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ImageFX and CineMorph
Copyright © 1992-1994 Nova Design, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
This drawer contains versions of Nova Design's exciting image manipulation
software packages ImageFX(tm) and CineMorph(tm).
ImageFX is a complete image processing system for the Amiga computer.
Featuring built-in support for scanning and framegrabbing, printing, image
rendering, file format conversion, painting and touchup work, not to mention
hundreds of special effects combinations, ImageFX is the only 24-bit image
processing software you will ever need. It is a modular, easy to use,
WYSIWIG system that covers all aspects of image manipulation from start to
finish.
CineMorph is ImageFX's companion morphing software. Because of its use of
industry standard mesh-based morphing techniques, it is quite simply the
fastest and easiest to use morphing tool available for the Amiga. Powerful
features such as infinite zooming, regional dissolve, and point naming make
it ideally suited for any type of morphing or warping project.
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What's Here
The ImageFX demo has all saving and printing features disabled, and a
limited number of load and render modules. Most all other features are
intact. The "real" version of ImageFX includes modules to load and save
dozens of file formats, render to many popular display devices (including
Firecracker, OpalVision, DCTV, and HAM-E), scan or framegrab from a variety
of input devices, and print to PostScript printers or through the Amiga
printer.device.
A simple Arexx script is included that will run through some of the features
of ImageFX. To run it, select the Arexx button (in the Toolbox), and
choose the "Demo.ifx" script. The demo will loop until it is stopped
(by pressing the close gadget on the "Arexx macro in progress" window).
For this CD-ROM release, we have included the full working version of
the stand-alone CineMorph 1.04. All saving and rendering features are
available.
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Getting Started With ImageFX
Here are few things to help you get started playing with ImageFX. Feel free
to go beyond these simple guidelines; many powerful features can be found
through experimentation.
1. Double-click the ImageFX_Demo icon. After a moment, you will see the
ImageFX interface, consisting of a menu panel over top of a black screen. The
black screen is known as the "preview" -- this is where images are displayed
while you are working on them. Since ImageFX uses a modular system, the
preview screen could be anything from a standard Amiga screen to a 24-bit
Firecracker or IV-24 display. This demo only includes Amiga preview modules,
however.
2. Click the "Load" gadget in the bottom right corner of the menu to load a
picture. Some sample images are included in the "Pictures" drawer. After
selecting the file you want to load, ImageFX will automatically attempt to
determine the type of file (be it ILBM, GIF, JPEG, or whatever). Once the
image is loaded into memory, you will see a representation of it in the
preview screen.
3. To change the Preview Options, click the "Prefs" gadget, also in the
bottom right corner of the menu. A window will appear with a number of
preferences settings for the program. Selecting the "Preview Options..."
button in the top middle of the window will give you all the display options
for the current preview (dither and color settings, etc.). Choose the
display mode you like best and click Okay. Clicking Use will return you to
the main menu.
NOTE: One thing to remember about ImageFX is the fact that the preview
screen serves only as a quick "sketch" of your image. For high quality
rendering, you should go into the Render menu (see 6 below).
4. The default area of ImageFX is the "Toolbox". This is where all painting
and image processing effects are done. Standard painting tools are aligned
along the top of the leftmost portion of the menu; further paint options can
be accessed by double-clicking these gadgets. The rest of the menu is filled
with image processing and buffer manipulation tools; clicking on a button
will bring a second pop-up menu of choices (for example, clicking on the
"Rotate" button will bring up a window with rotation options). Of note is
the region control cycle gadget in the upper left; it allows you to limit any
image processing operation to a region of the image.
5. The Palette area is used for selecting colors to paint with, building
color ranges (for gradient fills and transparency controls), and choosing the
colors used for rendering images. The palette can be reached by clicking on
the Palette gadget just above the Toolbox gadget. A band of palette colors
will appear just over the menu panel; you can choose any of these colors by
clicking on them. Painting tools will then use the color you selected.
6. Rendering a 24-bit image down to Amiga modes is done from the Render menu
(click on the Render button just underneath the Toolbox button). The toolbox
gadgets will be replaced with render settings, including dithering controls,
number of colors, and screen mode settings. Select a screen mode to render
to, the number of colors, and the dither options and then press the Render
button in the lower left corner to start the rendering process. ImageFX will
generate a histogram, choose a palette, and then display the rendered picture.
That should be enough to get you started exploring the many powerful features
of ImageFX. Have fun and don't be afraid to experiment!
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Getting Started With CineMorph
Here are few steps to help you get the feel of CineMorph:
1. Double-click one of the CineMorph icons (the FP version is for users with
floating point-equipped accelerators). The CineMorph screen will appear
after a few moments, showing you two empty windows. The window on the left
is the "source" window, the window on the right is the "destination" window.
Images are always transformed from the "source" into the "destination".
2. Load the sample morph project by select "Open" from the "Project" menu.
The project is in the "Samples" directory and is called "SmallDual.project".
The images and settings for this project will be loaded and you should see
two faces peering out at you from the source and destination windows, each
overlayed with a mesh of points.
3. The idea is to arrange the mesh points such that the image underneath the
source mesh is transformed into the image underneath the destination mesh.
You can think of the mesh as a grid of pins stuck into the image itself, with
thread stretched between each pin so you can see their relationship. Moving
the points of the mesh (the "pins") causes the image around that point to
warp according to how you move the point. Careful arrangement of the source
and destination points allows the source image to "morph" into the
destination image. Basically what you want to do is surround similar
features of the source and destination images with "boxes" (an area bounded
by 4 points); for example, the left eye of both the source and destination.
The boxes must be in the same row/column location in both the source and
destination images, however (ie. if the point at the upper left of the source
eye is at position row=4, column=4, then the point at the upper left of the
destination eye must also be at position row=4, column=4).
4. Once you have the points arranged, you can do a preview of any of the
frames in the morph to see how it is progressing. This is done with the
"Preview Single" option under the far right "Morph" menu. You will be
presented with a smaller window asking which frame to preview; choose a frame
somewhere near the middle and click the "Generate" button. After some amount
of processing time, a preview of the image will be shown. You can continue
to preview other frames as well.
5. Another fun aspect of CineMorph is