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Text File | 1995-04-16 | 70KB | 1,507 lines

__________ | | __ | _______| | | | | | | | |_______ _______ _______ _______ ____| | | | | \ / \ / \ / | |_______ | | __ | | _____ | | _____ | | __ | | | | | \ | | | | | | / | | | | | | | | | ______/ | ______/ | | | | _______| | | |__/ | | \_____ | \_____ | \__| | | | | | | | | | | | |__________| | ____/ \_______| \_______| \_______| | | | | _____ _____ __ |__| | _ | | ____| | | | | | | | ___| | | | |_| | | | | | |_____| |_| | | __ __ | | | | | | | | __ | | | | | | |__| ______ | |_____ ___| |___ | | __ / \ | \ | | | | | | | __ | | ___ | |___ ___| _____ _____ | | | | | / | | | | | | | | |____ | | _ | | | |__| | | | | | | | | | | __| | | |_| | | |________ | \__| | | | | | | |___ |__ | __ | _ | | | | | | | | | | | ___| | | | | |_| | |___________| \____ | |__| |__| \_____| |_____| |__| |_____| | | ____________________| | | | |______________________/ This document and all included documents are (C) Copyright 1993-1995, Stuart Denman All Rights Reserved. This document may only be reproduced for personal use. All coding and design by Stuart Denman. Internet: sdenman@cs.washington.edu (Valid through summer 1996) Released April 16, 1995 Speed of Light is a comprehensive image processor/viewer with many advanced and highly configurable features. Speed of Light is SHAREWARE! SHAREWARE! SHAREWARE! This SHAREWARE! version is an incomplete demonstration version until you register and receive a keycode to gain access to the disabled features. See the registration section for complete information on how to register. ******* NOTE: If you have already read the manual for version 3.1, you need not read this whole manual again. Simply read the CHANGES.DOC file, as well as the new (or changed) sections in this manual marked with an (*) or (**) below. Please take a look at the file SOL_AEO1.DOC which is an article I did for Atari Explorer Online about how to get the most out of Speed of Light. Check it out! I have included a file called GLOSSARY.DOC which defines some of the more complicated image processing terms used throughout this manual. So if there are any words that you don't understand, chances are that it is in the glossary. ******* This manual is a semi-brief introduction to the features of Speed of Light version 3.8. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to completely discuss the features in as much detail as they should be, so the best way to learn them is by playing with them. PLAY, PLAY, PLAY! Also, I have not discussed items which are redundant or obvious (like some of the items on the display-screen popup menu). This manual is organized into the sections, so even if you do not feel like reading the whole manual, at least keep in mind what the different sections are so if you have trouble figuring something out (and I know you will) you can find your way to the section you need quickly. I recommend printing this whole thing out and following along with the program. The manual is organized into the following sections (in order): >> WHAT IS SPEED OF LIGHT? >> HOW TO REGISTER (**) >> LEGAL STUFF/DISCLAIMERS (**) >> RUNNING THE PROGRAM AND IMAGE LOADING >> IMAGE FORMATS (**) >> DIALOG BOX TRICKS >> THE DISPLAY SCREEN >> THE OPTIONS DIALOG (**) >> THE HISTOGRAM EDITOR >> THE COLOR EDITOR (*) >> SAVING IMAGES >> THE DISPLAY SCREEN POPUP MENU (*) >> FILTERED IMAGE SCALING (*) >> IMAGE WARPING (*) >> DITHERING >> PREFERENCES (**) >> COLORS TO PLAY WITH >> GRAPHICS CARDS >> KNOWN BUGS >> FINAL REMARKS (*) Indicates that a significant amount of new information was added as of version 3.5. (**) Indicates that a significant amount of new information was added as of version 3.7. --------------------------------------------- ---===>>> WHAT IS SPEED OF LIGHT? <<<===--- --------------------------------------------- Speed of Light started as a GIF viewer with a twist. It could display more colors and shades on a standard ST than usual. It was also the FASTEST GIF decompressor on the ST, written in pure assembly language. NOW, Speed of Light is still the fastest GIF viewer, but also the fastest JPEG viewer (for machines without a DSP chip). Version 3.8 contains all the features of version 2.x, but also adds more image formats, more image processing features, and many other impressive tools, including the most extensive color map editing capabilities available on Atari systems. As of version 3.5, SOL includes two new capabilities fully available only to registered users: Filtered Image Scaling (FIS) and Image Warping. FIS allows images to be scaled to any size, yet retain their clarity. It can also be used to blur images, smooth out blocky zoomed images, and take into account lost pixels due to reduction. Version 3.5 includes 8 new filters for some unusual effects including sharpening and "3D Pixel" effects. It is probably the most advanced tool the program has to offer. Image warping allows you to shift and bulge your image in a variety of ways. You can stretch one part of your image, or repeatedly warp the whole image. A variety of waveforms can be used for the warping effect. Speed of Light (here on referred to by SOL) has been tested on all Atari computers and works on ST,MEGA,STE,TT, and Falcon computers. SOL 3.8 now runs in all resolutions of 256 colors or less, including MONOCHROME (2 color) and medium (4 color) resolutions! It also runs under MultiTOS, and allows switching from image to desktop in a flash. Several people have asked why SOL does not fully use GEM. The main reason is speed. I draw directly into screen memory for speed. This causes SOL to be very device-dependent, but it is a trade-off that myself and other users are willing to put up with. Believe it or not, all of SOL's dialog boxes and menus are 100% GEM. If I used the standard "desktop" look instead of my custom colors to create SOL's unique dialog boxes, it would be a lot different. It's just too hard, at this point, to convert all the dialogs to plain GEM. ------------------------------------- ---===>>> HOW TO REGISTER <<<===--- ------------------------------------- When you register for SOL 3.8, you will receive a keycode that will allow you to access the disabled features. Filtered Scaling and Warping will also display without blank lines. Your Shareware donation will help support my Shareware efforts so that I may bring you more quality Atari software like SOL. Once you type your keycode into the registration dialog box, this copy of SOL becomes your personal registered copy, and your keycode will work with any versions released after 3.8. The keycode will also make it so that the SOL title/information dialog and registration box will not come up when you run the program. To register, fill in the registration dialog box with the required information, and click on "Print EZform" to print the information and EZform registration letter. You will be asked whether you want to print a filled out form to the printer or to a disk file called REGISTER.TXT in ASCII format. A blank form is also included in the file REGIFORM.TXT. Send an EZform (with all the information required in the registration dialog box) and AT LEAST $25 United States funds (see below for foreign registrations) to this address: Stuart Denman 1751 N.E. NAOMI PL. SEATTLE, WA 98115 <<==-- This was wrong in SPOFLT35.DOC! U.S.A. Make checks or money-orders payable to Stuart Denman, or send CASH. Please allow at MOST one month for a response (especially during the summer) before you try to contact me again. PLEASE SEND YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS IF YOU HAVE ONE. If using E-mail, you will get your keycode within one week (of when I received it), sometimes the day I receive your letter (for cash shareware donations). I do sometimes go on vacation, so please be patient with me, especially during the summer, thanks! ***** FOREIGN ORDERS READ BELOW ***** If you are registering from a country other than the United States, you have two choices on how to register. You may either send your registration money and form to me, or send it to a designated foreign registration site. IF REGISTERING IN EUROPE: ------------------------- (This is the preferred way, if you are in Europe). Denesh Bhabuta will be handling registrations for Speed of Light in Europe. He will accept UK cheques or cash, Euro-cheques, and Postal Orders. Eventually, he may accept credit cards (you should contact Denesh about this). The registration is 20 pounds UK. Make cheques (20 pounds UK) payable to "Denesh Bhabuta" and send along with your completed registration form to: CyberSTrider 203 PARR LANE UNSWORTH BURY LANCASHIRE BL9 8JW UNITED KINGDOM If you have questions about registering with Denesh, he can be reached at the above address or by e-mail: dbhabuta@cix.compulink.co.uk danny@micros.hensa.ac.uk IF REGISTERING FROM OTHER NON-U.S. COUNTRIES: --------------------------------------------- Send your registration payment and form to me (Stuart Denman) in the United States. Foreign orders must send AT LEAST $25 U.S. CASH or money order, or you can send the EQUIVALENT of AT LEAST $30 U.S. MONEY IN CASH NOTES OF YOUR FOREIGN CURRENCY. NO UNSTABLE CURRENCIES, only things like Deutch-Marks, UK Pounds, and other stable currencies that I can easily exchange with small fees. If you are in Europe, please register using the prodedure above. ***** FOREIGN ORDERS READ ABOVE ***** --------------------------------------------- ---===>>> LEGAL STUFF/DISCLAIMERS <<<===--- --------------------------------------------- Use of this program is restricted to 30 days, after which, if you do not register the program and pay the $25 Shareware donation, you must TERMINATE USE. USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK! The author assumes no liability what-so-ever for any damages that may result from using this program or its accompanying files. This program includes absolutely no warranty, written or implied. PLEASE distribute this UNREGISTERED program everywhere, provided that this text file and all other files are included with the program. DO NOT RE-ARCHIVE SPEED OF LIGHT! Keep a copy of the original ZIP file so you can upload it to BBS's and distribute it to your friends. SPEED OF LIGHT MAY NOT BE SOLD FOR ANY PRICE BY ANYONE OTHER THAN THE AUTHOR. PUBLIC DOMAIN AND SHAREWARE RETAILERS HAVE PERMISSION TO DISTRIBUTE THE UNREGISTERED VERSION FOR A MINIMAL FEE NOT ANY HIGHER THAN THE COST TO REPRODUCE THE DISK. *** THIS PROGRAM MAY NOT BE PLACED ON A MAGAZINE COVER DISK WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! YOU MUST WRITE AND ASK FIRST, THANKS! *** WARNING: Any attempt to alter the program or its supporting files could result in permanent damage to your computer or i/o devices. The author assumes no liability or damages resulting from this. The Graphic Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated. ----------------------------------------- ---===>>> RUNNING THE PROGRAM <<<===--- ---===>>> AND IMAGE LOADING <<<===--- ----------------------------------------- To run SOL, double click on SPOFLT35.APP from the desktop, or drag an image file (in newer TOS versions) to the program name or icon. The title dialog should come up (if an unregistered program), followed by the registration dialog box (see "HOW TO REGISTER" above for information on how to use this box to register). Click on Cancel in the registration box to go to the Options Dialog. This is the main settings dialog where you tell SOL how to display the image. Click on "Add" to load an image and you will be prompted with a fileselect box. Select an image to load with the fileselect box. Some example images are included in the IMAGES folder. You can also type in wildcards like "*" and "?" to make SOL load in all the images in a particular directory that match the wildcard. Use "*.*" to load in all the images. You will then get a status/information box informing you that your image is being loaded, uncompressed, or whatever. Next, the Options Dialog box will appear again where you can change the display parameters before displaying the image. I recommend that you use a program like Warp 9 or NVDI with SOL, as it often can take a long time to draw the dialog boxes without these software accelerators, especially the Options Dialog. Selectric Fileselector is now supported, so you can select multiple files if you have it installed. A description of the items in the Options Dialog will appear in a section below, but there is a row of buttons at the bottom of the dialog that I will describe now. These are buttons for loading, saving, and displaying the current image, as well as for quitting the program. Click on "Quit", "Save As", and "Display" to quit the program, save the image, and display the image. "Add" and "New" are for loading in images. Clicking on these will call up the fileselect box again and you can select an image to load or Cancel. "Add" will load an image and place it at the end of the list of loaded images (this will occur even if you are not on the last image when you click on Add). "New" will replace the current image with the one you load in. Use "Purge" to remove the last image (or images) in the list and free up memory if needed. ----------------------------------- ---===>>> IMAGE FORMATS <<<===--- ----------------------------------- Speed of Light version 3.8 identifies the images it loads by their file extension. SOL can LOAD and display the following image formats: FORMAT NAME EXTENSION Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) *.GIF JPEG *.JPG Degas Uncompressed *.PI? Degas Compressed *.PC? Prism Paint *.PNT GEM (X)Image Format *.IMG SOL 3.8 now supports Brainstorm's DSP JPEG decoder for the Falcon030. If you have this program installed in your AUTO folder, SOL 3.8 will use it to quickly decode JPEG images. SOL version 3.8 can also SAVE in the following formats: FORMAT NAME SAVE TYPE GIF As original (as on screen only with graphics cards) Degas Compressed/Uncompressed As on screen Prism Paint As on screen GEM (X)Image Format As original and as on screen -------------------------------------- ---===>>> DIALOG BOX TRICKS <<<===--- -------------------------------------- SOL uses an "enhanced 3D GEM" interface with special features that you can take advantage of: * Popup menus are easy to use ways of selecting several items. Click on these to "pop" them up, then click again to select the item you want. * On any slider box, DOUBLE-click on the arrows to move the slider bar all the way to that side of the bar. * Real-time slider bars allow instant results. Click and hold on a slider bar until the mouse cursor turns into two arrows (like <>). Then drag it back and forth to see the numbers change. * In places where there are two or more slider boxes in a row, you can double click on the slider bar and the other slider boxes will move to the same position as the one you clicked on. * Keyboard equivalents in the dialog boxes were left out so that they would not interfere with programs like Let 'em Fly that enhance the dialog boxes. ---------------------------------------- ---===>>> THE DISPLAY SCREEN <<<===--- ---------------------------------------- After you load an image and the Options dialog box appears, click on DISPLAY to look at the image. SOL will scan the image and create tables of color conversions that it uses for display, and then it will draw the image onto the screen. This is called the Display Screen. To return to the previous dialog, click the RIGHT mouse button. There are a lot of image manipulation things that you can do from this screen without going to the Options Dialog. All of these things are accessible by pressing the appropriate key or by clicking and holding the mouse button. When you click and hold the LEFT mouse button, a popup menu appears with a large selection of items, as well as their keyboard equivalents listed beside them. The function of these items will be described below in the section "THE DISPLAY SCREEN POPUP MENU". The section you are reading now will discuss some basic things not available in the popup menu. If the image is larger than the size of your display screen, you can move around in the image with the arrow keys, or by using the mouse. Pressing the UP, DOWN, RIGHT, and LEFT ARROWS will move your display in that particular direction on the image by 20 pixels. To move the screen by one quarter of the screen, hold down CONTROL when you press the arrow keys. MOVING WITH THE MOUSE is more complicated. When you enter the display screen, the mouse appears in the center of the screen (even if it is not being displayed, it will still be in the center). Imagine a small box centered in the middle of the screen. The mouse can move freely inside of this box, but when it goes outside of the box, the display will move in the direction that the mouse went outside of the box. The farther the mouse goes outside of the box, the more the display moves. If the mouse is being displayed, and arrow will briefly appear showing the direction of motion. To stop the display screen from scrolling, move the mouse back to the center of the screen OR quickly press the left mouse button to return the pointer to the center. Holding it down longer will make the popup menu appear. You can also hold down ALTERNATE to prevent the screen from scrolling when the mouse goes out of the center box. If you have more than one image loaded, you can press the function keys to go to the first TEN images (F1-F10). To go to the NEXT TEN images, hold down SHIFT and press a function key (F11-F20). Use ALTERNATE for F21-F30. You can also press ']' to go to the next image and '[' to go to the previous image. In flicker mode, you can stop SOL from flickering the screen by pressing the SPACEBAR. This shows you the first of the two screens that SOL flickers to get the expanded palette. Press the SPACEBAR again to resume flickering. You can also use the SPACEBAR to pause during the drawing of the screen. Pauses during FIS as well. ---------------------------------------- ---===>>> THE OPTIONS DIALOG <<<===--- ---------------------------------------- The related items (text, buttons, sliders, etc.) in the Options Dialog are arranged in the same area with a thin line dividing each area. Each item is discussed in order from left-to-right, then top-to-bottom, in each specific group. Text items are indicated by a T>, buttons are indicated by a B>, editable items are indicated by an E>, slider bars are indicated by an S>, and popup menus are indicated by a P>. Group titles are surrounded by astrixes (**) and the specific items are listed under the group title. ** Image Specifications ** T> Image Filename - name of current image file whose display specifications are shown in the rest of the options dialog. T> Image Dimensions - size of the image in pixels. An 'I' is printed after this to indicate and interlaced image. T> Image Palette - the size of the palette used by the image. T> Image Colors - the actual number of colors in the current image. B> "H" Button - Displays the histogram for the current image. The histogram is separated into its red, green, and blue planes and you can switch between them with the buttons at the top of the histogram screen. A greyscale image (loaded in as greyscale, not displayed as Shades) will have the same histogram for red, green, and blue planes (as expected). Notice that additive color transformations will not effect this histogram, but complex histogram transformations will (see below for info on these color effects). B> "P" Button - This optimizes the palette of the image. The initial palette value is taken directly from the image header, or the expected palette. This button scans through the image and tries to find the actual palette resolution. A lot of times I get GIF pictures that say they only have 64 color palette when they actually have 16 million. I did not automatically optimize the palette on loading because it can take some time, and it is not necessary for normal use. ** Machine Specifications ** T> Machine - the machine you are using. T> Resolution - the size of your display. T> Palette - the size of the palette your system can display. T> Colors - Number of colors in the system. This can be changed by clicking on the arrows next to it. This sets the actual number of colors that the image will be displayed with. This allows you to reduce the number of display colors. B> "Delta" Button - On TTs and STs, you can change the resolution that you display in by clicking on this button and selecting the resolution in the popup menu. Machine specifications for color and resolution should change. The mouse does not always look right and has a limited range when enabled on ST Medium. B> "3-Bars" Button - This allows setting of program preferences as well as truecolor loading and inverse colormap settings. See the "PREFERENCES" section below for complete information. ** Picture Number, Display Mode, and ** ** Color Transformation Settings ** S> Picture Number - This slider bar selects the current image. There may be a pause after switching to a different picture. This is due to the computer taking some time to draw the new image parameters into the Options Dialog (the screen blanks during redraw). P> Display Mode - This selects between a color interpretation of the image and a shades display of the image. "Shades" are normally greyscale unless you change the color with the color transformation settings. On TT computers, you can select "TTGrey" mode which allows you to display 256 shades of grey when in TT Low display. B> Red Downward Pointing Arrow - This changes the color transformations so that the image looks as close to the original as possible (sets sliders to zero, or changes histograms to a one-to-one transformation). B> Complex - This switches between additive color transforms and histogram color transforms. When this is highlighted, three small histograms are displayed (one for red, green, and blue). Click on any of these histograms to edit that particular color plane in the histogram editor (see below). These histograms take a particular intensity of red, green, or blue color and map it to a new intensity. That is why the one-to-one transformation is a triangular shape (the graph represents the line y=x). Flipping this transformation will cause inversion of the color map (low intensities map to high ones, and visa-versa). For some interesting effects with these transformations, see the section "COLORS TO PLAY WITH" below. S> Additive Color Transforms - These three slider bars are active when "COMPLEX" is NOT highlighted and they allow you to add various levels of red, green, and blue to your image. Positive values increase the intensity, negative values decrease the intensity. For example, moving the green slider bar to the left makes the image look purple/red/blue when displayed. Putting all three sliders to the same value will brighten or darken the image without changing the colors' relative differences. NOTE AGAIN that these sliders are used only when the "COMPLEX" button is NOT highlighted. ** Color Reduction/Selection Settings ** P> Color Reduction Method - If the display colors are fewer that the number of colors in the image, then SOL will try to reduce the number of colors using the method selected by this popup menu. All color reduction methods take into account the "Color Contrast" settings (described below). The "Frequency" method is the most automatic and it selects the colors based on their frequency in the picture. The next two methods, "Influence" and "By Rank", use a ranking histogram to choose the colors. The only difference between these two methods is that "By Rank" selects the colors purely upon how they are ranked in the histogram, whereas "Influence" takes into account the frequency of the color in the image as well as its rank. B> Color Rank - The "Rank" button switches to the Color Ranking Histogram Editor where you can define the ranks of the red, green, and blue color planes. See "THE HISTOGRAM EDITOR" section of this manual for more information on how to use the editor. The ranking histogram for each color plane is organized with intensity on the horizontal axis from dark to light (left to right) and rank on the vertical axis from low to high (bottom to top). For example, if I wanted to make red, green, and yellow colors chosen more often than other colors, I would draw histograms like this: ^ Red: Green: Blue: ^ | ___ | ___ | R | / | / | A |______/ |______/ |___________ N | | | K +----------- +----------- +----------- Intensity > > When ranks for intensities are the same for all color planes, then the order of those colors will be chosen based on the order that they appear in the image's original palette (unless you are using the "Influence" method, in which case the frequency that they appear in the image will also have an effect). Rank has no effect when using the "Frequency" method; that is why you cannot edit the rank histograms when this method is selected. Rank also has no effect when all intensities, in all color planes, have the same rank. The height of the rank has no importance, except relative to the height of the rest of the histogram. B> Complex - This button selects between simple color contrast slider bars and a more complex histogram color contrast. If "COMPLEX" is highlighted, the three contrast slider bars will be replaced by three histograms which allow you to define the contrast for each intensity level of the red, green, and blue planes. To edit a particular contrast histogram, click on the small histogram of the one you want to edit. Contrast is on the vertical axis, and intensity is on the horizontal axis of each histogram. Read about the contrast slider bars (below) for more information on how contrast effects the image... S> Color Contrast/Separation - This trio of slider bars defines the minimum separation between the colors that SOL chooses to display the image with. This contrast can be set from 1 (choose colors as close together as possible) to 256 (choose colors with highest contrast, like black and white). A setting of 1 is best when the picture has equal or less than the number of displayed colors, but when the color must be reduced, like from a 256 color image down to a 16 color display, a contrast between 18 and 32 is best. If the contrast is too high, the color map will not be completely filled due to rejected colors. The best separation value is just below the point where colors are starting to be omitted from the map (use the "color-loss warning" alert box (see Preferences section) to help you find this point). ** Image Scaling and Some Miscellaneous Buttons ** E> Horizontal and Vertical Size in Pixels - These two editable fields define the size (in pixels) that the image will be scaled to. Click or use the arrows to move the editing cursor. P> Axis Effect - This popup menu selects "Horizontal, Vertical, or Both" as the axis that the buttons to the right of this popup effect (see below). The buttons "+, -, O, and A" will change the scaling of the axis that you set here. The first letter of your selection will appear in the button (either H, V, or B). B> "O" Button - With this button, scaling is set to the original size of the image. B> "A" Button - This calculates the aspect ratio of the original width and height of the image based on the effected axis (if "Both" is selected, then this button bases its effects on the horizontal axis). It then sets the other axis to the proper value to match this ratio. B> "-" Button - This button will halve the selected axis. This reduces the image by a factor of two. B> "+" Button - This button will double the selected axis. This enlarges the image by a factor of two. B> "Fltr" Button - This turns filtered scaling on and off. The filter that it uses is set with the "Set" button below. B> "Set" Button - Clicking on this button will switch to the Filtered Scaling Settings Dialog where you can set the filter type and scaling. B> "Fit" Button - This stretches the widest edge of the image out to the width or height of the screen so that the image is at its largest size without exceeding the screen's borders. The image's original aspect ratio is restored. B> "Mous" Button - If this is highlighted, then the mouse will be displayed in the Display Screen, otherwise it will be hidden. This is the same as pressing TAB from the Display Screen. B> "SmDr" Button - This turns on and off "Smooth Draw" mode. When flickering is used to increase the number of colors, this will make SOL flicker the screen even when it is drawing for a smoother effect. The only drawback is that drawing is considerably slower. B> "Warp" Button - This switches to the Warp Setting dialog where you can set various warping and stretching effects. See the Image Warping section for more details. ** Flicker Contrast and Dithering ** S> Flicker Contrast - This slider bar sets the maximum contrast allowed between flickered colors. Greater contrast may cause increased flickering, while lower contrasts will reduce flickering. When the slider is moved all the way to the left, the slider will indicate "OFF". Drawing will be twice as fast when flickering is off. If you have a large display palette and number of colors, flickering SHOULD be turned off, because you DO NOT NEED IT. Flickering may produce weird effects on graphics cards, and is unavailable with Byteplane Mode (see Preferences Dialog). There is a known bug on the Falcon when you have the mouse being displayed while flickering; the screen jumps around in funny ways on large resolution displays and sometimes may not flicker at all. This is due to a hardware bug that is unavoidable. P> Dither Pattern - This popup menu selects between dither patterns. See the dithering discussion section below for more information. B> "Set" Button - This switches to the Dithering Dialog so that you may have more detailed control over dithering than just what pattern is used. See the dithering section below for more information. ** Miscellaneous Buttons ** B> "Desk" Button - SOL allows you to go to the desktop to access accessories (or return to other programs in MultiTOS). Some menu items are available there, and a scrolling list of all the loaded images is also accessible from the menu. Most entries are self-explanatory. Keyboard equivalents for menu items are listed next to them. Loading can be done WITHOUT returning to the non-windowed environment of SOL. B> "?" Button - This displays the title dialog with credits and shareware information. It also shows you how much free memory you have available and who the program is registered to. B> "Purge" Button - This allows you to remove the last image from the image list and free the memory it takes. Unlike version 3.1, 3.8 lets you purge an image if it is the only one loaded into SOL. You can also double-click on "Purge" to remove all the images from memory. B> "Colors" Button - This goes to the powerful color editor. This is not available in Shades or Greyscale modes. See the section below on how to use the color editor. ** Lower Row of Buttons ** B> ">>" Button - This calls up the Slideshow Settings Dialog. Here you can move the slider bar to select the number of seconds to display each image. When the direction is selected (forward, backward, etc) SOL will automatically switch between images, displaying each one for the specified number of seconds. The way it switches between images is determined by the second popup menu. "First" and "Last" allow you to select the first and last image for display. Only images between and including these images will be displayed. If the first image comes after the last image, the two image numbers will be exchanged. If you display an image outside of this range of images while in the middle of a slideshow, the slideshow will terminate until you enter the range again. The display time is calculated from the point where the image finishes drawing. The Record Script button is described in the file SCRIPTS.DOC. Other buttons are described in the section "RUNNING THE PROGRAM AND IMAGE LOADING" above, but are fairly obvious. ------------------------------------------ ---===>>> THE HISTOGRAM EDITOR <<<===--- ------------------------------------------ This editor makes it easy to edit graphical histograms for color manipulation purposes. The main editing area is a large box in the center of the dialog. To set the level for a particular intensity, click the mouse where you want the level to be. You can hold the mouse button down and SLOWLY move it right or left to draw the shape of the histogram. You can easily switch between the red, green, and blue color planes by clicking on one of the three buttons at the top of the dialog. Most of the buttons at the bottom of the dialog are for editing and creating the shape of the histogram. "Stretch" and "Squash" are for doing just that. They effect the level of the histogram. "Invert" subtracts the maximum level of the histogram from the histogram level at each intensity and makes that the new level. The "Flip" button flips the image horizontally. The four ARROW buttons move the histogram in the direction specified. "Copy" will copy the histogram onto the GEM clipboard (disk) and you can use "Paste" to copy it back in to any other histogram. If you DOUBLE-CLICK on "Copy", it will copy the current histogram to the other two color plane histograms. For example, if you double-click on "Copy" in the green histogram, red and blue will become the same as green. "Undo" reverts the histogram back to what it was when you first started editing that particular color plane. "OK" goes back to the Options Dialog, and "Cancel" will Undo any changes you have made to any of the color planes since you entered the editor, and then goes back to the Options Dialog. "Gamma" allows you to automatically make a gamma-correction histogram. This is used for color transformations and is the most realistic way to brighten or darken an image without getting washout. After clicking on the button, type in the gamma- correction value and click on "Generate" to create it. A value greater than 1 will darken the image, less than 1 will brighten the image. A value of 1 is a one-to-one transformation. "Linear" allows you to automatically generate a linear histogram by setting the rise and run. The histogram has a width and height of 256, so a rise and run of 256 will have a slope of one. You can also shift the graph by a positive or negative pixel value to the right. "Step" was never implemented. -------------------------------------- ---===>>> THE COLOR EDITOR <<<===--- -------------------------------------- Ten colors are displayed at the top of the dialog and each has its actual color number above it. These colors are displayed in either VDI-order or Device-Dependent order, depending on whether you have "VDI Order" selected or not. To move the "window" of ten colors around in the larger color map, you can either adjust the slider bar below the colors, or click on the arrows to the right and left of the ten color boxes. Double-clicking moves all the way to the beginning or end. You can change the red, green, and blue color values of a color by clicking on the color. It is marked by an inner box. Even when you move the color "window" to a different spot in the color map, the one being edited always stays the same, even if it is not displayed in the current window of colors. To alter the color, use the three slider bars labeled RED, GREEN, and BLUE under the color map to the right. If a color exists in the color map that is not being used by the current image, it will be marked with a small X in the middle of the color box. The buttons in the editor are divided into two groups. The ten upper-left-hand buttons are tools for manipulating two or more colors. This is the "Toolbox." These buttons are slightly thinner than the other buttons. The lower-left-hand and right-hand buttons are for switching to other dialog boxes, undoing, or are used for other global operations. All the "toolbox" buttons are used in the same way. To apply the tool to the whole color map or to define the first and last colors in the color map as the "hot" colors, double click on the tool button. Otherwise, you must manually mark the "hot" colors. Click on the first "hot" color that you want in the color map and it will be marked with an inner box. Next, click on the tool button you want to use. The mouse pointer should turn into a pencil pointer. Then move to the second "hot" color and click on it to apply the tool between the two colors. To cancel the tool, click off the color map, or press the right mouse button. Here is the effect that each tool has: COPY - this copies the first color to the second one. SWAP - the two colors are exchanged. FILL - this fills all the colors in between and including the second color with the color of the first one. FLIP - this flips the colors in the selected area so that the first color goes the the last color's position and the last color ends up in the first color's position. < ROTATE - this shifts the colors to the left and takes the first color in the selected area and puts it in the last color slot. ROTATE > - this shifts the colors to the right and takes the last color in the selected area and puts it in the first color slot. SORT GROUP - this groups the colors in the selected area based on their color values. For example, all the greens and blues will be sorted into separate groups. GRADIENT - this smoothly fills in all the colors in between the first and the second color so that there is a gradual change from one to the other. For example, a gradient between black and white would fill in with increasingly brighter greys until it finally reaches white. Play with it! SORT DK > LT - this button sorts the colors in the selected area from the darkest color to the lightest color. SORT LT > DK - this sorts the colors in the selected area from the lightest color to the darkest color. The functional buttons are located in the left half of the Color Editor Dialog under the three RGB slider bars and on the right half under the "toolbox." Here is the what each button does when you click on it: MATCH - this is a on/off highlight button. When "Match" is highlighted, any changes to the color palette will cause SOL to try to match the images colors to the new palette. If it does not use one of the colors in the color map, it will be marked with a small X. If "Match" is NOT highlighted, then the pixels will retain their mappings to the old palette, and your changes will appear in the displayed image. NOTE that FIS matches your palette to the original image no matter what. DISPLAY - this goes to the display screen. You can press the right mouse button or the 'E' key to return to the Color Editor. UNDO - you can undo any changes you make to the palette using this button. CPY/SWP - this allows you to swap or copy the current palette to another image. Select the image in the small dialog and click on "Copy" or "Swap" depending on what you want to do. IMAGE - this allows you to edit another image's palette. Select the new image in the dialog box and click on "OK" to make it the current image. RESCAN - sometimes you want to revert back to the original palette that SOL calculated for this image originally. This button will do that. SELECT - clicking on this will switch to the display screen where you can click on any pixel in the image and that color entry in the palette will be selected in the Color Editor when you return. This is so you can be sure that you are editing the correct color. TAKE - this allows you to select a pixel from the image in the same way as SELECT. The color that you are currently editing will then take on the value that that pixel had in the original image. LOAD - this loads a .PAL palette file into the current color map. If there are more colors in the .PAL file than will fit into the current map, only the first ones that will fit are used. SAVE - this saves the current palette as a .PAL file. CANCEL - this aborts any changes you have made and returns to the previous screen. OPTIONS - this goes to the Options Dialog. .PAL FILE FORMAT: ================= BYTE OFFSET DESCRIPTION ----------- ----------- 0 Number of Colors in the file - 1 1 Red intensity (0-255) color 0 2 Green intensity (0-255) color 0 3 Blue intensity (0-255) color 0 4 Red intensity (0-255) color 1 5 Green intensity (0-255) color 1 6 Blue intensity (0-255) color 1 7 color 2...etc. ----------------------------------- ---===>>> SAVING IMAGES <<<===--- ----------------------------------- Clicking on "Save As" in the Options Dialog or from the Display Screen popup menu will bring up the Saving Dialog where you can select the image format that you want to save in. There are two ways to save images, some only apply to certain formats: SAVE AS ORIGINAL - this saves the image as it is stored in memory. The display scaling and display palette has no effect. The only things that have effects are flipping, rotating, clipping, and complex histogram color transformations. SAVE AS ON SCREEN - this saves the image as you see it on your screen. Any part of the image that is off screen will not be saved. If the image is being flickered, then you will be prompted for which of the two flickering screens should be the one that is saved. These are essentially the same except for some small dithering differences. It is best to turn off flickering and use dithering if you need to before saving. Select the image to save in with the popup menu. For some images, you can save the display information and scaling with the image (like with GIF images). Select this option with the small button. You can also save a text comment file with GIF89a images. Upon saving, you will be prompted with a fileselect box asking for the text file that you wish to incorporate into the image as a comment. GIF Images can only save as original on non-graphics card systems, so to save the screen as a GIF image, simply save the screen as a GEM Image or Prism Paint picture, the load that one in, clip if necessary, and save as original in GIF format. You can also use the new feature "Image = Screen [X]" from the Display Screen menu to make the original image the same as the screen. Then, just save as original. Using this feature is easier and faster than converting it from another format. --------------------------------------------------- ---===>>> THE DISPLAY SCREEN POPUP MENU <<<===--- --------------------------------------------------- While displaying an image, click and hold the left mouse button until the popup menu appears. All of the commands listed can also be used by pressing the corresponding key in square brackets [] next to each item. Move up and down while holding down the mouse to highlight an entry and release the mouse button to select it. Canceling can be done by releasing with "Center Mouse/Cancel" highlighted or by releasing outside of the menu. Most of the menu items have been discussed before or are self explanatory, so only some of them will be explained below. The keyboard equivalent is indicated in brackets. CLIP IMAGE [C]- this displays the mouse as the corner of a frame. Click on the image where you want to start the upper-left corner of the clipped area. Clipping outside of the image will cause the mouse to turn into an X and it will not let you click there. To cancel at any time before clipping, click the RIGHT mouse button. You can now drag a box from the upper-left corner that you defined down to the lower-right corner of the clipping area. Click again to finish marking the area. A dialog box will come up where you can either replace an image with a copy of the clipped area or add this clipped area to the end of the image list. Clipped images have the same filename as the image that they were clipped from, but the extension is ".CLIPxx" where "xx" is a number that increases with each clipped image. ZOOM [+/-/Z/O/I] - this pops up another menu to select one of four items. "Zoom Area" allows you to select an area of the image to zoom in on. You can select an area the same way as you do with clipping (see above). "Zoom In" and "Zoom Out" will double and half the size of the image, respectively. "Zoom Original" will resize the image to its original size, and "Fit to Screen" will enlarge or reduce the image to fit onto the screen while keeping its original aspect ratio. ROTATE IMAGE [,/.] - this pops up another menu to select the direction of the 90 degree rotation. Extra memory is required for rotation, so you will be alerted if there is not enough. FLIP IMAGE [H/V] - this pops up a menu where you can select the direction of flipping (horizontal or vertical). This requires no extra memory. CHANGE PICTURE/VIEW [P] - this goes to the picture selection dialog where you can select the next picture you want to view by using the scroll bar. Each picture is shown in miniature greyscale. You can also change the location of your view-screen on the image. Do this by moving the mouse over the small greyscale image until a box appears. Click inside of the box and drag the mouse to move the box. Release the mouse to place the box and click on OK to view the new position on the image. TOGGLE COLORING [T] - this switches to "Shades" mode if in "Color" mode and visa-versa. IMAGE = SCREEN [X] - this allows you to make the current screen into an image. This way, you can permanently keep any warping or filtering changes and modify them with other effects. This also a way of saving GIF images by converting the screen to an "Original" image. When you select "Image = Screen [X]" from the popup menu (or press 'X') a dialog box will appear where you can select the image slot where you would like to store the screen image. Click on "Convert" to make the screen into an image without clipping. Click on "Shrink" to do the same, but the image will be clipped if it does not take up the full screen. NOTE: clipping, flipping, and rotating, all effect the original image (not just the screen), so "Save As Original" will save these kinds of changes. However, zooming, warping, filtering, and other features only effect what is on screen and therefore saving "As On Screen" should be used to save these changes. Use "Image = Screen" to make any screen changes permanent. -------------------------------------------- ---===>>> FILTERED IMAGE SCALING <<<===--- -------------------------------------------- Filtered Image Scaling (FIS) is a similar feature as "averaging" was in SOL version 2.6, but is MUCH more powerful. This technique is used to smooth out or alter images that have been enlarged or reduced. FIS is very calculation intensive and takes a long time to draw, so it was not meant as a quick way to view images. Instead, you should position and scale the images to the way you want them, and ONLY THEN use filtering. To turn on filtering, highlight "Fltr" in the Options Dialog Box or, from the Filter Settings Dialog, click on the round button above the filter graph until "Filter On" appears. FIS has been improved since version 3.3 and before. Color scaling is now almost as fast (when not dithering) as greyscale and "shades" modes by utilizing inverse colormaps. You can improve the quality of color FIS by using at least a 5 bit Inverse Colormap and dithering. Dithering only works with color FIS. Likewise, flickering only works with "Shades" display mode. To see how FIS works, load in a small 256 color picture, and switch to "Shades" display mode in the Options Dialog. Then click on "Display" and press the '+' key several times from the display screen to zoom in. Press the 'F' key to go to the Filtered Scaling Dialog. Click on the popup menu under "FILTER CURVE:" to select a Standard filter (select B-Spline). Then click on "OK" to display it. There may be a small initial pause, but then scan lines will appear one by one. You will notice that the completed output will look much better than the blocky original. It looks like a slightly blurred representation of the original. Enhancing filters were added in version 3.5 and can be used for weird effects. Note that these filters work best when the scaling is a multiple of the original image (i.e. x 2, x 4, etc.) Often you will get banding due to the inability of these filters to shift phase. Sharpening and Diffusion filters works best on the original image (no scaling) and the other enhancing filters work best when the image is enlarged. These other filters can be used to create interesting effects on the pixels themselves. For example, the Sharp Bias filter produces a 3-D pixel effect by lightening one side of the pixel when enlarged. Some of the enhancing filters are asymmetric and therefore can be flipped for different effects. The filter can be flipped when filtering horizontally or vertically by highlighting the appropriate selection in the Filter Settings Dialog. Filters can also be wrapped at the edges of the image or faded. Both have drawbacks in that fading will darken the edge of the image, while wrapped edges can sometimes produce duplicate pixels close to the edges. When reducing an image without FIS, lines are removed to make the new size, so a lot of the image is lost. Standard filters are used to accurately take these lost lines into account. Box and triangle filters work better for integral reduction/ enlargement factors because they are not phase-adjusting filters. In other words, if you scale the image by a factor of 1.7432, you will get banding across the image with these filters. The smoother, more curved filters are better for most scaling factors. Banding also occurs with some of the Enhancing Filters. Play with all the settings to get the best feel for how filtering works. Because filtering is limited in unregistered versions, four pictures have been included in the IMAGE folder showing the effects of filtering: ENLWOFIS.GIF is an enlarged image without FIS. ENLWFIS.GIF is an enlarged image showing the benefits of FIS. REDWOFIS.IMG is a reduced image without FIS. REDWFIS.IMG is a reduced image showing the benefits of FIS In the Filter Settings Dialog, you can also change the scaling of the filter itself. This can be used, among other things, to blur the image. First, click on "Scale Filter" to highlight the round button. This will use the scaling values that you type into the boxes to the right and below. Values of 1 do not scale the filter, but values greater than 1 will widen the filter and cause blurring. A value of 2 is for a little blurring, 4 for even more and so on. These values need NOT be integers, and they can be less than 1 as well. Values less than 1 produce a weird patterned darkening effect. You can also scale the filter in height to compensate for darkening caused by the horizontal and vertical scaling factors. The temporary memory usage of filtering is shown at the bottom of the Filter Settings Dialog and shows how much space you will need for a particular filter and filter scaling. Higher filter scaling values take more memory, as do wider filters. You can click on the memory value to update it when new scaling values are typed in. ----------------------------------- ---===>>> IMAGE WARPING <<<===--- ----------------------------------- This is a new feature as of version 3.3. Clicking on Warp in the Options Dialog or selecting "Image Warping [W]" from the Display popup menu will go to the Set Image Warping dialog box. Here you can turn on warping and type in the values that change how warping looks. The basic principle behind warping is that the scan lines of the image are stretched and shifted in a particular pattern to make an interesting (and usually amusing) change in the image. To do this, there are several numbers which you type into the warping dialog box to create the warping. These are all in units of pixels relative to the image itself, so if you display the image enlarged twice, 1 pixel unit = 2 screen pixels. Therefore, each number is scaled by the same factor as the current image scaling. The warping is centered around a specified area (referred to as a "bulge") and can be repeated (a periodic bulge.) This center is usually at the peak of the curve selected for warping, except when using a sine wave. There are four numerical entries which define how the wave looks. The numerical entries are width, height, horizontal shift, and vertical center position. Vertical center determines which scan line in the image will be used as the center of the bulge. This is where the largest (or smallest if width is negative) bulge point on the curve is located. The width determines how many pixels on each side of the image the bulge will extend at its peak. A negative value causes the curve to bulge inward, squashing the image. If the width is zero, no stretching occurs, but horizontal shift still has an effect. Horizontal shift sets how many pixels to the right (negative is to the left) the image will be shifted at the peak of the curve. The height sets how many scan lines above or below the vertical center position that the bulge extends. The warp pattern popup menu turns warping on by selecting the pattern of the bulge curve. Flat, Linear, Cubic, B-Spline, and Plateau are all positive curves (only warp in one direction; in or out), and the Sine Wave is both positive and negative (stretches or shifts in and out). Note that the B-Spline curve is twice as wide as the others, and it actually extends to twice the height that you specify. Experiment with these curves to see their effects. The Repeat popup sets whether you get a single bulge or a repeated (periodic) warping. "Periodic" repeats the pattern after every period of the currently selected curve. Vertical center position will then effectively change the phase shift of the resulting wave. ------------------------------- ---===>>> DITHERING <<<===--- ------------------------------- There are three dithering patterns built into SOL (ordered 1+2 and random dithering). Others can be loaded into two empty slots. These dithering patterns are the same as the ones used by GEMview and have a .DIT extension. To load one of these, click on the Load button from the Dither Settings Dialog, choose slot 1 or 2 from the alert box, and select the .DIT file with the fileselector. Some dither patterns are included in the folder DITHER. Click on "Set" next to DITHER PATTERN in the Options Dialog to enter the Dithering Settings. Here you can see what the different dither patterns look like, and set other things. There are two "folder-tabs" that control dithering patterns for normal and FIS (filter) dithering. Filter dithering does not have contrast or step slider bars. When you have the "normal" tab selected, the two sliders control the number of dither steps and the dithering contrast. Slide the dither steps bar to see the effect that it may have on your image. The dithering contrast sets the maximum contrast that two dithered colors can have between them. This is so that you do not get a lot of bright specks in your image. Play with these settings to see the results. These two slider bars have no effect on when FIS is used. For an example, say you wanted to dither a color image to a black and white image. Do the following: 1. Turn off flickering. 2. Switch to "Shades" display mode. 3. Turn on dithering and set the dithering contrast to 255. 4. Reduce the display colors to 2. 5. Display the image. OR: 1. Turn off flickering. 2. Turn on dithering and set dithering contrast to 255. 3. Switch to "Color" display mode. 4. Go to the color editor and fill the palette with black. 5. Make the second color white. 6. Highlight "Match" and re-display the image for the final result. --------------------------------- ---===>>> PREFERENCES <<<===--- --------------------------------- The preferences dialog can be selected from the Options Dialog by clicking on the "three-bars" button in the upper right corner of the dialog. The following options are available: *** Preferences under the "Settings" tab: *** >> Start program is GEM menu mode. This is mainly for MultiTOS users, but it causes the program to start at the desktop menu. >> Warn of lost colors due to contrast. This puts up an alert box after the colors are reduced if the palette has not been completely filled. This occurs when the contrast is too high or fewer colors are created by complex transformations. The number of lost colors are shown in the alert box. >> Fit image to screen on loading. This stretches (or shrinks) the image to fit the screen automatically when the image is loaded in. It still keeps the proportions of the image, so at least one side is guaranteed to be as wide (or as long) as the screen. >> Display image on loading. This displays the image directly after loading it without going to the Options Dialog or GEM menu. >> Store histograms for each picture. If this is selected, then when the program is re-run, it will allocate histogram memory for each image. Otherwise, the histograms will be common to all images, and if you make a change in one color histogram, it will effect the colors of the other images in memory. >> Capture options dialog. This helps to speed up flipping to-and-from the Options Dialog by capturing the screen so that it doesn't have to re-draw it, which can take time. This does take up some memory to store the screen. >> Show image comments if supported. This will show the comments in an image when you load it if the image supports comments. GIF and JPEG images contain comments. >> Force "byte planes" in 256 colors. Does just what it says if selected. See the "GRAPHICS CARDS" section for more information. >> Blank screen while drawing image. This displays a blank screen while an image is being drawn to the screen. When the image is done drawing, the image appears instantly. This is used mostly for slideshows. *** Preferences under the "Truecolor" tab: *** >> Truecolor Palette Conversion. This popup selects the type of color conversion that SOL uses for loading in JPEGs. "2-Pass Octree" is the best and uses an octree data structure to accurately convert the truecolor image for display. This method takes three times the final memory for temporary storage than is required for final storage of the image when displayed. "Fixed Palette" is quick, fast, and takes only the memory needed for the final image, but can be grainy. "Greyscale" is even faster, uses little memory, and is as smooth as it gets, but is, well, not colored. >> No Dithering/Standard/Error-Diffusion. This selects the type of dithering and turns dithering off and on for truecolor conversions while loading in JPEG images. Error-Diffusion dithering is not supported as of this version. No dithering is the same as random dithering only when using "Fixed Palette" conversions. No dithering is much faster when using "2-pass Octree" conversion, but does not produce as nice results. >> Truecolor Dithering. This popup selects the current dither pattern used for "2-pass Octree" and "Fixed Palette" conversions. Loading a dither pattern can be done from within the Dither Settings Dialog, and can then be accessed from the Preferences Dialog for use in truecolor conversions. Previous version of SOL used only random dithering for fixed palette conversion, but standard dither patterns can now be used for better (or just different) results. >> Octree Pixel Coverage. With this popup you can select the percentage of the image that will be examined when building the octree colormap. The smaller percentage used, the less accurate the results will be, but the conversion will be much faster. Low percentages (5% or 10%) are good for most viewing purposes. >> Fixed Palette Principal Colors. This popup selects which colors will be most abundant in the fixed palette. Older versions of SOL used the "Red-Green" palette, which is best for most images. There are a fixed number of bits available for use in the fixed palette, so this popup menu effectively determines how the bits are distributed to the red, green, and blue color-planes. The following table shows how much resolution each selection distributes: Fixed Palette Red Green Blue ------------- --- ----- ---- Red 16 shades 4 shades 4 shades Green 4 shades 16 shades 4 shades Blue 4 shades 4 shades 16 shades Red-Green 8 shades 8 shades 4 shades Red-Blue 8 shades 4 shades 8 shades Green-Blue 4 shades 8 shades 8 shades Red, Green, and Blue fixed palettes produce a much grainier and lesser-quality image than the Red-Green, Red-Blue, and Green-Blue palettes do because of the uneven distribution, and therefore should be used rarely under normal circumstances. >> Inverse Colormap Resolution. This popup sets the number of bits of resolution used in the inverse colormap. The inverse colormap is used with "2-pass Octree" truecolor conversion as well as with color Filtered Image Scaling (FIS). 4 bits can be used for most purposes (requiring only 20K bytes of extra memory) but is best with dithering. 5 bits produces quite good results, but takes a little longer to calculate and requires over 100K bytes of extra memory. I recommend 5 bits for most images, if you can wait. The extra temporary memory required for the inverse colormap is displayed underneath this popup menu when you select a new resolution. *** Load/Save/Accept Buttons: *** >> Load preferences. This loads a preference file. Display parameters are only set if you saved the preference file in the same resolution. Other settings are loaded regardless of the resolution. >> Save preferences. Save the current preferences to a file. The file SPOFLT35.PRF is automatically loaded in when the program is run, but you can save the preferences to other files. ----------------------------------------- ---===>>> COLORS TO PLAY WITH <<<===--- ----------------------------------------- Switch to "complex" color transformation histograms, click on the red arrow above them to make them all one-to-one, then try these tricks for awesome effects: >> FLIP the green histogram and display the image for a NEON effect. >> FLIP the red, green, and blue planes in different combinations for interesting "inverted" effects. >> Use gamma correction (value from 0.5 to 0.8) on the red histogram (leave green and blue at one-to-one) to brighten the reds. This produces a warmer image. Brighten the blue plane instead for a colder image. Brighten the green image for an algae look. =) >> Try experimenting with some of the histograms in the folder HISTGRMS included in the SPOFLT35.ZIP. Try these in separate planes and with different combinations. ------------------------------------ ---===>>> GRAPHICS CARDS <<<===--- ------------------------------------ Speed of Light version 3.8 was programmed to work mainly on standard Atari graphics hardware, but it does work on some graphics cards. SOL v3.8 was tested on NOVA graphics cards and ONLY works in 256 color modes. Other graphics cards MAY work, but you have to manually tell the program that you have one... Most graphics cards store their screens in a byte-plane format as opposed to the Atari format (bit-planes), so if you have a graphics card, you can see if it will work in byte-plane format by selecting "byte-planes" in the Preferences Dialog. Make sure you are in a 256 color screen resolution. Flickering will be shut off if in byte-plane mode. Any saving "As Original" will work with graphics cards, but the only saving that works "As On Screen" is GEM (X)Image format and GIF format. Saving "As On Screen" can be done by using the "Image = Screen [X]" option from the Display Screen. See the "SAVING IMAGES" section for more information. ------------------------------------ ---===>>> KNOWN PROBLEMS <<<===--- ------------------------------------ When reporting bugs to the author, make sure your bug is not listed below! These problems are already known to the author: * Flickering acts funny on Falcons due to unknown hardware incompatibilities. This is not really a SOL bug. * Flickering does not look too well in MultiTOS due to slowdown. Giving SOL more processor priority usually helps. This is not a SOL bug, you just need a faster machine! <grin> * The clipping and zooming boxes in 4-color and 2-color modes leave junk behind when you move the mouse. This does not change the image in memory, only on screen. Just press 'R' to redraw the image if the lines are still left behind when you finish clipping. * Error handling is not as good as it could be...when you get a disk full error, the program quits! * Image reduction while loading is not supported in version 3.8 as it was in version 2.6 due to problems. Future versions may include it, but it is recommended that users of low-memory systems use version 2.6 to view large GIF images. ------------------------------------ ---===>>> FINAL COMMENTS <<<===--- ------------------------------------ Speed of Light version 3.8 represents over three years of very hard work. I would like to thank Dan Aylward for his help in testing. I would also like to thank all of those who registered for version 2.x and version 3.x early on...here it is! Finally! Hope it lived up to your expectations! If you have not registered yet, please do! Your support helps me bring more quality software to the Atari platform. Since Atari computers are a dieing breed (*sniff*), Shareware is the only reliable source of good software, so if you see something you like, SUPPORT IT BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!! During November of 1993, MajicSoft, under the hands of John Stewart, accidentally (so I was told...) leaked a copy of Speed of Light version 3.0 into the Public Domain. If you or anyone else finds or has a copy of this beta-test version, please delete it immediately. It is very buggy and is an out-of-date copy, as well as NOT being a Public Domain OR Shareware version of SOL. For a list of other software available or soon to come by StuSoft, see the file SOFTWARE.DOC included with this ZIP file. Enjoy Speed of Light 3.8, and please register!