Amiga Mag HDD Backup/Amiga Mag HDD Backup.zip/Amiga Mag HDD Backup/Alexander.img.bin/Alexander.img/***AC March⁄April/**Done/Editorial 10.3&4 Archive.sit/IFX2.Text/IFX2.Text.ASCII

Text File | 1978-06-29 | 14KB | 208 lines

ImageFX 2.0
R. Shamms Mortier

    ImageFX 2.0 is the most significant upgrade that any Amiga image processing
program has gone through in years. Has this 3.0 edition of ImageFX become king of
the mountain, leaving its competition gasping for air on the dizzying heights? My
answer is "yes", but read on and allow me to explain why.

The IFX interface

    ImageFX 2.0 uses five separate modular screens: Scanner, Palette, Toolbox,
Render, and Print) and as many graphic controls spread among these screens as any
professional or playful Amiga user could ever hope to encounter. There is no need to
search for hidden esoteric buttons or bland verbal commands, as all of ImageFX
identifiable graphic toggles and switches are clearly labeled as to what they do. There
are also other little things in the interface that wind up being not inconsequential to
professional users. A case in point is the way that IFX addresses the resizing of targeted
graphics. Several options are included that are unique to this software alone, like its
ability to change the targeted structure from pixels to "ruled" units, a mathematical
comparison of height/width increments. There are also size presets for various
resolution applications, from a preset for the FireCracker and Super VGA options to all
of the standard NTSC and PAL modes. When it comes to cropping, everything is set
before you on an interactive graphics screen as opposed to a separate screen that has to
be accessed. That, in fact, is the major advantage that IFX2 offers all around, a graphics
display that can be accessed by simple and clear choices.

IFX2 Direct Hardware support

    IFX3 supports all of the Amiga 24bit environments and than some, including all
of the Amiga AGA modes. It has support for the Epson 300/600/800 Scanners and  also
the VLAB-YC. My tests were an Amiga 2000 (with OpalVision), a 3000T (in standard
resolutions), and a 4000 (with AGA modes addressed). In all situations, IFX2 worked
flawlessly. Not only does it render very fast to the OpalVision hardware, but you can
even choose to have IFX come up with the full Opal screen in the preview mode as
well. Every Opal owner is going to lust to add this software to their Opal kits. As an
owner of a Primera Pro color printer, I am also happy to see Primera support added to
IFX. To access the Pro version of the printer (300 x 600), you have to use the Pro driver
that comes with the printer. DPS PAR (Professional Animation Recorder) users will be
happy to learn that IFX can now convert images to that format. There is also support
for PICT vector and JPEG (for the Macintosh user or Mac emulator owner); PIC (in all
resolutions and color depths, GRASP/GL and DL animation frames (MS-DOS); SGI
RGB, WaveFront, and Softimage (Silicon Graphics); MPEG, X-Windows, Abekas 960,
Sun Raster, and even  Commodore-64 Koala pad output files (if you're old enough to
remember this format).

    How about vastly improved font handling? The only attribute missing from this
reworked option is the inability to import fonts from other than the native font
directory. Otherwise, there is more than the usual  number of options here. One of my
favorites is the ability to import and export large blocks of text that you may have saved
out in ASCII from your word processor. As an aid in the production of quality text
slides and graphics, IFX2 has a special toggle that allows you to anti-alias the imported
fonts, necessary in the case of jaggy bitmaps, though it's advisable to use the vector
type fonts whenever possible. Everything is available at a glance in IFX2's "text
generator" requester: Bold, Italic, Underline, Remapping the font colors, adding an
"Extra Border", Anti-aliasing, and justification. In addition, IFX2 has a work area in
this same space that allows you to add multiple lines of text that you can store on
screen, accessing each as your needs dictate. This becomes important in text slides,
because often it is the designer's need to use different fonts on interweaved lines of text.
Any effect or texture or distortion that can be applied to the graphic can be applied to
the text brush as well, giving you all sorts of unique looks.

Interactive Previews... the industry standard revisited on the Amiga

    Applying an IFX2 Effect, Hook, or Distort to a graphic can take a comparatively
long time, especially when it represents a complicated list of options. IFX2's
competition makes you wait until the  effect is applied before you can view the results
and then you have to undo them if they aren't to  your liking. With IFX2, when an
alteration is about to be applied to either the whole image, a selected region, or even a
grabbed brush (including a text brush) two associated postage stamp sized views pop up
next to your choices. The top one represents the graphic selected before the effect, and
the other a comparison after the effect. Often the top view can also be interactively
manipulated as well, which causes the numeric sliders to move in turn. As you alter the
parameters either interactively or with the associated sliders and choose "preview" (the
second postage stamp sized view), the alterations become visible, allowing you a full
view of what will become the final  image. This option alone will save you a mega
amounts of time and frustration in the manipulation of your images. This feature
emulates one found on high end image manipulation programs on other platforms, like
Adobe PhotoShop on the Mac.

    In IFX2, images are manipulated on a separate "preview" screen, different from
their final rendering. Both the Preview screen and final renders may be targeted to
standard Amiga, Amiga 1.3, DCTV, OpalVision, EGS, and "Foreign" selections (the
last represents other boards like the Retina). What's useful about this approach is that
even the Preview screen can be set up in various Amiga modes, AGA modes, DCTV,
OpalVision, "SuperAmiga" modes, or simply at the resolution of the WorkBench
screen. Each situation can vary, depending upon the configuration of your system. As
an OpalVision owner, I was excited to be able to select the Opal option and see the
IFX2 menu superimpose itself over the 24bit OpalVision screen in Preview mode. As
part of the process, selections for the preview mode can be addressed as grayscale,
color, dithered color, and HAM (with a special "Lo-Res Only" option added). IFX2
allows you to truly tailor  its use to your own unique Amiga specifications, and does so
in clearly understandable language.

IFX2 Prefs Requester

    The IFX2 image manipulation engine is driven by the selections you choose in
its special Prefs section, a very complete screen in itself that has an amazing array of
options and checkoffs. A simple mouse click gets you there at any time, so if your
machine configuration changes, you can simply change and save the new preferences.
The only selection that I miss having a go at is one that would allow more than a single
printout at a time, but everything else is here, including preview options like choosing a
scanner (Epson, IVFG, or VLAB), Printer (Prefs 1 or 2, PostScript, or Primera),
Load/Save hotkeys, and (my favorite) selecting how many levels of Undo you want to
have. All of the Pref changes can be saved out, so that they become the default next
time you boot up. Another dozen check-off options (like saving thumbnails with the
file) and toggling coordinates on are also included. There's even a separate area where
you can enable virtual  memory, including whatever hard disk partition is to be used for
it. Both the screen preview modes and the final render modes can be saved out here as
well. You want to use another file requester when loading or saving files? How about
choosing from ASL standard or thumbnail included, and even having the option to use
the ASL file or font requester when it comes to font directories?

Painting and Amazing Flare Effects

    IFX2 has the best flare options of any Amiga software, and that includes
LightWave. And remember, IFX2 allows you to preview every effect before you apply
it, including interactively moving the flare parameters and radii in the preview stamps.
The added options make flare creation limitless as far as variety goes. Under "Effects",
there are both Radial Star and Lens Flares. Radial Stars have options that include
adjusting the number of star "points" from 1 to 90, altering the thickness, angle, and
color of the points. The points can be straight, taper in/out, or act as flares. There's a
whole separate list of sliders for adjusting the corona glows. At first glance, lens Flare
creation seems a little less complex, but it can be just as variable. Anamorphic stretches
can be added and the radius/brightness altered. And then there's a little line at the
bottom of the Lens Flare requester that says "Artifacts", which opens a whole separate
list of goodies. Spots, diagonal, vertical, and horizontal streaks, hexagons, rainbows,
dots, rings,.. they're all here waiting to be explored (remember before we even heard of
lens Flares?).

    One of the neatest new options is the creation of Lightning, so neat that you'll
have a hard time not overusing it at first. Yes, Norbert, IFX2  has a true lightning bolt
generator with so many options you may stall out for weeks just playing with this
attribute alone. You can adjust the strength, size, and coloration of the bolts, and saving
a bunch out as animated single frames opens up a wealth of additional possibilities.

Painting

    IFX2 is one of the most versatile painting utilities that the Amiga can boast, and
much of that is based upon its new "PaintFX", one of the choices in the Special Effects
list. On bringing it up, you can select from a long list of options (like Biochain,
Charcoal, Cheetah, Eye, JFK, Medical, Pencil, Rake, Smoke, and dozens more) and
apply your choice to either the whole picture or to a selected region. Most of the
painting effects are unique to IFX2,  so don't expect to find them in other software. Ad
to this the ability to add "paper" textures to an image (whole or part), and you have an
expectant canvass before you.

Alpha-ing Around

    "Compositing" has become a buzz-word for computer artists in the know, a
method by which separate graphics screens can be combined in an infinite number of
ways to produce state-of-the-art illustrations and photo compositions. IFX2 has a most
awesome variety of tools to enhance creativity in this area. You can combine separate
pictures on different screens, and also include an Alpha channel to boot. If you don't
know, an Alpha channel is a grayscale graphic that uses the lightest colors to depict
where images will combine, while the darkest colors usually are meant to "show thru" a
live video feed. As expected, IFX2 has a host of separate Alpha tools. There's really no
way to do my description of compositing with IFX2 justice except with a dedicated
tutorial, something I plan to do in the coming months in Amazing (probably a tutorial
series). Angled motion blurs, distortions, ARexx applications, batch animation tools,..
there's enough in IFX2 to keep you very creatively busy for a very long time, and its
quality is high enough to please even the most discriminating broadcast client.

Conclusions

    As long as your system has enough RAM (or you add the virtual memory
options), you should never face the frustrating problem of having the software refuse to
load a graphic (something IFX2's competition is notorious for). A separate program
called "IMP" (ImageFX Multi Processor) gives you the capacity to do on-board batch
processing, and as opposed to using an esoteric and techie-exclusive interface to do it,
the whole thing is spelled out in plain language on an intuitive interface. The design of
IMP is extremely elegant, and it automatically generates Animations (loop toggleable),
single frames, or 24bit frames as a target. Added to this is the capacity of another
module, AutoFX, that will apply any and all preset effects to any file you choose, and
which also allows automatic batching. I want to highly praise this software and also to
thank Nova Design for sticking with the Amiga in their development instead of
jumping ship (as some others seem to have done early on). To mention some
non-Amiga wares as comparisons, ImageFX 3.0 is like PhotoShop/Fractal Painter for
the Amiga video artist and animator. This is software the quality of which is keeping
the Amiga alive and jumpin', and I choose it as the BEST (!) Amiga image
manipulation software on the market. It sets new standards that the competition is going
to have to struggle long and hard to begin to match. If you are an Amiga artist or
animator and you don't have IFX2 in your kit of tools, you must be interested in less
than the best there is. I choose IFX2 as one of the very best Amiga products of 1994.

Image FX 2.0
MSLP: $349.95 ($124.95 upgrade cost to previous registered users)
Nova Design, Inc.
1910 Byrd Ave., Suite 214
Richmond, VA 23230
1-804-282-5868
1-804-282-3768 FAX
1-804-965-0234 BBS

Captions to pics:

Figure 1. Four Painting Effects applied (L-R, T-B) in IFX2 to the Tut image:
Brushstroke, Eye, Dot, Smoke.

Figure 2. Four more Effects: Bricks, Crystallize, Straw, and Dragon Scales.

Figure 3. Four IFX2 Distorts: Swirl, Wave, Punch, Polar Blur.

Figure 4. Four ARexx examples: Disperse, halftone, Negative, and Solarize.

Figure 5. You can almost hear the crackle of this IFX2 lightning.

Figure 6. The modular IFX2 Interface.