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PCXLAB 1.00
Copyright (c) Jesper Frandsen
April 13., 1993
=================================
DISCLAIMER
----------
This product is distributed AS IS. The author specifically disclaims all
warranties, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, implied
warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose with
respect to defects in the diskette and documentation, and program license
granted herein, in particular, and without limiting operation of the
program license with respect to any particular application use or purpose.
In no event shall the author be liable for any loss of profit or any other
commercial damage including but not limited to special, incidental,
consequential or other damages.
LICENSING AGREEMENT
-------------------
PCXLAB is copyrighted software and all rights are reserved. PCXLAB may
not be changed or modified in any way except by the author. PCXLAB is
part of the PCXDUMP system. The PCXDUMP system is SHAREWARE and may be
freely distributed as long as it remains in its complete form with all
support and documentation files. It may be used for a 10 day free trial
period. Regardless of how the copy is obtained, it is requested that all
users comply with the following licensing and registration provisions if
they continue to use it after the 10 day trial period. Should you find
this program useful, you must register it; you will then be provided with
the latest releases of the PCXDUMP system.
OVERVIEW OF PCXLAB
-------------------
* It can be used on any color EGA, VGA or SVGA display card (except
EGA mono).
* It can show any 2, 16, 256 and 16.7 million (24 bit) color PCX file
in both 16 and 256 color modes. However viewing real 256-color and
24 bit pictures in 16 color will only give you a hint of the picture.
Viewing 24 bit pictures in 256 color is acceptable.
If the images displayed is bigger than the current resolution you can
scroll the images around FAST with the arrowkeys and PgDn & PgUp. You
can also change resolution with '+' or '-'.
* It detects these SuperVGA card and uses their HiRes modes in 16 or
256 colors:
ATI-VGA, Trident, Genoa, Paradise, Tseng 3000, Tseng 4000, MXIC, Realtek
OAK-37, OAK-67, OAK-77, Video7, Ahead A/B, Chips & Tech 451/452/453 and
VESA compatible cards.
* On HiColor or TrueColor cards, you can view 24 bit colors PCX files in
32768 colors or 16.7 million colors (TrueColor card needed for this).
PCXLAB will use the HiColor extensions on these cards:
Tseng ET 4000, Paradise, Realtek, OAK-77, Trident, ATI, VESA.
With the proper VESA-driver, you will be able to show images in
16.7 million colors (if supported by videoadapter).
* It has a neat file browser, so you can walk through your whole harddisk
without leaving PCXLAB. There is a limit of 2000 PCX-files per
directory (you are not likely to hit this limit!). You simply use the
cursor arrows or PgUp or PgDn to select the file you want to see. Press
Enter to view file.
* The PCX-files must be no larger that 3800 pixels wide, which should be
more than enough.
* You can easily set up a slideshow by tagging a number of files and then
hitting F8 (to start the slideshow). You must tag at least 2 files to
have a slideshow.
* PCXLAB will detect which videomodes your videocard can use, and you
can easily switch between these modes by pressing F2 (or + & -).
* It is FAST! PCXLAB is written in a high level language and assembler
for all the screen and unpacking operations.
Compared with the great shareware fileviewer VPIC (which can show a large
number of formats, not only PCX), PCXLAB is 30%-700% faster with an
average about 2 times faster as VPIC!
* Converts PCX-files to other fileformats: Postscript, Windows BMP, Amiga LBM
TIFF, Targa TGA, Wordperfect WPG.
* Manipulate PCX-files:
1) Convert color files to monochrome with Floyd/Steinberg or Burkes
dithering.
2) Reduces 256 or 16.7 million color PCX-files to 16 or 256 colors.
3) Converts color PCX-files to gray scaled PCX-files.
* Shows both PCX-files and ANS-files (ANSI text files)
* Shows images from commandline.
USAGE
-----
USAGE: PCXLAB [/CHIPSET=number] [File1 [File2] ...]
If one or more arguments are valid filenames on PCX- or ANS-files,
these will be showed. Otherwise the PCXLAB will start as usually.
If PCXLAB somehow fails to recognize your video adapter that you
know is on the list below, you can force PCXLAB to use it with the
/CHIPSET switch.
The number must be in the range 2-23:
Number Chipset Number Chipset
---------------------- -------------------
0 UNSUPPORTED 12 OAK-67
1 RESERVED 13 Video 7
2 EGA-card 14 Ahead A
3 VGA-card 15 Ahead B
4 ATI-vga 16 Chips & Technology 451
5 Trident 17 Chips & Technology 452
6 Genoa 18 Chips & Technology 453
7 Paradise 19 VESA
8 Tseng 3000 20 Tseng 4000 TrueColor
9 Tseng 4000 21 OAK-77
10 Tseng 4000 HiColor 22 MXIC
11 OAK-37 23 Realtek
By forcing PCXLAB to use your adapter you will not be able to use
your videocards HiColor extension (if it has any)!
FILE CONVERSION - F3
--------------------
WPG FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 8 (OR MAYBE 4)
----------------------------------------
These are the native import graphic files for WordPerfect. These
files can contain both bitmaps and line art, or vector graphics.
PCXLAB will only generate the bitmapped part of them.
PCXLAB will deal with WPG files having one, four or eight bits of
color information, that is, monochrome files, sixteen-color files
and 256-color files.
The WPG specification allows for 256-color files. As of this writing,
WordPerfect itself would not read them. If you wish to use 256-color
images in a WordPerfect document, you might want to either reduce
them to sixteen colors or dither them to monochrome, depending upon
what you'll be outputting them to.
BMP FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24
----------------------------
These are the files which are used as "wallpaper" under Windows
3. They can be created using the version of PC Paintbrush
supplied with Windows.
BMP files use no image compression, as the intention appears to
be to make them fast to load. Plan on your BMP files being very
large.
There is a very important aspect of color BMP files which you
should bear in mind when you use this format. Windows uses a
fixed palette which Windows Paint cannot go about changing, as
doing so would make the screen and border colors change too.
This means that transferring an image to the BMP format will
generally result in some color shifts when BMP files are
imported into Windows applications.
The BMP format can support 24-bit files, which PCXLAB does
generate. However, as of this writing importing a 24-bit BMP image
into Windows Paint results in a noticeable color shift.
This appears to be a peculiarity of Windows Paint.
EPS FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 8
---------------------------
The EPS format... encapsulated PostScript... isn't really a
bitmapped format at all. However, it may contain bitmapped data.
PostScript cannot be interpreted directly by most PC
applications. As such, an EPS file which is to be imported into
an application such as Ventura Publisher or PageMaker also
includes a "preview". A preview is a small black and white TIFF
image which will show you a rough idea of what the EPS file will
look like. PCXLAB will not generate a preview.
If you import an EPS file into Ventura, for example, the screen
image you see will be the preview but the data printed to your
printer will be the PostScript data itself.
PCXLAB can transform PCX-files with between 1 and 24 bits of
color information... between two and 16.7 million colors...
into EPS files. Images with more than two colors will be turned
into PostScript halftones.
Please note that the EPS files which PCXLAB creates are only
intended to be printed. You cannot read them into applications
such as Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. These applications
will not accept the large mounts of bitmapped data which a
PCXLAB EPS file contains.
For the most part, using EPS files in this way is no longer
necessary. Applications which import EPS files will usually allow
you to import TIFF files as well, which will provide you with
much better halftoning and screen control.
TIFF FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24
-----------------------------
PCXLAB generates 1, 4, 8 or 24 bit TIFF files.
Color TIFF files are useful in Corel Draw, among other places.
Corel Draw 3.0 will import color TIFF files for inclusion in
CDR graphics.
Due to the complicated nature of TIFF-files PCXLAB will only
dump uncompressed TIFF. This will allow almost any TIFF-reader
to read the files generated by PCXLAB without choking.
IFF/LBM FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24
--------------------------------
These started out on the Amiga. The IFF file standard is
extremely flexible, and allows all sorts of things besides
images to be stored in IFF files. IFF files are found on the PC
having been ported from Amiga systems. They are also created on
the PC by several applications such as Electronic Arts' Deluxe
Paint package and Digital Vision's Computer Eyes video scanner
board. In the first case they are given the extension LBM. In
the second they are given the extension CE. The basic file
structure is the same, however.
The standard form for IFF image files is called ILBM,
compressing all images as planes. This is much slower, but it
means that files thus compressed will be readable by pretty well
all IFF readers... even if you port 'em back to the Amiga. This
is how PCXLAB creates IFF files. Unfortunately, there's a problem
with old versions of Deluxe Paint which will occasionally cause
them to stop reading one of these files part way through the image.
This happens to IFF files from sources other than PCXLAB, so it's
probably a bug in these versions of Deluxe Paint.
TGA FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24
----------------------------
The Truevision Targa format is used by several high end paint
programs and things like ray tracing packages. It can handle
images with up to sixteen million unique colors.
PCXLAB will generate 1, 4, 8, or 24 bit TGA files. As with
TIFF files, PCXLAB will only generate uncompressed TGA files.
DITHERING - F4
--------------
Dithering is a sort of magical process by which color images can
be converted into pretty attractive black and white versions for
reproduction on a monochrome screen or a black and white laser
printer.
Note that source files for dithering must have more than one bit
of color information.
Dithering often works a lot better if you scale the original
image up. PCXLAB lets you dither with images from "size as" up to
300 percent expansion.
Note that the F4 function only dithers to monochrome. Color
dithering is handled by one of the functions of the F5 key.
Dithering is a fairly slow process, and the better the dithering
algorithm, the slower it gets.
If you have PCXLAB dither a file, it will create a new file for
you of the type selected and with "$" as the first char in the name.
Thus PICTURE.PCX could be dithered to $ICTURE.PCX, for example.
PICTURE.PCX would be left untouched.
The two dithering algorithms use what is called "error diffusion".
These produce really nice looking dithers, but they're quite slow.
The fastest... and least attractive... is Floyd-Steinberg. The
better... and slower... is Burkes (in my opinion).
It is possible to adjust the brightness and contrast of dithered
image with the GAMMA and CONTRAST values. Also it is possible to
invert the dithered image.
COLOR REDUCTION - F5
--------------------
This function allows you to create destination files with fewer
colors than the source files they're derived from. You can use
this function, for example, to reduce a 256-color file down to a
16-color one. It's particularly useful for reducing 24-bit files
down to 256-color files.
Whenever you reduce the number of colors in a file, some image
information will get lost. The simplest form of color reduction
is "remapping". This simply means that the destination image will
have the best color palette it can, and that all the pixels in
it will be replaced with colors from that palette. The results
aren't usually very attractive.
Color dithering, also available in this function, can produce
decidedly better results. With color dithering, you can reduce
24-bit files down to eight bits with very little loss of detail
or color resolution.
If you have PCXLAB color dither a file, it will create a new file
for you of the type selected and with "!" as the first char in the
name. Thus PICTURE.PCX could be dithered to !ICTURE.PCX, for example.
PICTURE.PCX would be left untouched.
Gray scale
----------------
This function creates a gray scale destination image from a
color source image. The number of bits of color will remain the
same, although when grayscaling a 24-bit image, the destination
image will be a 8-bit image.
If you have PCXLAB dither a file, it will create a new file for
you of the type selected and with "#" as the first char in the name.
Thus PICTURE.PCX could be dithered to #ICTURE.PCX, for example.
PICTURE.PCX would be left untouched.