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DigiPaint.rvw
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DIGI-PAINT
Reviewed by Graeme Whittle.
Digi-paint first came to my attention as an unfinished public
domain program. I fiddled around with it for a while until it
gurued my machine a few times and promptly gave it up as a bad
joke. It's difficult to believe that NewTek's current release
of Digi-Paint is in any way related to the earlier version, it is
so much better.
With Digi-Paint NewTek have come to grips with the advantages and
limitations of the Amiga's hold and modify mode and have produced
software which is powerful and easy to use. Digi-Paint is also
the perfect compliment to their other excellent program Digi-View.
HOLD AND MODIFY
So what are the advantages and limitations of hold and modify?
The really great thing is that in HAM mode you can have all 4096
of the Amiga's colours on screen at one time. The drawback is
that an effect called "fringing" occurs at the edge of any given
area of colour.
Digi-Paint is attractively packaged and comes with a brief but
adequate manual. It is not copy protected but after booting the
user is asked for a password from the manual. I find this an
acceptable means of protection since whilst preventing a degree
of piracy it also allows the legitimate user to make a backup or
install the program on a hard disk.
Once in you are presented with a black screen which has a rather
unusual (for the amiga anyway) menu strip across the bottom. Oddly
the menus are in medium resolution while the working area can be in
either lo-res or interlace. On the left of the menu strip is a
is a pallette of sixteen colours, these colours can be user defined
and differ from the other colours in that when used there is none of the
"fringing" effect described earlier. This is a tremendous advantage
especially when introducing parts of a picture which require clarity
such as text.
TOOLBOX
In the centre of the tool box are three squares with portions of the
4096 colour pallette and to their immediate right are three calibrated
colour sliders. Brush colours can be picked either by selecting from the
4096 colour pallette, by adjusting the sliders, by using the sixteen
colour pallette or by choosing "pick" from the menu and selecting from the
screen.
To the right of the pallette is the brush and tool selection area. There
are eleven different brushes as well as tools for defining squares,
rectangles, circles and ellipses. One rather irritating limitation of
the circle tool is that the edge of the picture plane limits the edge
of the circle. You just can not draw a circle or ellipse larger than
the screen.
Also included in the toolbox is a magnification tool and "scissors" for
clipping parts of the picture. The clip function is very flexible,
although this is not immediately apparent because the full instructions
on its use are not in the manual but are included in a loose sheet
which comes with the package.
MODES
Digi-paint has twelve different drawing modes. It is these modes which
give this program its real power, I shall deal with them one by one.
1> Solid
This mode is exactly that, solid. When used the selected brush
paints the selected colour without change.
2> Blend
Blend averages the R.G.B. values of the pixels on the screen with
those of the currently selected colour. The effects obtainable are
not unlike smoked glass or sheer fabric.
3> Tint
The tint mode is similar to blend, only this time the brush colour
is dominant. What you get is an effect much like a watercolour
wash, very nice.
4> Light Tint
Like tint but much more subtle.
5> Minimum
This mode picks the lower of each RGB value between the paint and
the screen. The results are usually wildly unpredictable and some
experimentation is recommended.
6> Maximum
Picks the higher of the RGB values, once again experimentation
is necessary.
7> Add
Adds the RGB values of the paint and screen together. Often the
result will be white but some very pleasing effects can be
obtained with this mode
8> Subtract
Subtracts paint and screen values. Black is often the result
but once again pleasing effects are possible.
9> Xor
Pronounced exor this mode acts on the RGB values as binary numbers.
Generally speaking depending on the selected colour Xor produces
a negative image.
10> And
This mode pushes the screen colour in the direction of the brush
colour. It is possible (at least according to the manual) to
produce colour separations for printing applications in this
mode. It is especially useful for removing unwanted colours and
for harmonizing jarring images.
11> Or
The last of the logical functions, usually adds the brush colour
to the image or lightens it. Once again somewhat unpredictable.
12>Shading
Shading is perhaps the most powerful feature of Digi-Paint. When
painting with this function the brush colour is gradually diffused
towards the edges into the background colour. In this mode there
a slider for adjusting the amount of dither as well as two gadgets
for changing the position of the selected colours maximum density.
When used with the fill gadget on it is possible to create spheres
and beautifully graded backgrounds and skies.
GADGETS
The menu strip also contains a number of gadgets. Some of which amiga
users will recognize immediately, others which are unique to Digi-Paint.
PickColour and CopyColour are used for assigning colours to and from the
the sixteen colour pallette.
Again repeats the last move. This is very useful for increasing the
depth of a tint especially light tints.
The fill gadget when activated fills any shapes drawn on the screen in
the currently selected mode. It does not work like the DPaint fill
function, this is not a disadvantage however as quite complex shapes
can be drawn and filled.
There are also a number of functions available through pull down menus.
You can soften the image, split the image, change the size of the
image and flip the image. You can not rotate the picture or custom
brush through 90 degrees and if anybody out there has a program which
enables this to be done with a Ham image please let me know.
SPARE SCREEN
Like Deluxe Paint, Digi-Paint allows you to put an image on to a spare
screen and work on two pictures at the same time. The amazing thing
about Digi-Paints spare is its ability to be merged into the on screen
picture. This enables global changes to be made
one of the logical functions such as Xor, copy it to the spare screen
then reload the original image and merge the two pictures. If the
pictures are merged in more subtle modes such as blend or tint very
beautiful and surprising results can be achieved. There is also a rub
through function which when used eats away the pixels revealing the
spare screen. When the spare and rub through are used together the
results can be stunning and these modes alone make Digi-Paint worth the
money.
Digi-Paint is an excellent addition to the already substantial range
of Amiga paint software. The only other HAM paint package that I am
aware of is Prism which is just not in the same league. I found Digi-
Paint to be very stable (no gurus) and while there are a few shortcomings
they are outweighed by the many excellent features of this program.
It is not for those interested in prescision drawing but is more for
the user interested in "painterly" effects and the reworking of
digitized images. It is my belief that NewTek have on their staff
some of the finest designers of software for the Amiga around and
they are fully deserving of your support, At around $160.00 Digi-
Paint is good value.
END OF DIGIVIEW.RVW