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1989-12-06
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PC Paintbrush IV PLUS
Release Information / Read Me file
Thank you for purchasing PC Paintbrush IV Plus, the latest in our line of
next generation products. This file contains specific release information
and other items that became available after the manual went to print.
Version Change Description
--------- -----------------------------------------------------------
1.0 Initial Release. Please read notes, below.
Gray Scale Scanning:
-------------------
The program will not automatically switch to a gray scale palette
when scanning in gray scale. Before scanning in gray scale, use the Set
Preferences item from the Options Menu when in the scan mode. Specify
GRAYS.PAL as the default palette file to be automatically loaded before
a scan. To make the change "permanent", save the scanning Configuration
into a file named STANDARD.CNF. Alternatively, instead of using Set
Preferences, just load GRAYS.PAL when in the edit mode before scanning in
gray scale mode.
Color Scanning:
--------------
Currently, the program does not optimize the hardware screen palette to
best match the colors in the newly scanned image. For now, to obtain
the best results, make sure the palette is the standard, default set of colors
that come up when the program is first run in 256 color mode. You can load
STANDARD.PAL to get back to the standard 256 color palette if needed. Or, use
the Set Preferences item from the Options Menu when in the scan mode. Specify
STANDARD.PAL as the default palette file to be automatically loaded before
a scan. To make the change "permanent", save the scanning Configuration into
a file named STANDARD.CNF. If there are a different number of colors
on the screen than are being scanned, the image will be halftoned
according to the currently selected halftone method and brightness setting.
These settings can be changed using the Set Halftones dialog box
(Options Set Halftones in the Edit Image menus, not the Scan Image menus).
Halftoning:
----------
PC Paintbrush IV Plus automatically performs sophisticated color halftoning
on the image during certain operations. These operations are:
1. Loading (and pasting) an image with a different number of colors
than the current display mode.
2. Printing on a printer that offers less colors than are in the image.
3. Performing color scans when there are a different number of colors
on the screen than are being scanned.
4. Gradient operations.
YOU SHOULD SET THE DESIRED HALFTONE METHOD IN THE SET HALFTONES DIALOG BOX
BEFORE PERFORMING THESE OPERATIONS. The brightness control in the dialog
box also offers good control of the brightness during the halftoning process.
The Enhanced halftone method is particularly good for images that are to
be viewed on the screen (and not be resized or printed). The default
halftone method is Bayer.
Memory and Disk Configuration info:
----------------------------------
The program will automatically use expanded (either 3.x or 4.0 LIM EMS)
memory if it is available. It will not directly use extended memory. If
there is not enough DOS or expanded memory to hold an image, the disk (called
virtual memory in the user's manual) will be used. There are commands you
can use to set up your DOS environment to instruct Paintbrush to put the
disk based images on certain disk drives. This allows you to use RAM disks
for extra speedy scrolling. We recommend using RAM disks and disk cache
utilities to improve the operating speed of the program; extended memory can
be used for RAM disks and disk caches. See the user's manual for information
about configuring your computer memory for optimal performance.
Note that PC Paintbrush IV Plus can require large amounts of "virtual memory"
from your hard disk and ram disk, especially if you are doing full page gray
scale or color scans. Make sure that you have plenty of free space on your
hard disk, and that you set the PBTEMP environment variable appropriately
(see your User's Manual).
"Generic" mice and other drawing devices:
----------------------------------------
If you have already installed your mouse (or tablet or other drawing device)
in your computer and are already using it with other programs, please
select one of the "Generic" drawing device entries in the installation
program PBSETUP. Then PBSETUP won't have to bother you with reinstalling
your drawing device driver.
Using single button drawing tablets (digitizers):
------------------------------------------------
If you are using a drawing device that has only one button on the pen
barrel, you must select one of the 1 button type drawing devices in PBSETUP.
Then, YOU MUST DEPRESS THE ALT KEY WHEN PUSHING THE PEN TIP TO SIMULATE
A RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. PUSHING THE PEN TIP WITHOUT HOLDING DOWN THE ALT
KEY IS THE SAME AS THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON.
Printing with Intel Visual Edge and DPTEK printing systems:
----------------------------------------------------------
These printing systems require enough EMS memory be available at print time
to hold the entire printed image. They use standard EMS memory, as does
PC Paintbrush IV Plus. Consequently, unless you have a lot of EMS memory,
printing with these printers may fail due to Paintbrush's use of EMS to
hold the image that is being edited. If your printouts are missing the
bottom portion or fail entirely, the solution is to make Paintbrush not
use EMS memory, so that it will be available at print time. To disable
use of EMS memory in PC Paintbrush IV Plus, type "set ZEMS=0" at the
DOS prompt. This sets up an Environment variable called ZEMS, and sets its
value to zero.
GRAYTOBW and other nice utilities included in PC Paintbrush IV Plus:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
GRAYTOBW is a DOS utility used to modify .PCX files. This program
can turn a B/W image into a 16 level grayscale image, or convert a
grayscale image into a dithered B/W image using a selectable dithering
algorithm, and much more.
PCL2XFR is a handy utility that will convert HP soft font files (.SFP and
.SFL) into .XFR font files. This allows use of any HP soft font file
inside PC Paintbrush IV, as a normal bitmap font.
TIFFDUMP analyzes TIFF files. It's used to help solve problems sometimes
encountered when trying to load incompatible TIFF files.
VPTIF is used to convert a gray scale TIFF file so that it look right
in Ventura Publisher V2.0. As far as we can tell, Ventura and PageMaker
interpret gray scale information differently, so our files work
correctly with PageMaker and require this fix for Ventura.
Another workaround for this problem is to first invert the entire
image (i.e. make it a negative), and then save it as a TIFF file. (Note
neither PageMaker nor Ventura support compressed gray scale TIFF files).
CHKMEM is a utility that quickly reports your machine's available disk and
RAM memory. It can be used to help you make more memory available, so
that PC Paintbrush can edit the largest possible pictures.
For full information about these utilities, see the User's Manual.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLDGRAY
This program builds a gray scale palette and pattern set for PC Paintbrush
IV and IV Plus (for 4,8,16 and 256 color) with different gamma factors. The
program itself is zipped into the fonts.exe file on the fonts disk; however,
the file will unzip itself upon installation on a hard disk.
Syntax:
BLDGRAY GammaFactor OutputPalFile
Where:
GammaFactor - a floating point number between 0.01 and 10
OutputPalFile- the file to be built for this gamma factor
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Discussion:
Gamma corrected palettes (as built by BLDGRAY) are important
for maintaining the scanner-eye-printer relationship of grays. When
you scan an image, the scanner has a linear response curve (half as light
produces half the output value). Your eyes are non-linear, though, and so
the output of a scanner will look very dark. To make the screen display
match the paper input you will need a gamma corrected palette (usually
a gamma of 0.3 to 0.7). To make the image print right, you will
need a different gamma correction - note that if you are using Paintbrush
IV Plus to print, it has a brightness control in the halftoning options
dialog box (which actually performs gamma correction). If you are planning
to use another application to print, you may want to load a different
gamma corrected palette before saving the image for the other application.
Example:
You scan at 256 levels of gray
Load a gamma of 0.4 to display
Load a gamma of 0.7 before saving for other apps