Vectronix 2/VECTRONIX2.iso/FILES_01/DAS_REPR.LZH/RETCH1.TXT

Text File | 1994-05-01 | 17KB | 334 lines

For over a year I've been waiting to write these ar-
ticles. I purchased Retouche Black & White Profes-
sional for $1,000 and while I can't say I regretted the
purchase, at the same time, I felt this price was just to
high. The program was, and is, great, but $1.000 dol-
lars for a photo manipulation program, that works
only in gray, is way to much. I desperately needed the
program for my graphic business, so I bought it. But I
couldn't bring myself to review it, until the price
came down, to something reasonable. Finally, three
years after it became available, such is now the case. It
also means that Retouche CD (CD stands for color and
design) is nowwithin my reach. I have ordered the pro-
gram and will review it later on.
Before going anywhere further, here is the new
price structure for the Retouche family of software, as
marketed by San Jose Computer.

San Jose Computer
1278 Alma Court
San Jose CA., 95112
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Retouche CD
+ Didot Professional Color: $995
Retouche CD: $695
Retouche Black & White Professional
+ Didot Black & White: 695
Retouche Professional Black & White: $395

These articles will deal primarily with Retouche and not Didot. Didot is a full featured Desk-top pub-
lishing program, with built in Vector drawing capabili-
ties, and a font editor among other extras. The output
of Retouche meshes quite well with Didot. On the
other hand, as someone who has used Didot, I don't
hesitate to say that Calamus Sl, is a superior program,
and handles .TIF files from Retouche with no prob-
lems. However Didot is an amazing program and I
will review it in a future article. Until then my re-
marks about it and Calamus Sl can stand as a mini-re-
view. This first article, while called a review, is
actually a listing of features, along with remarks about
how great all of this is. I apologize in advance. The
reader has to understand that I want to do these
products justice, and an entire issue of Current Notes
would be needed to fully describe them. If you're even
thinking of purchasing Retouche, than I suggest you
hold onto to the articles in this series, because future
articles will give you a feel for operating this program
and tutorials on photo-manipulation in general.

Photo Manipulation
The Retouche family of software by 3K Computer-
Bild are photo-manipulation programs. To get any real
use out of them you should also have a true gray scale
or color scanner. You could also use the new film de-
velopment system from Kodak to turn your regular
photo's into .TIF files loaded on a CD ROM disk. DMC Publishing has a driver available, for $20, that
will allow you to load these .TIF files, into your Atari,
for further manipulation. Retouche requires any ST/TT (I have no idea if it will run on the Falcon). I rec-
ommend a minimum of four megs. The more mem-
ory the better. Retouche runs in ST monochrome and
TT medium as well as TT high. These little details dis-
posed of, just what is photo-manipulation anyway?
Why am so excited about it? Why did my dog run
away from home?
Let me start off by saying that these true color and
gray scale .TIF files can be treated as actual photo-
graphs. Unlike monochrome .IMG files, which are
composed of black and white dots, arranged to form
an image, .TIF files are areas of gray or color which
correspond to the actual colors of your photograph.
Blowing up an .IMG files results in larger black and
white dots, blowing up a .TIF file is like blowing up a
photograph. The digitized information is embedded in
the file, just as in a real photograph. Naturally the
higher the resolution of the scan, the better this proc-
ess works. But even low resolution (75 DPI) scans are shockingly good as compared to even high resolution
monochrome files. This is because you are expanding
the areas of gray or color and not expanding the size
of the individual dots.
These files, like vector files, are device independ-
ent. This is to say that the printer assigns dots only when the printer is ready to print. A 2400 DPI Lino
will assign a much greater number of dots than would
a lazar printer. As I said this works just like a photo-
graph. The Retouche programs are designed to take
advantage of these facts and, running them, turns
your computer into a real darkroom. I've written of
this process in previous articles, but in the course of
talking to real people, I notice that the information
just doesn't sink in. People just don't want to believe
that this is for real. Here are a few things you can do
with photo-manipulation:
You can take those old photo's your grandfather
took back in the 1920's and restore them. You can re-
trieve details from crime scene photo's and solve mys-
teries. You can isolate little portions of photo's and
blow them up to any size you want. You can create
complex photo-collages. You can turn the expression
½a photo is worth a thousand words" into an outright
lie. This is because the results of your work can be
taken to a service bureau and for $20 be turned back
into a photographic negative. You can turn night into
day and day into night. You can make a blue sky pink
and the trees in a forest blue. You can..., well let me re-
view the program.

Program Overview
Retouche Black & White Professional is
strictly to manipulate black and white photo-
graphs. Retouche works with 256 levels of gray,
which is about all the human eye can discrimi-
nate between. I'll make one mention of its color
capabilities which are limited to loading color
files and changing the percentage of the RGB
values. You can also convert color to gray. Fi-
nally you can mix your gray images into the
color image, but basically this program is not
designed to handle color, for that you'll need Retouche CD. Retouche is both sophisticated
and simple. It is indeed so
simple to use that a thor-
ough reading of the
manual in a step by step
process is necessary sim-
ply because you can do
serious work without really
knowing anything. This
causes the user to sit in
front of his or her compu-
ter and make funny oo-
hing and ahhing sounds.
In my case I also added a
certain amount of scream-
ing and pointing at the
monitor. As a result, at
some point, the user
learns that some of the
things you're doing could
have actually been done,
with a lot less effort, if you
had bothered to read the
entire manual. Never be-
fore has this been a significant problem for me.
Learning programs like Calamus SL require careful
study to come to grip with their sophisticated poten-
tial With Retouche you can happily start manipulat-
ing photo's almost as soon as you read the introduc-
tion. This can be embarrassing when you discover six
months later that you've missed some basic func-
tions.

The Tool Box Screen
Take a good look at figure one. There in front of
you is the entire program. The only other screen is
where the actual image is displayed. The working
screen has no icons or tools. It does have a coordinate
display and hitting certain keys will show the size of
the picture and the gray value underneath the cursor.
In the tool screen, on the upper left, is where photo's
are loaded. You can load in up to 10 images at one
time and cut and paste between them. To the far right
is a large window showing the currently active photo.
Notice the highlighted rectangle. This corresponds to
the active work area of your screen. In this example
the currently loaded photo is much larger than the
ability of my monitor to display it. Retouche works by
switching back and forth from the tools display (figure
one) and the actual image. Retouche has the ability to
plug in a separate monitor and work with the tools
screen on one monitor and the actual image on an-
other. I don't have two monitors (and you need a sepa-
rate graphics card in order to use this capability) but
two monitors are not needed to run the program. In
fact, if I didn't know about this capability, I wouldn't
miss it. To switch between the tools window and the
actual image, simply hit the escape key or click on
both mouse buttons, and you are in the work window,
where the actual image is displayed. The real advan-
tage of two monitors is that you can grab the high-
lighted rectangle in the large display area and move it,
and as you move it the image will move in the other
monitor. However the program allow rapid scrolling
while in the working screen simply by holding down
the alternate key and while holding down the right
mouse, move the mouse. You can even control the speed or direction of scrolling by the speed or angle
with which you move the mouse. At the same time the
currently selected tool is active and you are working
on your photo. Key equivalents exist for every tool and
you don't have to return to the tools window to change
tools. It is true that you must return to the tools win-
dow to select such items as the size with which each
tool manipulates pixels, and choosing the special effect
which you want to use. Ok, ok, a separate monitor would be handy but until I get one I refuse to miss it.
Just below the ten photo boxes are the various op-
tions which Retouche uses. In figure two are the result-
ing pop up dialogue boxes which result from their se-
lection. In addition sub dialogue boxes pop up with al-
most all of these selections. For example, each of the
special effects, such as sharpen, allow you to set cer-
tain parameters. such as the type of colors being
worked with, the amount of change, the matrix of af-
fected pixels, etc. I will come back to these special ef-
fects next month. The Graduated Fill allows you to se-
lect between various shades and patterns of gray to
add to your photo. This is basically useful for the cre-
ation of shadows and the handling of light. The Block dialogue is where you cut and paste, rotate and distort
your images. Mask, is where you create masks to
cover portions of your images so that they will either,
not be affected by other options, or, for the creation of
photo collage. The Vector Path option is for using vec-
tor curves to work in conjunction with various tools to
fine tune and speed the creation of your work.

The Different Tools
Below these option are the two remaining areas.
Here are the various selection of tools. From left to
right, they consist of, a pencil, chalk, paint brush,
stamp (the stamp is a user definable matrix of pixels
of various colors which can be used much like a
brush), spray can, ruler (for precise measurement),
knife (which acts to increase the contrast between
neighboring pixels), the finger, which acts as an anti-aliasing tool, as does the water tool. The randomizer,
also useful in anti-aliasing. The densitometer, which
measures the gray level of the pixels you are working
on, the fill tool, the block tool, the mask and finally,
the magnifying glass. Just to the right are the various
erasers. One of them simply erases what it is applied
to, the second scrapes away at the image and the third
actually restores the image, acting very much like a
localized  undo buffer. Is all this crystal clear? Every-
thing is actually much simpler than any description
I'm going to provide. In figure three is a typical dia-
logue box, to set for each tool, in this case, the anti-aliasing finger. Do you want it to work on all the col-
ors or just a few? The pressure control sets the degree
of effect that the tool has on the image. This is all
very refined stuff. The degree of control is enormous.
Just to the right of the image storing frames, is a thin
box containing the different sizes which you can select
for many of the tools described. There is also a choice
for whether you are working with your mouse as a
free form painting tool, or you can use lines or vector
curves. One thing to keep in mind about Retouche is
that each tool can be set up exactly the way you most
often use it. These settings can then be saved along
with a host of other parameters. As I said before all
these tools can be selected by key equivalents.

Contrast and Brightness Controls
To the left of the tool selection chart is the contrast
and brightness control. In figure four is the resulting
dialogue box. With this option you can change the
contrast and graduation of your image. You can set pa-
rameters so that you only affect some of the colors.
You can also use this option along with the masking
tool to affect only those areas which are not masked.
In addition any of these graduated curves can be
stored and later reloaded. The results can be amazing.
Beneath these options is a gray bar running from
white to black. You can manually set the color of your
operating tool or eraser by clicking with the left
mouse button for tool and right mouse button for
eraser. Tools are implemented, by holding down the
left mouse button for the tool, and right mouse button
for eraser. You could of course switch this around, and
set the eraser to a different color, and erase with gray.
On the right of the gray bar is where you set the
dithering pattern, used by the program, to display the
image. Retouche does not take advantage of the Atari's
color capability unless you have a graphics card. Set-
ting the dithering pattern, makes working on the im-
age much easier, depending on the type of image dis-
played. The last icon on the far right, sets the colors of
the working tool to match the actual values of the
loaded image. In other words, if the lightest color in
the image is ten percent gray and the darkest 75
percent gray, then the new color setting for writing
and erasing will match these values. You can also use
this option to exchange values between the working
color and the eraser. If the image is to large to be dis-
played on the working screen, you can hit the ½eye"
icon, or click on the ½o" key, and the program will dis-
play the entire image, so you can see how you work is
proceeding. Let me pause and mention that Retouche does an incredible job of showing you the way the pic-
ture actually looks. This even extends to the little im-
age loading boxes on the top. Even they look good.
Finally you can set the zoom in fixed percentages.
This can also be done in the image working area, sim-
ply by clicking on the left mouse button, while holding
down the ½alternate¬ plus ½left shift¬ key.
This is the entire program. It seems and is very
simple. The simplicity of Retouche is a reflection of
its polish. This program is POWERFUL! There is
nothing to match it on other computer platforms.

What This Means For The Atari
When the program first came out, programs like
photoshop, were in their infancy and many of the ef-
fects in Retouche were beyond their scope. At this
time Photoshop has matured and can accomplish the
same things that Retouche can but with much more
effort. One example of the power of Retouche would
be in rotating a graphic to an odd number of degrees.
A 500K .TIF file takes 9 seconds to rotate at an 11 de-
gree angle. Why is this so? Better ask Dave Troy. Any-
one who has used Touch-up knows how many good
novels could be read when rotating a 500K .IMG file.
Perhaps .TIF files require a different mechanism? An-
other point to keep in mind is that this program takes
advantage of the TT Ram in my computer This
means that on a regular ST all operations take roughly
four times longer. This is still incredibly fast. Some of
the special effects like sharpening or blurring take
quite a bit longer. Sharpening an entire 500K .TIF file
took 40 seconds on my TT. On my ST, this operation
took 2 minutes and twenty seconds. This is incredibly
quick for such a powerful effect.
Retouche has the option of storing its Undo buffer
on a hard disk. This process is relatively quick and de-
pends more on the speed of your hard disk then of the
computer. Since Retouche works by using the Undo
buffer for many of its effects this is very important. If
you are creating a collage then it pays to shut off the
Undo buffer on all but the collage frame. This frees up
considerable memory. The only problem with Re-
touche is that the key equivalents are built into the pro-
gram and not user definable. The Tab key actuates the
special effect chosen, while right above the tab key is
the escape key, used for switching between tool screen
and working screen. Guess what sometimes happens.
Next month I will demonstrate the power and use
of this program. Those people who think I am ex-
aggerating - Let them be amazed. Future articles will
cover Retouche CD and a review of Didot.