Improvements
ImageFS has been around for
a while now and has been reviewed in Archive, most recently in Volume
9 No.1. That review was particularly enthusiastic, concluding that it "is
one of those essential products that anyone who is remotely interested in
DTP and graphics should have... Don't hesitate to buy it. It's the ultimate
in bitmap file transfer." The current version is 2·36, and it is
even better than the v1·72 reviewed then. In particular it supports
many more bitmap formats and, very significantly, one vector format, as
shown in the table below.
Of even more tantalising interest is the fact that there are a number of
formats listed in the conversion window that are greyed-out, and it is
possible that Alternative Publishing will implement these in the future. In
enigmatic style they aren't committing themselves either way at the moment,
but they are the ones that are most likely to be added if the range is
extended in the future. The last column in the table shows the formats that
graphics can be saved in, which doesn't cover all the ones it can read.
Notable omissions are GIF, JPEG and Psion PIC files. GIFs are dealt with by
applications such as InterGIF from
Peter Hartley, and JPEGs by Acorn's ChangeFSI, but those of us with
Psion machines still have no way to create PIC or MBM files totally under
RISC OS. The conversion from PIC files in ImageFS is not perfect, as
it ignores the grey planes in S3a files. Effectively it is treating the
images as if they came from a Series 3. Given that its treatment of PIC
files is incomplete, I'm tempted to wonder why it bothers at all, as
ChangeFSI and Steve Godfrey's Psion
application handle their conversion to sprites much more faithfully. From a
personal point of view, I do hope that aspect is developed further.
Filetype | Format | Description | Save? |
PCX | I T M A P | PC Graphics programs (.PCX .PCC .DCX) - 1/2/4/8 and 24 bpp | |
BMP | MS Windows and OS/2 Bitmaps (.DIB .RLE .BMP .RL4 .RL8 .VGA .BGA) - 1/4/8/24 bpp, CMYK | ||
Clear | Clearfiles of John Kortink's !Translator - 1 to 24 bpp | ||
PBMPlus | Portable Bitmap Toolkit (.PBM .PPM .PNM .PGM) - 1 to 24 bpp (rounded up) | ||
SunRastr | SUN Microsystems Rasterfiles (.SUN .RAS) - 1/8/24/32 bpp | ||
Targa | Truevision TARGA images (.TGA .VDA .ICB .VST) - 8/16/24/32 bpp | ||
TIFF | Tagged Image File Format (.TIF .CMY .CPT .SEP) - 1 to 32 bpp, CMYK (rounded up) | ||
GIF | Graphics Interchange Format (.GIF) - 1 to 8 bpp, interlaced | ||
MacPaint | Apple Macintosh MacPaint (.PNT .MAC) - 1 bpp (fixed image size) | ||
IMG | Atari GEM (.IMG or .GEM) - 1 bpp only supported | ||
AmigaIFF | IFF and Amiga HAM images (.IFF .HAM .LBM .HBR) - 1 to 8 bpp, HAM4 and 24 bpp | ||
ColoRIX | ColoRIX softworks (.RIX .SCI .SCF) - 8 bpp only supported | ||
PICT2 | Apple PICT2 bitmaps (.PCT) - 1/2/4/8/16/32 bpp | ||
JPEG | JPEG File Interchange Format (.JPG .JFF .JIF .JPE .CMP) - 8/24 bpp, CMYK | ||
PhotoShp | Adobe Photoshop (.PSD .PHO .PTS) - 1 to 8 bpp | ||
ICO | MS Windows Icons (.ICO) - 4/8 bpp (fixed image size) | ||
Degas | Atari Degas (.PI1/2/3 .PC1/2/3) - 1/2/4 bpp (fixed image size) | ||
MTV | MTV raytracer (.MTV) - 24 bpp | ||
PsionPIC | Psion3a PIC images (.PIC .PSI) - 1 bpp only supported | ||
QRT | Quick Ray Tracer (.QRT) - 24 bpp | ||
WinMeta |
|
Windows Metafiles (.WMF) - MicroSoft Windows® graphics |
Anything that sets itself up as "The ULTIMATE Graphics Utility" and a "Universal bitmap file converter" as ImageFS does, inevitably lays itself open to complaints that it doesn't handle particular formats at all, or as well as it could. That is a very easy criticism to make, and I'll try not to labour it any further. Neither am I being ungrateful for the range of things it does; I've already found it invaluable in converting both sprites and drawfiles to TIFF files to send to PC users.
The Package
What you get is a rather elegant card slip-case containing a
floppy disc in a CD-sized jewel case, a slim, 44 page, glossy manual, and a
list of recent changes since the manual was produced. The floppy contains
the main programme, CDFix, CDType, and UniImage, of which more later. Although the manual
refers to the Gordian installer being used for copy protection, a text file
on the disc explains that is no longer used, and all that is needed is to
copy the application to your hard disc as normal. Running from a machine
without a hard disc would be difficult unless the graphics files are very
small, as some Scrap file space can be needed during the conversion process.
In Use
ImageFS takes a little getting used to, as it does things in what initially seems to be a slightly odd manner. What you have to do initially is remind yourself that it is a filing system (hence the FS in the name), and treat it accordingly. Foreign format files are loaded into Paint by double-clicking them, but if you hold down a shift key while doing this, another window opens up containing a sprite of the same name. This can then be dragged out of the filer window and treated like any other file (except that you can't delete or rename it, or add any other files to the window).
The closest analogy to the way you use ImageFS is to think of
dealing with an archive with the read-only version of ArcFS:
you can open it to see the contents, run them from the archive, or drag them
out into another filer window, but you can't delete or rename them from the
archive. Once that understanding has sunk in, ImageFS becomes
very comfortable to use.
The illustration below shows the different stages in the
process. The central filer window contains a GIF file and a JPEG, while the
left and right windows show the sprite that ImageFS has
revealed inside them. Finally the illustrations above and below them show
the result of double-clicking the sprites or the original files.
You don't actually need to see the sprites if you don't want to, as the
whole process of converting and displaying the original files is extremely
quick. Alternative Publishing say that the latest version contains improved
JPEG conversion code, making it even quicker than the JPEG routines built
into RISC OS 3·6/3·7. I've compared the speeds to open the
same file on my StrongARMed Risc PC, and that is definitely the case.
In most cases, the speed of display is very impressive. The main exception to this is when viewing files on CD-ROM. These can take several seconds to load, and so you get a progress bar and a chance to cancel the conversion. If you have a lot of images to work through, it is probably better to temporarily copy them to a hard disc first. After the speed and convenience of that conversion, files on CDs seem to take ages in comparison.
If your image files have come from a PC, then they may not have the right
filetypes set. In that case you simply drag individual or multiple files to
the Iconbar for ImageFS to identify them and set the filetypes
automatically.
Saving in Other Formats
Converting to another format is done by saving from
Paint, with one slight difference: you go to the "Save"
"Sprite" "Save As" sub-menu in Paint, and drag the file icon to a filer
window while holding down the "Alt" key. That opens up a conversion
window, giving a choice of the ten different formats listed in the table
above. Select the appropriate one, click on "Convert" and it is saved
in that format. A warning appears if you try to save the file back into the
same directory without changing the name, and you have the chance to cancel
the operation to avoid over-writing the original. One problem in this
operation is the difficulty in saving drawfiles in other formats using
ImageFS. If the drawfile contains more than just a single embedded sprite,
you get an error message and an empty file is created. The only reliable way
round this is to use Paint to save the screen area, and then convert it to
the desired format from there. Again, that is a bit clumsy, and it would be
really useful if it could be done directly. To be fair to Alternative
Publishing, they didn't intend that Draw and
ImageFS should be used in this way, but I'm the sort of person
who always seems to try to do things software authors didn't mean to
happen!
Alternatives
There are other, cheaper, ways of doing some of the same
jobs, and a range of PD or Shareware convertors exists. They allow you to
convert between Drawfiles and WMF, Sprites, EPS and CGM files. In addition,
every Acorn owner has a copy of ChangeFSI, which will convert
between sprites and JPEGs, as well as reading Psion PIC files, TIFFs, some
GIFs, and a few other formats. All of these applications do their job, but
none of them will do everything. If you want to convert a GIF to a TIFF, or
a sprite to PCX, or lots of other permutations, then the simplest way is to
use ImageFS. It will do all these, and many more besides,
quickly and efficiently. ChangeFSI will only open one file at
a time; if you want more open, you need to run more copies of it, which puts
demands on memory and makes finding out which copy has which picture in it a
little difficult. As ImageFS uses Paint, you can
have a large number of pictures open at once, and double clicking on another
won't close an existing one down. I find both of these features to be very
handy when I'm working through a number of files, and the consistent
approach of using ImageFS makes things so much simpler than
using a range of different applications. I think that one of its great
strengths is the tremendous degree of integration with Paint,
which anyone who's used an Acorn for a while will have learnt to use to some
extent. Because of that ImageFS feels less like a separate
package, and much more like an extension of Paint.
Fine Tuning
In reality, ImageFS is a complex application
with a bewildering array of possible configurations, but fortunately you
very rarely need to change anything. Most of the controls can be left in the
default position, but if you love to fiddle, there is plenty of scope for
doing that. It really is well worth taking the advice in the manual to read
the "How ImageFS Works" chapter first, to start to understand what it
actually does. Clicking on the Iconbar icon opens up one of the four
configuration windows. By default the first one is entitled configuration
(see below), and allows you to choose whether the conversions are turned on,
off, or set to automatic. Setting a particular filetype to "Inactive"
makes ImageFS ignore it, which can be useful if you have
another application that copes better with those files. The "Active"
setting just lets you open the window onto the sprite file instead of
viewing it. That is handy if all you want to do is convert files to Acorn
ones, and save them without looking at them first. This is the same result
as the double-clicking while holding down a shift key I mentioned earlier
when in the default "Auto" setting.
Perhaps the most important window is the Conversion one (below), as that allows you to select between the "New" (or "Deep") and "Old" sprite formats. That's really the only one I've had to change, as some files are invisible or have distinctly odd colours if that is wrong. I've now adopted the policy of swapping that if the files look strange for any reason, and it has always sorted any problems out. There's a lot of information in the manual about the differences between these two sorts of sprites, and you should read it if you want to understand when to use which method. Again, you don't need to understand the details to make use of the application.
One other useful feature is the "Tinyview", which allows you to see a small pop-up version of the image by double-clicking on the file while holding down a Control key. This is also configurable, and is very good for checking which of the files in a directory is the one you want. Some files can't be displayed in this way, and the manual explains the problems you might have. You can also set ImageFS to load on booting the machine, to remove its icon while still remaining active, and do many other things. Fortunately if you mess the whole thing up, you can restore all the default conditions to get back to the original state. It also includes interactive help and works well with applications such as BubbleHelp, in case you want reminding of the purpose of a control without resorting to the manual.
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