Labels:text | screenshot | font | black and white | document OCR: lakeIcons . ifx by Per Espen Hagen, 7-Aug-94 Here's a little ImageFX ARexx script I use for creating icons from my images. To utilize it to the fullest, you need: 1. ImageFX 1.50 or higher 2. ReqTools and RexxReqTools (from aminet:util/libs/ReqTools22b_U. Iha) 3. MewTool 2.6 or higher (from aminet:util/wb/NewToo 126. 1ha) 1. Some pictures :- ) In addition, you should create an ImageFX palette containing your Workbench colours. This is very straightforward with Workbench 2. If you run Workbench 3 in "Multi-color Mode", use the first four and the last four colours in the palette; fill the ones inbetween with copies of one of the first four -- black, for instance. If you want to use more than 8 colours in your icons under Workbench 3, you would need to get a program like "ProcurePens" (aminet ). Save the palette as "Workbench. palette". After starting the script from ImageFX, you are presented with a multiple-file appears. requester. After one or more files are selected, MakeIcons' main requester Explanation of the gadgets Brightness, Contrast, Gamma: Same as the corresponding sliders in ImageFX's Balance requester. Optimal values depend on your Workbench palette; the default values give decent results on my system. lax Size: This is the maximum width and height (in pixels) of the icons. My default value is 80. The images are scaled with image aspect preservation; for instance, an 800x600 image will be scaled to 80x60, and a 256x512 image will be scaled to 40x80 (with the default values). Step Size: The icons will be scaled to a perfect multiple of the value supplied here. For instance, with (the default) Step Size of 4, the only allowed icon widhts and heights are 4, 8, 12, 16, etc. Set this value to 1 if you want any size (up to the specified maximum). Bitplanes: Number of bitplanes to render the icons to. Use 8 for a Multicolor WB 3: 1-4 for WB 2. Jse Aspect? If this gadget is switched on, any aspect ratio information in the images will be used. Very useful e.g. with LoRes-Interlaced pictures. If switched off, a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio is assumed for all pictures. Colours? Switch this gadget off if you want black-and-white only icons. Lock GUI? If you run MakeIcons from ImageFX on a custom screen, I would suggest you turn this gadget ON, to disable all preview redrawing. If you run the script from ImageFX_UB, you can leave this gadget off. The icons The rendered images are saved as project icons (input filename + ". info"), and "NewTool" adds the default tool of your preference. For instance, I have configured MewTool to write "fjpeg" for JPEGs and "PPShow" for all other images. Please note that you need at least version 2.6 of NewTool; alternatively, if you use 2.5 or earlier, you need to add "AUTO" to the NewTool call in the MakeIcons script. Hints and Tips For the best results, choose your palette colours carefully. In particular, if you want colour icons, be sure to have one red, one green, one blue, one white, and one black colour. A gray and a yellow would help much too. But that makes seven out of the eight colours in WB3 ... so you're rather restricted in the choice of colours. Of course, the red, blue etc do not have to be "pure". Actually, the default 8-colour palette is very good for colour icons. Under WB 3, Multicolor icons should preferably be saved in 8 bitplanes, even if they only use 8 colours. This has several big disadvantages: (1) They take up more disk space, (2) they take up more of your precious Chip RAM, and (3) they take much longer time to display. Furthermore, if you want to use some fancy colours for Workbench windows, menus etc, you need to do some serious compromising to get a good set of icon colours. There is a solution to this, and it's called ProcurePens. This is a small program which sets and "locks" any number of pens (colourmap entries) on your Workbench. I recently changed all my picture icons from 8 bitplanes down to 3, locking colours 4-7 (I usually run Workbench in 32 or 64 colours). Not only did this save me a few megabytes of HD space (!), but my icons show up more than twice as fast as before. And I don't run out of Chip RAM as fast as before. As an example, I've included a grab of part of my Workbench screen. The icons use colours 0-7 only. If you have any questions or comments, I can be contacted by e-mail as per-espen. hagen@ffi.no. Have fun, Per Espen Hagen
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