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DELUXE PAINT To create beautiful pictures on your computer's screen, get a program called Deluxe Paint ___ or one of its cousins. Deluxe Paint was invented in California by Dan Silva in 1985. Then he invented an improved version (Deluxe Paint 2). Then he developed a further improvement (Deluxe Paint 3), which included advanced graphics tricks and also animation. His programs all ran on the Commodore Amiga. They were published by Electronic Arts. An Electronic Arts employee ___ Brent Iverson ___ developed an IBM version of Deluxe Paint 2. Then another Electronic Arts employee ___ Steve Shaw ___ developed an IBM version of Deluxe Paint 3 and called it Deluxe Paint Animation. He also invented a lesser version called Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced, which includes all the features of Deluxe Paint 3 except animation. Electronic Arts also developed an Apple 2GS version of Deluxe Paint 2. Electronic Arts also sells several paint programs for the Mac: Studio 1 has animation but no color; Studio 8 and Studio 32 have color but no animation. They were all developed by an independent group of French programmers inspired by Dan Silva. In this chapter, I'll concentrate on the IBM versions. Each IBM version requires 640K of RAM and a mouse. Choose an IBM version Which IBM version should you buy ___ Deluxe Paint 2, Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced (which should be called Deluxe Paint 2½), or Deluxe Paint Animation (which should be called Deluxe Paint 3)? Intelligence Deluxe Paint Animation understands more commands than the other versions, and it's the only version that produces animation. Price Deluxe Paint 2 has been included free with many computers and software packages. That's because it's considered obsolete! Discount dealers sell Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced and Deluxe Paint Animation for about $100 each. Hard disk Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced and Deluxe Paint Animation require a hard disk. If you don't have a hard disk, you must buy Deluxe Paint 2. VGA Deluxe Paint Animation requires a VGA (or MCGA) video card. If your video card is worse than that ___ if you have just EGA, CGA, or Hercules ___ you must buy Deluxe Paint 2 or Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced. High resolution Unfortunately, Deluxe Paint Animation operates just in low resolution (320-by-200). (Instead of using RAM to store higher resolution, it uses RAM to store your animation.) If you insist on full VGA resolution (640-by-480), buy Deluxe Paint 2 or Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced. To operate in Super VGA resolution (800-by-600 or 1024-by-768), you must buy Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced. Summary Deluxe Paint 2 is obsolete. Use it only if you get it free or you're broke or you lack a hard disk. If your computer has a poor video card (Hercules monochrome, CGA, or EGA), get Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced. If your computer has a good video card (MCGA, VGA, or Super VGA), get either Deluxe Paint Animation or Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced. Deluxe Paint Animation offers animation, but Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced offers higher resolution. Assumption In the rest of this section, I assume you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced or Deluxe Paint Animation. Copy to the hard disk When you buy Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced or Deluxe Paint Animation, you get four 5¼-inch floppies and two 3½-inch floppies. Here's how to copy the 5¼-inch floppies to your hard disk. (Copying the 3½-inch floppies is similar.) Turn on the computer without any floppy in drive A. When you see the C prompt, put the PROGRAM Disk into drive A and type ``a:''. The computer will display an A prompt. Type ``install''. The computer will say ``Installation''. If you're using Deluxe Paint Animation, press ENTER twice. If you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced instead, press ENTER once, then type ``dp'' (so the screen says ``dp'' instead of ``DPAINT''), then press ENTER again. When the computer tells you, put the other three disks in drive A and press ENTER. The computer will say, ``Installation Complete!'' (Then if you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced, do this: type ``century'', press ENTER, and wait for the computer to copy fonts to the hard disk.) Turn off the computer, so you can start fresh. Run the paint program To start using the paint program, turn on the computer without any floppy in drive A. To do Deluxe Paint Animation, type ``do da''. To do Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced, type ``do dp''. (That ``do'' method works if you put the DO.BAT file onto your hard disk as I recommended in the MS-DOS chapter. If you have not put DO.BAT onto your hard disk, do Deluxe Paint Animation by typing ``cd da'' and then ``da''; do Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced by typing ``cd dp'' and then ``dp''.) Choose a video mode If you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced, you must choose a video mode. (If you're using Deluxe Paint Animation, you don't have to choose a video mode, and you can skip ahead to the next section.) Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced shows you this list of video modes: a. CGA 320 x 200 4 colors b. CGA 640 x 200 2 colors c. EGA 320 x 200 16 colors d. EGA 640 x 200 16 colors e. EGA 640 x 350 16 colors f. MCGA 320 x 200 256 colors g. MCGA 640 x 480 2 colors h. VGA 320 x 200 16 colors i. VGA 640 x 200 16 colors j. VGA 640 x 350 16 colors k. VGA 640 x 480 16 colors l. Hercules 720 x 348 2 colors m. Tandy 320 x 200 16 colors o. Amstrad 640 x 200 16 colors p. Extended VGA 640 x 400 256 colors q. Extended VGA 640 x 480 256 colors r. Extended VGA 800 x 600 2 colors s. Extended VGA 800 x 600 16 colors t. Extended VGA 800 x 600 256 colors u. Extended VGA 1024 x 768 2 colors v. Extended VGA 1024 x 768 16 colors Type a letter from ``a'' to ``v''. Here's which letter to type: Video you boughtType this letter Hercules monochrome``l'' CGA ``a'' for lots of colors, ``b'' for high resolution EGA ``e'' MCGA ``f'' for lots of colors, ``g'' for high resolution VGA ``f'' for lots of colors, ``k'' for high resolution A plain VGA system is limited to 640-by-480 resolution and has a 256K video RAM. If your VGA system can handle higher resolution or has extra video RAM, you have extended VGA, which lets you type these letters instead: Extended VGA you got ResolutionVideo RAMType this letter 640-by-480512K ``q'' for lots of colors, ``k'' for high res. 800-by-600256K ``f'' for lots of colors, ``s'' for high res. 800-by-600512K ``t'' 1024-by-768256K ``f'' for lots of colors, ``u'' for high res. 1024-by-768512K ``t'' for lots of colors, ``v'' for high res. If you choose a letter near the end of the alphabet (``p'' through ``v'', you face two complications: The computer might say, ``Specify which card is active''. To reply, press the SPACE bar, look at the menu of VGA card manufacturers, and type your manufacturer's code letter. (If your VGA card is manufactured by a company that's not on the menu, try pretending that your VGA card is an AST VGA Plus, which handles video modes q and r.) The computer might say, ``Not enough memory''. That means your computer doesn't have enough expanded RAM. Choose a different letter instead. Move the mouse Look at the computer's mouse. The mouse's tail is a cable that runs from the mouse to the computer. The area where the tail meets the mouse is called the mouse's ass. The mouse's underside ___ its belly ___ has a hole in it, and a ball in the hole. Put the mouse on your desktop and directly in front of you. Make the mouse lie flat (so its ball rubs against the desk). Make the mouse face you so you don't see its ass. In the middle of the screen, you'll see a cross, which is called the mouse pointer. Move the mouse across your desk. As you move the mouse, remember to keep it flat and facing you. As you move the mouse, the cross moves also. If you move the mouse to the left, the cross moves to the left. If you move the mouse to the right, the cross moves tot he right. If you move the mouse toward you, the cross moves down. If you move the mouse away from you, the cross moves up. Practice moving the cross by moving the mouse. Remember to keep the mouse facing you at all times. If you want to move the cross far and your desk is small, move the mouse until it reaches the desk's edge; then lift the mouse off the desk, lay the mouse gently on the middle of the desk, and rub the mouse across the desk in the same direction as before. Draw a squiggle On the top of the mouse, you'll see 2 or 3 rectangular buttons you can press. The main button is the one on the left. The middle of the screen is a white, rectangular area that's huge: it consumes most of the screen. That area is called the painting area. It's where you draw your pictures. Try this experiment. Put the cross in the middle of the screen, in the middle of the painting area. While holding down the mouse's left button, move the mouse. That activity ___ moving the mouse while holding down the mouse's left button ___ is called dragging. As you drag, you'll be drawing a squiggle. For example, try drawing a smile. To do that, put the cross where you want the smile to begin (at the smile's upper-left corner), the depress the mouse's left button while you draw the smile. When you finish drawing the smile, lift the mouse's button. Then draw the rest of the face! Click an icon At the screen's right edge, you see these pictures: One-Dot BrushSquiggle Line Arc Filled RectangleFilled Circle Filled PolygonFilled Blob Fill Spray Brush PickupText Grid Perspective Magnify Hand Color PickupSymmetry Undo Clear Gradient Pattern Color Indicator Color Palette Those pictures are called icons (or tools). Try this experiment: move the mouse pointer (the cross) to those icons. When the cross reaches those icons, the cross turns into an arrow. Line Here's how to draw a line that's perfectly straight. Move the mouse pointer until it turns into an arrow, and the arrow's tip is in the middle of the Line icon. Then tap the mouse's left button. (That's called clicking the Line icon.) Then put the mouse pointer in the middle of the screen, in the middle of the painting area, where you want the line to begin. Drag to where you want the line to end (by moving there while holding down the mouse's left button). The line you desired will appear! Practice drawing lines. When you finish drawing lines and want to draw squiggles instead, click the Squiggle icon. (Since the Squiggle icon looks like a paintbrush, it's also called the Freehand Brush icon). Practice! Draw lines, then squiggles, then lines, then squiggles. When you feel comfortable, explore the following icons, which are more advanced. . . . Arc To draw an arc (a smooth curve), click the Arc icon (which is also called the Curve icon). Then put the mouse pointer in the painting area, where you want the arc to begin, and drag to where you want the arc to end. Lift your finger off the mouse's button, move the mouse until the arc has the curvature you wish, then click. Undo If you make a mistake, click the Undo icon. That makes the computer erase the last object you drew (or undo your last activity). The screen will look the same as before you drew that object (or did that activity). Clear To erase everything you drew on the screen (so the screen becomes white and you can start over), click the Clear icon (which says CLR). If you're using Deluxe Paint Animation, you must then press ENTER. Color Palette Normally, the computer draws black shapes (on a white background). To draw in a color other than black, look at the Color Palette icon (which is divided into many colors), and click the color you want. The color you choose is called the foreground color. For example, to draw a blue object, do this: click blue, then draw the object. To erase part of an object, do this: click white, then cover the object by drawing with white paint. If you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced and chose a 2-color video mode, the only colors in the palette are black and white. If you're using Deluxe Paint Animation (or Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced in a 256-color mode), the Color Palette icon shows just some of the colors. To see other colors, repeatedly click the Right Arrow icon (at the screen's bottom right corner). To go back to the colors you were seeing before, click the Left Arrow icon. When you see your favorite color, click it. Color indicator In the middle of the Color Indicator icon, you see the color that you picked to be the foreground color. Color pickup Suppose you've drawn a picture, and one of the colors you've used is so nice that you want to use it again. Click the Color Pickup icon (which looks like an eyedropper that soaks up ink), then click your picture's middle, where you used that color. That color will become the foreground color. Filled rectangle To draw a rectangle whose sides are perfectly straight, and whose middle is filled in, click the Filled Rectangle icon. Then put the mouse pointer in the painting area, where you want the rectangle's top left corner to be. Drag to where you want the rectangle's opposite corner. Filled circle To draw a circle whose middle is filled in, click the Filled Circle icon. Then put the mouse pointer in the painting area, where you want the circle's center to be. Drag until the circle is as big as you wish. Filled polygon To draw a polygon whose middle is filled in, click the Filled Polygon icon. Then click in the painting area, where you want the polygon's first corner to be. Click where you want the polygon's second corner to be. Presto ___ the computer draws a line from the first corner to the second corner! Click where you want the polygon's third corner to be. The computer draws a line from the second corner to the third corner. Keep clicking, until you've clicked all the corners. Then press the SPACE bar, which makes the computer draw a line from the last corner back to the first corner and fill in the polygon. Filled blob To draw a blob (lumpy circle) whose middle is filled in, click the Filled Blob icon (which is also called the Filled Freehand Shape icon). Then put the mouse pointer in the painting area, where you want the blob to begin. Drag in a circular motion (so you're drawing a lumpy circle). When you lift your finger from the mouse's button, the computer completes the circular shape (by drawing a line back to where you began) and fills in the middle. Fill Suppose your drawing contains a big area that's all the same color. For example, suppose you drew a big filled rectangle, circle, polygon, or blob. Here's how to change the color of that area. Click in the Color Palette, at the new color you want, so it becomes the foreground color. (The new color can be red, blue, black, white, or any other color you wish.) Click the Fill icon (which looks like a paint bucket). The mouse pointer turns into a paint bucket. Move the mouse pointer carefully, so the tip of the paint (spilling out of the bucket) is in the middle of the large area whose color you want to change. Then click. The entire area's color will change to the foreground color. If you make a mistake, click the Undo icon and try again. You can use that technique to change the color of any big area that's all the same color. For example, if you draw a big yellow sun, you can change the sun's color to orange. Here's how to start drawing a landscape. Clear the screen (by clicking the Clear icon). Then draw the horizon, as follows: by using the Squiggle icon, draw a horizontal black squiggle all the way across the screen. Make sure the squiggle goes all the way across the screen ___ from the screen's far left to the screen's far right ___ so that there are no gaps in the horizon, and so that it's impossible to travel from the sky (above the horizon) to the ground (below the horizon) without crossing the horizon. Then make the sky blue. To do that, click the blue part of the Color Palette icon, then click the Fill icon, then click in the middle of the sky. (If you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced in a 2-color mode, pick black instead of blue and make a night scene.) The entire sky will turn blue (or black). If you made a mistake and forgot to make the horizon go all the way across the screen, the sky's blue paint will leak through the horizon and make the ground blue. Click the Undo icon and try again! To make the ground be desert brown or lawn green or fantasy-land purple, click your favorite ground color in the Color Palette, then click Fill, then click in the middle of the ground. Here's how to draw a face that's embarrassed. Clear the screen (by clicking the Clear icon). Begin using the Squiggle icon, draw the face's black outline (a circle with two bumps on it ___ for the ears). Make sure the face's bumpy circle is a complete circle and has no gaps. Make sure it's impossible to go from the middle of the face to the screen's edge without crossing the face's circle. Then make the face turn red. To do that, click the red part of the Color Palette icon, then click the Fill icon, then click in the middle of the face. The entire face will turn red. If you made a mistake and forgot to make the face's circle be complete, the face's red paint will bleed through the gap in the face's circle and make the rest of the screen be bloody. Yuk! Click the Undo icon and try again! Spray To vandalize your own drawing by using a can of spray paint, click the Spray icon (which looks like a can of spray paint and is also called the Airbrush icon). Then put the mouse pointer in the painting area, where you want to begin spraying, and drag! Text To put words in the middle of your picture, click the Text icon. Then click in the painting area, where you want the words to begin. Type the words. Grid To draw simple diagrams more easily, click the Grid icon before you draw. Then anytime you click or drag the mouse (except when drawing squiggles), the computer will automatically nudge the mouse pointer so that its X and Y coordinates are a multiple of 8. For example, try this experiment. Click the Grid icon. Draw a line (by using the Line icon). Now try to draw another line that starts at exactly the same point as the first line. Because of the grid, you don't have to bother putting the mouse pointer exactly where the first line began; just put the mouse pointer close to that point, and the computer will automatically nudge the mouse pointer so that its coordinates are a multiple of 8 ___ and exactly where the first line began. Magnify To magnify part of the screen temporarily, so you can see more clearly what you're drawing there, click the Magnify icon (which looks like a magnifying glass). Then click in the part of painting area you want to magnify. The screen splits into two parts. The left part of the screen shows the objects in their actual size; the right part of the screen shows the objects magnified. Go ahead: continue drawing! Whatever you draw will appear in the left part of the screen (actual size) and simultaneously in the right part of the screen (magnified). When you finish needing magnification, click the Magnify icon again. The screen will return to its usual, unmagnified state. Hand While looking at a magnified part of the screen, here's how to nudge the magnifying glass so you see a slightly different view. Click the Hand icon. (It's also called the Grabber icon.) Put the mouse pointer in the middle of the magnified view. Drag a short distance in the direction that you want to nudge the view. Symmetry To create perfect symmetry, click the Symmetry icon (which looks like a snowflake or the image seen through a kaleidoscope). Then move the mouse pointer near the center of the painting area. You'll see the mouse pointer and 11 clones of it ___ 12 pointers altogether, arranged in a circle. Go ahead: continue drawing! Whatever you draw will be duplicated 11 extra times, so you'll see 12 copies of your drawing. The 12 copies are arranged in a circle and rotated, and 6 of those copies are mirror images (flipped backwards). Groovy! When you finish symmetric drawing, click the Symmetry icon again. Then you'll have just one mouse pointer, instead of 12. Pop out a menu You can make the screen display extra icons. Here's how. Zigzag Try this experiment. Point at the Line icon, then hold down the mouse's left button awhile. A new menu pops out onto the screen. (It's called a pop-out menu). The menu shows two icons. One of them is a copy of the Line icon. The other is the Zigzag icon: it's a line with a bend in it. To use the Zigzag icon, drag to it. Here's how to draw a zigzag (try it!). Drag to the Zigzag icon (which pops out of the Line icon). Then click in the painting area, where you want the zigzag to begin. Click where you want the zigzag's first bend. Click where you want the zigzag's second bend. Click at each additional bend. Click where you want the zigzag to end. Then press the SPACE bar. (If the zigzag's ending point is the same as where the zigzag began, pressing the SPACE bar is optional.) The Zigzag icon is also called the ``Connected Lines'' icon or ``Polyline'' icon. After you've used the Zigzag icon, that icon stays on the screen, where the Line icon used to be. If you ever want to draw a simple line again, make the Line icon reappear. Here's how. Point at the Zigzag icon. Hold down the mouse's left button. You'll see the pop-out menu again. Drag to the pop-out menu's Line icon. Practice drawing zigzags, then simple lines, then zigzags again. When you feel comfortable, explore the following icons, which are more advanced. . . . Zigzag arcs To draw a zigzag made of a series of arcs instead of lines, drag to the Zigzag Arcs icon, which pops out of the Arc icon. Then point in the painting area, where you want the first arc to begin, and drag to where you want that arc to end. Lift your finger off the mouse's button. Move the mouse until that arc has the curvature you wish, then click. Click where you want the second arc to end, and click where you want that second arc to curve. Click where you want the third arc to end, and click where you want the third arc to curve. Do the other arcs. When you finish the last arc, press the SPACE bar. The Zigzag Arcs icon is also called the ``Connected curves'' icon or ``Polycurve'' icon. Extended color palette If you're using Deluxe Paint Animation (or Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced in a 256-color mode), try this trick. In the Color Palette icon, point at one of the colors, and hold down the mouse's left button awhile. You'll see a pop-out menu displaying all 256 colors simultaneously. Drag to the color you want. It becomes the foreground color. If you're using Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced in a 16-color mode, try this similar trick instead. In the Color Palette icon, point at your favorite color, and hold down the mouse's left button awhile. You'll see a pop-out menu that displays 16 modifications of that color. (The computer creates the modifications by adding tiny polka dots made of the other colors. The modifications made by polka dots are called dithers.) Drag to whichever dither you like. That dither becomes the foreground color. Modified rectangles Point at the Filled Rectangle icon, and hold down the mouse's left button. You'll see four pop-out icons. One of them is a copy of the Filled Rectangle icon. Another (Filled Square) acts like the Filled Rectangle icon but always produces a perfect square. The other two icons (Unfilled Rectangle and Unfilled Square) let you draw an outline shape whose middle is not filled in. Modified circles Point at the Filled Circle icon, and hold down the mouse's left button. You'll see six pop-out icons. One of them is a copy of the Filled Circle icon. The other pop-out icons are Filled Ellipse, Filled Rotated Ellipse, Unfilled Circle, Unfilled Ellipse, and Unfilled Rotated Ellipse. To draw a filled ellipse (oval), choose the Filled Ellipse icon. Then in the painting area, imagine a rectangle just big enough to contain the ellipse you want. (That's called the bounding rectangle.) Point at that rectangle's top left corner, and drag to the opposite corner. The ellipse will appear. To draw a filled rotated ellipse, choose the Filled Rotated Ellipse icon. Then click in the painting area, where you want the ellipse's center to be. Move the mouse until the ellipse is as fat and tall as you wish. Then drag in a circular motion, until the ellipse is rotated to the angle you wish. Unfilled polygon The Unfilled Polygon icon pops out of the Filled Polygon icon. Modified squiggles Point at the Squiggle icon, which looks like a paintbrush that's drawing a squiggle. Hold down the mouse's left button. You'll see three pop-out icons. One of them is a copy of the Squiggle icon. Another popped-out icon (Dotted Squiggle) acts like the Squiggle icon but makes the squiggle be a series of dots instead of a continuous curve. If you want the dots to be far apart, drag the mouse fast while drawing the dotted squiggle. That icon is also called the Discontinuous Freehand Brush icon. The other popped-out icon (Stopped Squiggle) produces just a single dot instead of a complete squiggle. Since it stamps just one dot onto your screen, it's also called the Single-Stamp Freehand Brush icon. Magnification level When you use the Magnify icon, it normally magnifies objects by a factor of 4, so that each object appears 4 times as wide and 4 times as tall. That's called a magnification level of 4x. To choose a different magnification level, point at the Magnify icon and hold down the mouse's left button. You'll see a pop-out menu that offers these magnification levels: 2x, 3x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x, and 16x. Drag to the magnification level you want. Choose a brush To draw without a computer, you can buy a collection of paintbrushes. To draw a thick line, use a thick brush. To draw a thin line, use a brush that's tiny and fine. To create a weird texture, paint with a toothbrush. To create a big weird texture, paint with a hairbrush. To create a gigantic weird texture, get together with your friends, undress, cover yourselves with paint, and roll around on a large sheet of canvas. (That's called Technicolor mud wrestling. It's a quick, fun way to create an abstract pop mural. The mural makes a great conversation piece when you match the shapes on it with the various people and their parts.) Your computer lets you paint on the screen by using all kinds of brushes. You can even invent your own brush, having any shape you like! Here's how to pick a brush. Built-in brushes Point at the One-Dot Brush icon, and hold down the mouse's left button. You'll see 18 brush shapes. Some of them are round brushes. Some are square. Some have multiple tufts (like a tiny toothbrush, or like a paintbrush whose bristles have been purposely frayed apart). Some are chisel-pointed (like a miniature ax, for calligraphy and Japanese effects). They're called the 18 built-in brushes. Drag to whichever built-in brush interests you, and try it! The computer will use that brush to draw all shapes (squiggles, lines, arcs, etc.), until you switch to a different brush. Custom brushes Here's how to invent your own brush. First, decide what shape you want the brush to produce when you tap the brush onto paper. Do you want the resulting shape to be a tiny dot, or a circle, or a square, or an irregular blob, or blob that's the same shape as a ear, or a blob that looks like Bart Simpson's hair, or some other weird shape? Draw that shape in the painting area. (For example, if you want the brush's blob to look like Bart Simpson's hair, draw a picture of Bart Simpson's hair.) When drawing that shape, use your favorite colors! To make that shape become your brush, click the Brush Pickup icon. Then draw a rectangle around the shape: point where you want the rectangle's top left corner, and drag to where you want the rectange's opposite corner. When you lift your finger off the mouse's button, the shape becomes your new brush. Its colors become the new colors you'll be drawing in. The computer will automatically click the Dotted Squiggle icon for you. Go have fun! Drag the mouse wherever you wish! As you drag, you'll be drawing dotted squiggles by using your new brush and colors. The brush you invented is called a custom brush. It will be your brush until you invent a different custom brush or switch back to one of the 18 built-in brushes (by clicking the One-Dot Brush icon). EXOTIC GRAPHICS There's more to painting than just Deluxe Paint! Mac Paint's children Although Deluxe Paint is a good painting program, it wasn't the first. The first popular painting program ever invented was Mac Paint. It was invented in 1984 ___ the year before Deluxe Paint. It was invented by Bill Atkinson at Apple Computer Ince. To use it, you had to buy a Mac. At first, it was included free with the Mac. Later, Apple priced it at $149. In 1986, Ann Arbor Software published an improved Mac Paint called Full Paint. A few months later, at the end of 1986, Silicon Beach published an even fancier program, called Super Paint. They understand all Mac Paint's commands, plus more. Discount dealers sell Super Paint 1.1 for $79 and Super Paint 2 for $109. In 1987, Apple created a spin-off company, Claris, to publish Mac Paint. Claris developed Mac Paint 2, which is fancier than the original Mac Paint but not as fancy as Full Paint, Super Paint, or Deluxe Paint. Clip art Some artists sell little cartoons that you can insert into your own masterpiece. Those cartoons are called clip art. You can buy a disk containing hundreds of little cartoons, stick that disk into your computer, and insert your favorite cartoons into your Deluxe Paint masterpiece. By using Deluxe Paint commands, you can modify the cartoons to suit your own taste. For example, you can make a cartoon larger or smaller, or change the expression on the person's face, or change the writing in the bubble that comes out of the person's mouth. Computer dealers sell dozens of disks full of such cartoons. Copying and editing those cartoons is much faster than creating your own art from scratch. Thunder Scan You can attach the computer to a video camera, and feed the video picture directly into the computer, so the computer can manipulate the picture. The cheapest way to do that is to buy a teeny-weeny video camera called the Thunder Scan. It comes in a cartridge. To use it, buy a Mac Imagewriter printer, remove the printer's ribbon cartridge, and insert the Thunder Scan cartridge instead. Then turn on the printer; but instead of inserting blank paper, insert any page containing a photo. The printer tries to move the ribbon back and forth, to print; but since the ribbon's been replaced by the Thunder Scan camera, the printer moves the camera instead; so the camera moves back and forth over the entire photo, scans the photo, and feeds it through a wire to the Mac's RAM, which displays the photo on the Mac's screen. Then you can copy the photo to the disk, and edit the picture by using Mac Paint. Thunder Scan was invented by Andy Hertzfeld, who also helped invent the Mac. Thunder Scan lists for $249, but discount dealers (such as Mac Connection) sell it for just $199. CAD To design a building (or machine), you must create a blueprint. Making the computer create a blueprint is called computer-aided drafting (or computer-aided design or CAD). If those blueprints are fed to computerized machines that manufacture the parts for the building, the whole process is called computer-aided design & computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM). Many architects and engineers use CAD programs. The CAD programs resemble Deluxe Paint but have several advantages. . . . The CAD programs can do math. They can look at your diagrams, compute all the measurements (lengths, surface areas, and volumes), and write those measurements on the blueprints. The CAD programs can do advanced geometry. For example, they can draw a circle, even if you don't tell the center and radius. Just say three points that you want the circle to touch! The CAD programs will figure out which circle goes through those three points and will draw it. After you've drawn an object, the CAD programs can rotate it and show you the views from different angles, in the form of blueprints or as artistic perspective drawings. The CAD programs let you name the parts of your object and move the parts around. If one part covers another part and hides it, the CAD programs remember that the hidden part is still there, so that the hidden part will automatically reappear if you ever more the other part out of the way. Although CAD programs are excellent for drawing and analyzing straight lines, circles, and ovals, they're not good at handling artistic squiggles. So if you're an artist who likes to draw wild squiggles, do not get a CAD program: instead, stick with Deluxe Paint. CAD programs are strictly for architects, engineers, and other folks who do technical drafting. Traditional top-notch CAD programs require you to sit at a fancy screen (called a graphics workstation) attached to an expensive computer costing over $50,000. Newer CAD programs work on microcomputers and are almost as fancy. The fanciest CAD program for microcomputers is Autocad. The newest version of Autocad lists for $3500; it requires an IBM AT (or AT clone) and a math coprocessor chip (which helps the computer handle decimals quickly). A stripped-down version, called Autocad Lite, sells for about $400. A fun version, called Autosketch, lists for just $80 and runs on any IBM clone. Autocad's main competitor is Cadkey, which has more commands for 3-dimensional drawing but fewer commands for 2-dimensional drawing. It lists for $3195. The first CAD program for the Mac was Mac Draw. For elementary CAD applications, you can get by with Super Paint, which includes some of the commands of Mac Draw plus all the commands of Mac Paint. Better CAD programs for the Mac are being developed. Business graphics Business executives like to turn tables of numbers into pie charts and bar charts. The most popular way to produce those charts is to use a spreadsheet program (such as Lotus 1-2-3), which lets you type a table of numbers and then say ``Graph''. Lotus 1-2-3 produces just a few types of graphs, and its graphs look crude. To create graphs that are fancier and prettier, buy a fancier spreadsheet program (such as Microsoft Excel) or a presentation-graphics program (such as Microsoft Powerpoint or Lotus Freelance or Harvard Graphics). Those presentation-graphics programs are especially good for preparing slide shows and overhead transparencies. CLASSIC COMPUTER ART During the 1960's, many creative ideas were generated about how computers would someday create their own weird art, using a wild combination of formulas and random numbers, and unshackled by the bounds of human culture. Here's how to make the computer produce wild art, by using the wonderful classic tricks invented in the 1960's and 1970's. . . . Gray levels You can express every black-and-white photograph as a table of numbers. Each number in the table represents the darkness of a different point ___ the higher the number, the darker the point. The ``darkness numbers'' are called gray levels. To feed a picture into the computer, type in the table of gray levels. Or aim a special camera at the object you want pictured; the camera system will automatically compute the gray levels and send them to the computer via a wire. You can program the computer to change the gray levels in any weird way you wish, and draw the result. In the 1960's, the Computer Technique Group of Japan did this to an ordinary photograph of John Kennedy: Shot Kennedy Diffused Kennedy Kennedy in a Dog Here's what the group did to a photograph of Marilyn Monroe: Monroe in the Net Csuri & Shaffer fed the computer a realistic line drawing of an old man; here's what came out: Random Light and Shadow I did this with the help of a computer: Pin-Up The Pin-Up has these specifications. . . . scene: a scantily clad woman sitting on a stool 4 gray levels 4 symbols (1 for each gray level: a blank, a period, an asterisk, and a dollar sign) 1537 symbols altogether (53 rows x 29 columns) In the specification, the numbers are small, yet the picture is clear. To obtain the clarity, I did non-computerized finagling. At Bell Telephone Laboratories, Knowlton & Harmon produced a picture with much larger specifications. . . . scene: two sea gulls flying in the clouds 16 gray levels 141 symbols (each gray level has several symbols; the computer chooses among them at random) 11616 symbols altogether (88 rows x 132 columns) Instead of using blanks, periods, asterisks, and $, they used cats, battleships, swastikas, and other weird shapes. Here are the 141, listed from lightest to darkest, with some repetitions: The picture is several feet long. Seen from a distance, it looks like this: Gulls Here's a close-up view of part of one of the gull's wings: If you don't like sea gulls, how about Mona Lisa? In 1971, Michael Hord made the computer turn photographs into artistic sketches. Here's what the computer did to a photograph of his boss, and to a photograph of a colleague's girlfriend: Boss Woman To draw each sketch, the computer's camera scanned the original photograph and found the points where the photograph changed dramatically from light to dark. Then, on a sheet of paper, it plotted those points; and through each of those points, it drew a short line perpendicular to the direction in which the original photograph darkened. More precisely, here's what the computer did. . . . It looked at four adjacent points on the original photograph: A B C D It computed the darkness of each of those points. Then it computed the ``darkening in the X direction'', defined as: (darkness at B) + (darkness at D) - (darkness at A) - (darkness at C) Then it computed the ``darkening in the Y direction'', defined as: (darkness at A) + (darkness at B) - (darkness at C) - (darkness at D) Then it computed the ``overall darkening'', defined as: (darkening in the X direction)² + (darkening in the Y direction)² If the overall darkening there turned out to be large, the computer sketched a short line, in the vicinity of the points ABCD, and perpendicular to the direction of darkening. More precisely, the line's length was 1, and the line's slope was: the darkening in the X direction - the darkening in the Y direction Morphs Here's how to make an L slowly become a V. Notice that the letters L and V are both made by connecting three points: Let 1" be the point halfway between 1 and 1'; let 2" be halfway between 2 and 2'; and let 3" be halfway between 3 and 3'. Then 1", 2", and 3" form a shape that's halfway between an L and a V: The process can be extended further: Turning one shape into another (such as turning an L into a V) is called a metamorphosis or morphing. The intermediate shapes (that are between the L and the V) are called the morphs. Using that method, the Computer Technique Group of Japan gradually turned a running man into a Coke bottle, and then into Africa: Running Cola is Africa The group turned this head into a square: Return to a Square The head on the left returns to a square by using arithmetic progression: the lines are equally spaced. The one on the right uses geometric progression instead: the lines are close together near the inside square, but further apart as they expand outward. Csuri & Shaffer exploded a hummingbird: Chaos to Order The hummingbird at the far right was obtained from the one at the far left, by moving each line a random distance and in a random direction (between 45° and -45°). Computers can make movies. The best movie ever made by a computer is called Hunger (or La Faim). It was made under the auspices of the Canadian Film Board. It's a 10-minute cartoon, in color, with music; but it goes far beyond anything ever done by Walt Disney. It uses the same technique as Running Cola is Africa: it shows objects turning into other objects. It begins by showing a harried, thin executive at his desk, which has two phones. One of the phones rings. He answers it. While he's talking on that phone, his other phone rings. To talk on both phones simultaneously, his body splits in two. (How does a single body become two bodies? By using the same technique as turning a running man into a coke bottle.) On the other side of his desk is an armchair, which turns into a secretary, whose head turns into a clock saying 5PM, which tells the executive to go home. So he stretches his arms in front of him, and becomes his car: his hands become the headlights, his arms become the front fenders, his face becomes the windshield. You have to see it to believe it. He drives to a restaurant and gets the waitress, who turns into an ice-cream cone. Then he eats her. As the film progresses, he becomes increasingly fat, lustful, slothful, and miserable. In the end, he falls into hell, where he's encircled by all the poor starving naked children of the world, who eat his flesh. then the film ends. (Don't see it before eating dinner!) It combines computer art and left-wing humanitarian politics, to create an unforgettable message. Now morphing is being applied to color photographs and video images. For example, Hollywood movies use morphing to show a person gradually turning into a monster; environmentalists use morphing to show a human baby gradually turning into a spotted owl; and portrait photographers who have gone high-tech use morphing to show you gradually turning into the person you admire most (such as your movie idol or your lover). Order versus disorder Computer artists are starting to believe that art is a tension between order and disorder. Too much order, or too much disorder, will bore you. For example, in Chaos to Order, the hummingbird on the left is too orderly to be art. The hummingbird on the right is more interesting. Consider Gulls. Seen from a distance, it's an orderly picture of gulls. Seen up close, it's an orderly picture of a cat or battleship or swastika. But from a middling distance, it looks like disorderly wallpaper: the symbols repeat, but not in any obvious cycle. That element of disorder is what makes the picture interesting. At first glance, Pin-Up is just a disorderly array of periods, asterisks, and dollar signs. At second glance, you see order: a girl. Art is the formation of order from disorder. A first glance at Monroe in the Net shows order: a piece of graph paper. A second glance shows disorder: some of the graph's lines are inexplicably bent. A third glance shows order: Marilyn Monroe's face pops out at you. Her orderly face is formed from the disorder of bent lines. Return to a Square uses arithmetic progression and geometric progression to create an over-all sense of order, but the basic elements are disorderly: a head that's bumpy, and a panorama of weird shapes that lie uncomfortably between being heads and squares but are neither. Many programs create disorder by random numbers. Chaos to Order uses random numbers to explode the hummingbird. Gulls uses random numbers to help choose among the 141 symbols. An amazing example of random numbers is this picture by Julesz & Bosche: To your eyes, the picture seems quite ordered. Actually, it's quite disordered. One pie-shaped eighth of it is entirely random; the other seven eighths are copies of it. The copying is the only element of order, but very powerful. Try this experiment: cover seven-eighths of the picture. You'll see that the remaining eighth is totally disordered, hence boring. That program imitates a child's kaleidoscope. Do you remember your childhood days, when you played with your kaleidoscope? It was a cardboard ``telescope'' that contained a disorganized pile of colored glass and stones, plus a series of mirrors that produced eight-way symmetry, so that what you saw resembled a giant multicolored snowflake. The program by Julesz & Bosche uses the same technique, computerized. Hundreds of programmers have imitated Julesz & Bosche, so that today you can buy kaleidoscope programs for your Apple, Radio Shack, etc. Or try writing your own! Take this test: One of those is a famous painting (Composition with Lines, by Piet Mondrian, 1917). The other was done by a computer (programmed by A. Michael Noll in 1965). Which one was done by the computer? Which one do you like best? The solution is on the next page, but don't peek until you've answered! The computer did the top one. The programmer surveyed 100 people. Most of them (59) thought the computer did the bottom one. Most of them (72) preferred the top one ___ the one that was actually done by the computer. The test shows that people can't distinguish computer art from human art, and that the computer's art is more pleasing that the art of a famous painter. The computer's version is more disordered than Mondrian's. The computer created the disorder by using random numbers. The survey shows that most people like disorder: Mondrian's work is too ordered. It also shows that most people mistakenly think the ``computer'' means ``order''. Envelopes Try this experiment. On a piece of paper, put two dots, like this: The dots represent little insects, or ``bugs''. The first bug is looking at the second bug. Draw the first bug's line of sight: Make the first bug take a step toward the second bug: Make the second bug run away, in any direction: Now repeat the entire process. Again, bug 1 looks at bug 2; draw its line of sight: Bug 1 moves toward bug 2: Bug 2 keeps running away: If you repeat the process many times, you get this: The ``motion of bug 1'' looks like a curve. (In fact, it's a parabola.) The ``curve'' is composed of many straight lines ___ the lines of sight. That's how to draw a fancy curve by using straight lines. Each straight line is called a tangent of the curve. The entire collection of straight lines is called the curve's envelope. Creating a curve, by drawing the curve's envelope, is called stitching the curve ___ because the lines of sight act as threads, to produce a beautiful curved fabric. You can program the computer to draw those straight lines. That's how to make the computer draw a fancy curve ___ even if you know nothing about ``equations of curves''. To get a curve that's more interesting, try these experiments: What if bug 2 doesn't walk in a straight line? What if bug 2 walks in a curve instead? What if bug 1 goes slower than bug 2, and takes smaller steps? What if the bugs accelerate, or slow down? What if there are three bugs? What if bug 1 chases bug 2, while bug 2 chases bug 3, while bug 3 chases bug 1? What if there are many bugs, all chasing each other, and their starting positions are random? What if there are just two bugs, but the bugs are Volkswagens, which must drive on a highway having nasty curves? Show the bugs driving on the curved highway. (Their lines of sight are still straight; but instead of moving along their lines of sight, they must move along the curve that represents the highway.) What if each bug has its own highway, and all the bugs stare at each other? Here are some elaborate examples. . . . Four bugs chasing each other: The next example, called Compelling, appeared in the famous book and movie, The Dot and the Line. (Norton Juster made it by modifying art that had appeared in Scripta Mathematica.) It resembles the example above, but makes the 4 bugs start as a rectangle (instead of a square), and makes the bug in the upper left corner chase the bug in the opposite corner (although looking at a nearby bug instead). Enigmatic (from The Dot and the Line) makes 3 bugs chase each other, and a fourth bug stay motionless in the center: I invented Kite, which has 8 bugs chasing each other: I also invented Sails, which has 14 bugs chasing each other: Elliptic Motion (by my student Toby D'Oench) has 3 bugs staring at each other, as they travel on 3 elliptical highways: Archimedean Spiral (by Norton Starr) has bugs on circles. The bugs stare at each other but don't move: Fractals A fractal is an infinitely bumpy line. Here's how to draw one. Start by drawing a 1-inch line segment: In the middle of that segment, put a bump and dip, like this: Altogether, that bent path is 2 inches long. In other words, if the path were made of string, and you stretched the string until it was straight, the string would be 2 inches long. That's twice as long as the 1-inch line segment we started with. So here's the rule: putting a bump and dip in a path makes the path twice as long. That bent path consists of seven segments. Put a bump and a dip in the middle of each segment, like this: Altogether, those bumps and dips make the path twice as long again, so now the path is 4 inches long. Again, put a bump and dip in the middle of each segment, so you get this: Again the path's length has been doubled, so now the path is 8 inches long. If you again put a bump and dip in the middle of each segment, the path's length doubles again, so the path becomes 16 inches long. If you repeat the procedure again, the path reaches 32 inches. If you repeat that procedure infinitely often, you'll develop a path that's infinitely wiggly and infinitely long. That path is longer than any finite line segment. It's longer than any finite 1-dimensional object. But it still isn't a 2-dimensional object, since it isn't an ``enclosed area''. Since it's bigger than 1-dimensional but isn't quite 2-dimensional, it's called 1½-dimensional. Since 1½ contains a fraction, it's called fractional-dimensional or, more briefly, fractal. Look out your window at the horizon. What do you see? The horizon is a horizontal line with bumps (which represent hills and buildings and other objects). But on each hill, you see tiny bumps, which are trees; and on each tree, you see even tinier bumps, which are leaves; and on each leaf, you see even tinier bumps, which are the various parts of the leaf; and each part of the leaf is made of even smaller bumps (molecules), which have even smaller bumps (atoms), which have even smaller bumps (subatomic particles). Yes, the horizon is an infinitely bumpy line, a fractal! You can buy software that creates fractals. Computer artists use fractal software to draw horizons, landscapes, and other bumpy biological objects. For example, they used fractal software to create landscapes for the Star Wars movies. You can also use fractals to draw a bumpy face that has zillions of zits. Now you understand the computer artist's philosophy of life: ``Life is a lot of lumps.'' What's art? To create art, write a weird program whose consequences you don't fully understand, tell the computer to obey it, and look at the computer's drawing. If the drawing looks nice, keep it and call it ``art'' ___ even if the drawing wasn't what you expected. Maybe it resulted from an error, but so what? Anything interesting is art. If the drawing ``has potential'' but isn't totally satisfying, change a few lines of the program and see what happens ___ or run the program again unchanged and hope the random numbers will fall differently. The last thing to invent is the title. Whatever the drawing reminds you of becomes the title. For example, that's how I produced Kite and Sails. I did not say to myself, ``I want to draw a kite and sails''. I just let the computer pick random starting points for the bugs and watched what happened. I said to myself, ``Gee whiz, those drawings remind me of a kite and sails.'' So I named them Kite and Sails, and pretended that I chose those shapes on purpose. That method may seem a long way from DaVinci, but it's how most computer art gets created. The rationale is: don't overplan. . . . let the computer ``do its own thing''; it will give you art that escapes from the bounds of human culture and so expands your horizons! Modern style Computer art has changed. The classic style ___ which you've been looking at ___ consists of hundreds of thin lines in mathematical patterns, drawn on paper and with little regard for color. The modern style uses big blobs and streaks of color, flashed on a T.V. tube or film, which is then photographed. Uncreative art You've seen that computers can create their own weird art by using a wild combination of formulas and random numbers, unshackled by the bounds of human culture. Today, programs such as Deluxe Paint let people use computers to create art easily and cheaply. Unfortunately, the typical person who buys a graphics program uses it to create the same kind of junk art that would be created by hand ___ just faster and more precisely. That's the problem with computers: they make the production of mediocrity even easier and more glitzy. 3-D DRAWING The computer drew these three-dimensional surfaces: Three Peaks by John Szabo Dip Those were done for the sake of art. This was done for the sake of science: Population Density in the U.S. by the Harvard University Mapping Service The hardest part about three-dimensional drawing is figuring out which lines the computer should not show, because they're hidden behind other surfaces. Coordinates Try this experiment. Put your finger on the bridge of your nose (between your eyes). Now move your finger 2 inches to the right (so that your finger is close to your right eye). Then move your finger 3 inches up (so that your finger is near the upper right corner of your forehead). From there, move your finger 8 inches forward (so that your finger is 8 inches in front of your forehead). Your finger's current position is called (2,3,8), because you reached it by moving 2 inches right, then 3 inches up, then 8 inches forward. The 2 is called the X coordinate; the 3 is called the Y coordinate; the 8 is called the Z coordinate. You can reach any point in the universe by the same method! Start at the bridge of your nose, and get to the point by moving right (or left), then up (or down), then forward (or back). The distance you move to the right is called the X coordinate (if you move to the left instead, the X coordinate is a negative number). The distance you move up is called the Y coordinate (if you move down instead, the Y coordinate is a negative number). The distance you move forward is called the Z coordinate (if you move back instead, the Z coordinate is a negative number). Projecting the coordinates To draw a picture of a three-dimensional object, put the object in front of you, and then follow these instructions. . . . Pick a point on the object. (If the object has corners, pick one of the corners.) Figure out that point's X, Y, and Z coordinates (by putting your finger on the bridge of your nose and then seeing how far you must move your finger right, up, and forward to reach the object). Then compute the point's projected X coordinate (which is X/Z) and the point's projected Y coordinate (which is Y/Z). For example, if X is 2 and Y is 3 and Z is 8, the projected X coordinate is 2/8 (which is .25) and the projected Y coordinate is 3/8 (which is .375). On graph paper, plot the projected X coordinate and the projected Y coordinate, like this: Then plot the point: Go through the same procedure for every point on the object (or at least for the corners). Connect the dots and ___ presto! ___ you have a three-dimensional picture of the object! And the picture is mathematically accurate! It's what artists call a ``true perspective drawing''. To make the picture look traditionally beautiful, place the object slightly to the left of you and slightly below your eye level, so that all the X and Y coordinates become negative. Computerizing the process You can program the computer so that if you input a point's X coordinate, Y coordinate, and Z coordinate, the computer will calculate the projected X coordinate (from dividing X by Z) and the projected Y coordinate (from dividing Y by Z) and plot the point on the computer's screen (by using high-resolution graphics). The easiest way to draw three-dimensional pictures is to buy a special three-dimensional arm that attaches to an Apple computer. To draw a picture of an object, move the mechanical arm until the arm's finger touches the object. Immediately the arm's software computes the X coordinate, Y coordinate, and Z coordinate of the touched point; you don't need a ruler! It also computes the projected X coordinate and the projected Y coordinate and plots the points on your television. If you have a graphics printer, the software also plots the point on your printer's paper.