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Amiga Collections: The Best of Public Domain
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Best of Public Domain, The Nr.37 (19xx)(Garfield, Andi)(DE).zip
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1989-11-20
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THE BUTCHER
-----------
Project Menu
------------
Ask Mode:
320 x 200 1 - 5 bit-planes
320 x 400 1 - 5 bit-planes interlaced
640 x 200 1 - 4 bit-planes
640 x 400 1 - 4 bit-planes
320 x 200 Hold and Modify (6 bit-planes)
Tools Menu
----------
Undo:
You can reverse many of the commands in this program by
selecting UNDO
Draw:
A few primitive drawing tools are included in a small
window which you can move around the screen. Upon
selection of one of the five commands, (Filled Box,
Hollow Box, Lines, Draw, Fill) the window will disappear
and you can draw with the selected tool using the current
color. To recall the draw window, press the right mouse
button. The last thing which you did can be cancelled
by pressing the UNDO button.
On choosing "Pick" the window will also disappear and all
pixels of the current color will flash in red. To stop
the flashing, press the left mouse button. You can flash
any of the colors by positioning the crosshairs over a
pixel of the desired color and again pressing the left
mouse button. You can continue to do this until you
press the right button. The window will return and the
current color will be the last flashing color. This
command is used in several places in the program.
Reverse and Flip:
"Reverse" will reverse the screen horizontally. "Flip"
turns the screen upside down.
Palettes:
You can maintain three different palettes at all times.
These palettes are switchable from the menu. When you
load a picture, the picture's colormap is always loaded
into Palette One. Should you wish to apply another
palette to a picture, you should first copy that palette
into Palettes Two or Three before loading the picture.
Sorting by intensity is particularly effective if used
with the "Spread" command. By spreading a range of
colors between two shades of the same hue you can produce
a shaded picture. Also, by exchanging the colors at the
light and dark ends and spreading between the ends, you
can create a negative.
The "Copy" and "Ex" (Exchange) commands work as they do
in most palettes. With "Copy" you can not only copy colors
to other positions, but you can also copy the current
palette to another palette by pressing one of the Palette
Selection Buttons after invoking the copy. The "Pick"
command that is also found in other parts of the program
flashes the current color in red. You can stop the
flashing by pressing the left mouse button. You can
select a new current color by positioning the crosshairs
over a pixel and again pressing the left mouse button.
This process can be repeated until the right mouse button
is pressed. The last flashing color is then the current
color.
The "Map" command will map one palette to another palette.
Butcher will rearrange the colors of the second palette
to match more colsely the colors of the first palette.
Sometimes this match will be very good depending on the
closeness of colors in the two palettes. The mapping is
less effective if the palettes are not very close.
Process Menu
------------
Edge:
The edging process of Butcher if based on a nonlinear
function which decides whethter any particular pixel is
part of an edge by examining its neighboring pixels. If
the computed variance between the tested pixel and its
neighbors is greater than an adjustable threshold,
Butcher writes that position as part of an edge.
You set the threshold with the proportional gadget
at the top of the window. A threshold of zero will result
in edges at all points where a pixel differs with one of
its neighbors. If this gadget is tuned to its maximum
value, edges will be found only where pure black
(R = G = B = 0) is found next to pure white (R = G = B = 15)
Note that Butcher only notices differences in intensity,
not in color. If two very different colors have R + G + B
values which are similar, then it less likely that an
edge will be found. Finding edges by intensity is
satisfactory in most cases.
The pen gadgets determine the color of the contour
lines. "Light" will map the brightest color from the
palette on a background of the darkest color. "Dark" will
reverse the foreground and background colors.
If "Color" is selected, the pen color will relate to
the actual pen color of a tested pixel. If the
proportional gadget at the bottom of the window is tuned to
zero (completely to the left), the pen color is the actual
color of the pixel. Increasing the value of "Darkness"
will cause the program to choose darker and darker colors
from the existing palette. If possible, it will choose
colors with related hues.
"Enhance" applies the edges to the pcture itself. If
the pen color is light, white lines will be traced around
the contours of the picture. If the pen color is dark,
black lines will be written on the edges. If "Color" is
selected, different colors from the palette will be used
on the picture.
"Map" draws the edges on a blank background. If "Color"
is active, colors are drawn on a blank background. The
background will be as dark as possible. Mapping on a
dark background with different colors often produces
eerie effects.
You can stop mapping a picture at any time by pressing
"Stop". "View" closes the Edge Window until you press the
right mouse button. "Restore" returns the original picture
to the screen. "Keep" closes the Edge Window and keeps
whatever picture is currently displayed. "Cancel" closes
the window and returns the original picture to the screen.
Filter:
The filter removes isolated pixels or isolated groups
of pixels from the picture. Level 1 will remove pixels
which do not have neighboring pixels of the same color.
Levels 2 through 4 will attempt to remove larger groups of
pixels of the selected color. Isolated pixels chosen for
removal will be replaced with a neighboring color. Butcher
filters pictures by testing each set of pixels with
templates of all other colors. You can stop this process
at any time by pressing "Stop".
You can clip the part of the screen you wish to filter
with the "Clip" command. You can pull a rectangle on the
screen which will define the section which will be
filtered. If you frame a section which is not exactly
right, you can continue to pull rectangles until you
press the right mouse button. You can remove the clip by
pressing the "Clip" button a second time.
You can select the filtered color by pressing one of
the color squares at the bottom of the window. Also, you
can choose a color by selecting "Pick" and pressing the
left mouse button when the crosshairs are over a pixel of
the desired color. The last color which flashes red is
the current color.
"Filter" works particularly well on contour maps or
on pictures with only a few colors. Filter is less
effective on areas with finely grained mixes of numerous
colors.
Mosaic:
Mosaic creates new pictures with blocks of colors. The
color for each block is a sample from the original
picture. You can adjust the pixel height of the blocks.
Butcher adjusts the width depending on the pixel aspect
ratio for the current display mode.
Slice Plane:
You can selectively remove any bit-plane or combination of
bit-planes from a picture. Each bit in a plane corresponds
to one pixel postion. A one bit-plane picture can have
only two colors because each bit in the plane is either on
or off. A picture on the Amiga consists of one or more
layers of these bit-planes. The binary number which is
extracted from combining bits from each plane determines
the color used to draw a specific pixel.
With the slicer you can examine each plane or
combination of bit-planes. With only one plane displayed
you are essentially seeing the individual bits of memory
in a single bit-plane. If the bits happen to map to dark
colors you can brighten the palette by toggling the "False"
button. This changes the palette to a series of gray levels.
Press the "View" button if you wish to see the entire
picture. You can return to the window by pressing the right
mouse button.
Sometimes you can manufacture interesting effects by
removing planes from a picture. You can often find smooth
silhouettes of the features in your pictures.
Density Slice:
You can think of every palette as a series of
intensities progressing from no intensity, or black, to
maximum intensity, or pure white. Whith density slicing,
you pick a point on this scale of intensities and assign
one color to one side of the point and another color to
the other side of the point. You can adjust this point
with the sliding gadget. The colors will update as you
move the gadget.
If "Mono" (for monochrome) is selected, the point is
adjusted with black to the left side and red to the right
side of the scale all of the colors will shift to black.
At either end of the scale the screen will turn all one
color.
If you lose the gadget, hitting the space bar will
return the slicing point to the center. Pressing the 'R'
key will restore the original palette. Also, you can move
the slicing point left by pressing the '<' key and right
by pressing the'>' key.
You can slice the scale of intensities at more than
one point with the two markers. By pressing a marker button
you will place a numbered marker at the current position of
the sliding gadget. Butcher will use green to the right
side of this marker. With one marker and the point above
the sliding gadget you can slice the palette into three
levels. With two markers you can slice the palette into
four levels. Yellow is the fourth color. If you cansider
the areas between markers, and between markers and end
points, as regions, you can adjust a slicing point within
any one of these regions with the sliding gadget. The
purpose of this scheme is to allow simple adjustment along
the entire scale even while using multiple levels. This
becomes important if you choose "View" and close the window
Butcher will continue to adjust the slicing point by
responding to the keyboard commands.
If you choose "Color", the darker colors to the left
side of the slicing point are replaced with black as you
slide right. The original colors return as you slide the
gadget to the left. In Color mode, the markers are ignored.
By pressing the "Reverse" button, you can invert and
redisplay the colors. If the mode is "Color" and you have
the dark colors of the palette on the right side of the
scale, white will fill on the left side of the slicing
point instead of black.
If you choose "View" the utility window will disappear
You can still use the keyboard commands. Pressing the
right mouse button returns the window.
Density slicing is useful for pictures with very low
contrasts. By dividing regions of intensity into starkly
different colors, you can highlight various features
which are not very prominent in the original picture.
Density slicing only operates on the palette. The program
does not rewrite any pixels. It is helpful if you copy
the original palette into one of the other palettes before
you use density slicing. You can manipulate one of the
palettes and then alternate the original palette with
the transformed palette from the menu.
Convert Menu
------------
Histogram and Quick Merge:
In "Histogram" the program counts the number of
pixels drawn in each color of the palette. After it
finishes the count, Butcher displays a bar chart describing
the relative totals. You can sort the colors by number of
pixels, exchange sets of pixels (not colors as in the
palette), and merge all or portions of these sets into
other colors. Butcher immediately rewrites the pixels
and updates the graph.
"Quick Merge" is a modified version of "Histogram".
When "Histogram" first opens, it counts all of the pixels
in the picture. This takes about ten seconds in low
resolution. The counting can take much longer in higher
resolutions. With "Quick Merge", the program samples the
picture. You do not get the precise counts for each color,
but you can get to the tools of "Histogram" a lot faster.
The current color is selected at the bottom of the
window by pressing one of the color gadgets. The RGB
values are updated in the box to the right. These numbers
are in hexadecimal so that '0' is the minimum value and
'f' is the maximum value. For example, white is
described as 'fff', bright red as 'f00', a medium gray
might be '777', and black is '000'. You can also select a
color by choosing "Pick". The window will disappear with
the current color flashing in varying intensities of red.
You can stop the flashing by pressing the left mouse
button. By pressing the left mouse button over a pixel of
another color you can select that color as the current
color. You can return to "Histogram" by pressing the
right mouse button. The last flashing color is now the
current color.
If you press the "Use" button, the pixel count for
the current color is displayed in the window title bar. Its
percentage of the total number of counted pixels is also
displayed.
With "Merge" you can merge all or a clipped section of
the pixels of a single color into another color. In other
words, the pixels of the current color are redrawn using
the selected color. You can effectively reduce the number
of colors in a picture by merging some colors into other
closely related colors. This can free room for defining
new colors in the palette or you can reduce the memory
requirements and the file size of the picture by removing
enough colors to eliminate a bit-plane.
Sometimes, you can improve the appearance of the
picture by merging some of the pixels. For example, a
digitizer may have generated a blue sky with a mix of
various shades of blue. The picture might look better if
you merge most of the shades of blue into a single shade.
The fine shadings of buildings or other features remain
in the picture. By breaking the uniform texture of the
picture, you can often improve its perceptual depth. You
can do this with drawing programs but it can become
tedious if you must draw around or through complicated
features.
You can clip a rectangle in which all merging
operations will occur. When you choose "Clip" the window
disappears, and you can pull rectangles on the screen by
pushing and releasing the left mouse button. If you don't
quite like the rectangle you have drawn, you can start over
and Butcher will remove the preceding rectangle. The final
rectangle is selected when you push the right mouse button.
A clip can be removed by pushing the "Clip" button again.
Clips only apply to the command of merging pixels.
Butcher updates the pixel count after every merging
or sorting operation. The update is almost instantaneous
after merging the entire screen. Because the program has to
count the pixels within a clip, clipped operations take
more time to finish.
"Blend" performs a full screen merge of pixels. In
this case, the color into which you are merging may change.
This change is determined by a proportional change. This
change is determined by a proportional mix of the two
colors based on their relative pixel counts. If the
second color has many more pixels than the first color, no
change will occur in the second color.
"Exchange" rewrites the pixels of one color into the
position of a second color. The pixels of the second color
are placed in the original position of the first color.
Since both of the colors are also exchanged, there is no
change in the picture.
"Sort" rewrites pixels until their counts are in
descending order. The sort starts with the third color and
proceeds to the last color in the palette. Color Numbers
One and Two are unaffected. By sorting the colors you can
place the least significant colors, in terms of their
pixel counts, at the end of the palette. Sorting is the
only operation which cannot be reversed with the "UNDO"
command.
Auto Merge:
You can define the maximum number of colors used in
the palette. "Auto Merge" will merge, blend, and sort
the colors until all of the palette positions beyond the
maximum count are without pixels. You can redefine the
empty color registers without changing the picture.
Auto Chop:
"Auto Chop" uses "Auto Merge" to remove enough colors
from the picture in order to reduce the number of bit-
planes in the picture. After it completes merging,
Butcher converts the pcture to a screen with the specified
number of bit-planes. Suppose you currently have a five
bit-plane picture. If you specify a depth of four planes,
Butcher clears the pixels of 16 colors from the picture.
The picture is changed into a four plane picture with a
maximum of 16 colors.
Change Depth:
You can change the number of bit-planes in the
picture without regard for the information in the dis-
carded bit-planes. This will usually result in severe and
not entirely pleasant changes in your picture. If you
increase the depth of a picture, clear bit-planes are
added to the picture and the picture appears unchanged.
Adding one plane will double the number of colors
which you can use.
Lo-Res to HAM
This command will convert a low resolution picture
(320 x 200) of any depth to a Hold and Modify picture.
HAM to Lo-Res
This converts a Hold and Modify picture to a low
resolution picture. It can hen be used in most paint
programs. Since Hold and Modify pictures can use all of
the Amiga's 4,096 colors, the reduction to 32 colors in
low resolution will almost always result in a picture of
less quality than the original.
Slice Menu
----------
The items in the slice menu represent similar operations.
You can change pictures to different resolutions by expanding
or reducing their width or height. The depth does not change
unless you are converting a picture with a width of 320 pixels
and a depth of five planes into a picture with a width of 640
pixels. The fifth plane is discarded in the conversion.
Before perfomring this command it is important that you
clear out the last bit-plane with either "Auto Chop" or "Auto
Merge".
If you are converting a picture to a higher resolution
it will not look any different after the conversion. Single
pixels are split into two pixels, but the picture appears no
different. This is not the case when you change a picture to
a lower resolution. Every other pixel is lost in the conversion.