Software of the Month Club 1996 June

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PCXLAB 1.30 Copyright (c) Viper Software 1993-1995 July 1st, 1995 ================================= DISCLAIMER ---------- This product is distributed AS IS. The author specifically disc- laims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose with respect to defects in the diskette and documentation, and program license granted herein, in particular, and without limiting operation of the program license with respect to any particular application use or purpose. In no event shall the author be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages. LICENSING AGREEMENT ------------------- PCXLAB is copyrighted software and all rights are reserved. PCXLAB may not be changed or modified in any way except by the author. PCXLAB is part of the PCXDUMP system. The PCXDUMP system is SHAREWARE and may be freely distributed as long as it remains in its complete form with all support and documentation files. It may be used for a 10 day free trial period. Regardless of how the copy is obtained, it is requested that all users comply with the following licensing and registration provisions if they continue to use it after the 10 day trial period. Should you find this program useful, you must register it; you will then be provided with the latest releases of the PCXDUMP system. OVERVIEW OF PCXLAB ------------------- * It can be used on any color EGA, VGA or SVGA display card (except EGA mono). * It can show any 2, 16, 256 and 16.7 million (24 bit) color PCX file in both 16 and 256 color modes. However viewing 256-color and 16.7 million-color pictures in 16 color will only give you a hint of what the picture looks like. Viewing 24 bit pictures in 256 color is acceptable. If the images displayed are bigger than the current resolution you can scroll the images around FAST with the arrow keys and PgDn & PgUp. You can also change resolution with '+' and '-'. * It detect a wide range of SuperVGA cards and uses their HiRes modes in 16, 256, 32K, 64K or 16.8 million colors. * On HiColor or TrueColor cards, you can view 24 bit colors PCX files in 32768 colors or 16.7 million colors (TrueColor card needed for this). * It has a neat file browser, so you can walk through all your directories on your harddisk without leaving PCXLAB. There is a limit of 2000 PCX-files per directory (you are not likely to hit this limit!). You simply use the cursor arrows or PgUp or PgDn to select the file you want to see. Press Enter to view file. * The PCX-files must be no larger that 3800 pixels wide, which should be more than enough. * You can easily set up a slideshow by tagging a number of files and then hitting F8 (to start the slideshow). You must tag at least 2 files to have a slideshow. * PCXLAB will detect which video modes your videocard can use, and you can easily switch between these modes by pressing F2 (or + & -). * It is FAST! PCXLAB is written in a high level language and assembler for all the screen and unpacking operations. Compared with the great shareware fileviewer VPIC (which can show a large number of formats, not only PCX), PCXLAB is 30%-700% faster with an average about 2 times faster as VPIC! * Converts PCX-files to other fileformats: Postscript, Windows BMP, Amiga LBM, TIFF, Targa TGA, Wordperfect WPG. * Manipulate PCX-files: 1) Convert any color file to monochrome using Floyd&Steinberg or Burkes dithering. 2) Convert any color file to 16 or 256 color file. 3) Convert any color PCX-files to gray scaled PCX-files. * Shows both PCX-files and ANS-files (ANSI text files) * Shows images from command line. PCXLAB will NOT show GIF, TGA, LBM, WPG, BMP, EPS, TIFF images even though they may apper in the file browser. USAGE ----- PCXLAB [/CHIPSET:number] [/AUTO] [/SKIPVESA] [/PCXONLY] [files] If one or more arguments are valid filenames on PCX- or ANS- files, these will be showed. Otherwise the PCXLAB will start as usually. If PCXLAB somehow fails to recognize your video adapter that you know is on the list below, you can force PCXLAB to use it with the /CHIPSET switch. The number must be in the range 2-23: Number Chipset Number Chipset ---------------------- ------------------- 0 UNSUPPORTED 23 Realtek 1 RESERVED 24 Matrox 2 EGA card 25 OAK-57 3 VGA card 26 OAK-83 4 ATI Wonder 27 OAK-87 5 Trident 28 S3-911 6 Genoa 29 S3-924 7 Paradise 30 S3-928 8 Tseng ET 3000 31 S3-80X 9 Tseng ET 4000 32 S3-864 10 Tseng ET 4000 HiColor 33 S3-964 11 OAK-37 34 Compaq Qvision 12 OAK-67 35 ChipTech 450 13 Video 7 36 ChipTech 455 14 Ahead A 37 ChipTech 456 15 Ahead B 38 ChipTech 457 16 ChipTech 451 39 ChipTech 65520 17 ChipTech 452 40 ChipTech 65530 18 ChipTech 453 41 ChipTech 65510 19 VESA 42 ChipTech 64200 20 Tseng ET 4000 TrueColor 43 ChipTech 64300 21 OAK-77 44 Advance Logic 22 MXIC By forcing PCXLAB to use your adapter you will not be able to use your videocards HiColor extension (if it has any)! If you invoke PCXLAB with argument /AUTO, PCXLAB goes to AUTO, which automatically selects a resolution which will display the whole picture. When PCXLAB tries to identify your video card it will always treat your video card as a VESA card if you have a VESA-driver installed because the very first thing PCXLAB checks, is the presence of a VESA-driver. If you install PCXLAB with the /SKIPVESA option no check for a VESA-driver is performed. The /PCXONLY switch will tell PCXLAB only to scan for PCX- files. PCXLAB will use XMS for temporary storage when viewing or converting PCX images. If there is not enough available XMS memory, PCXLAB will use the disk for temporary storage. You can tell PCXLAB where to place the temporary file with the environment variables PCXTMP, TEMP or TMP. First PCXLAB will check if PCXTMP is defined and points to a valid location. If that is not the case PCXLAB will check the TEMP variable and then if necessary the TMP variable. If you put the following line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file SET PCXTMP=E:\ PCXLAB will use the root of disk E: for temporary files. If you choose to use your extended memory as a RAM disk, you should make the PCXTMP environment variable point to your RAM disk. FILE CONVERSION - F3 -------------------- WPG FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 8 (OR MAYBE 4) ---------------------------------------- These are the native import graphic files for WordPerfect. These files can contain both bitmaps and line art, or vector graphics. PCXLAB will only generate the bitmapped part of them. PCXLAB will generate with WPG files having one, four or eight bits of color information, that is, monochrome files, sixteen-color files and 256-color files. The WPG specification allows for 256-color files. As of this writing, WordPerfect itself would not read them. If you wish to use 256-color images in a WordPerfect document, you might want to either reduce them to sixteen colors or dither them to mono- chrome, depending upon what you will be outputting them to. BMP FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24 ---------------------------- These are the files which are used as "wallpaper" under Windows 3. They can be created using the version of PC Paintbrush supplied with Windows. BMP files use no image compression, as the intention appears to be to make them fast to load. Plan on your BMP files being very large. There is a very important aspect of color BMP files which you should bear in mind when you use this format. Windows uses a fixed palette which Windows Paint cannot go about changing, as doing so would make the screen and border colors change too. This means that transferring an image to the BMP format will generally result in some color shifts when BMP files are imported into Windows applications. The BMP format can support 24-bit files, which PCXLAB does generate. However, as of this writing importing a 24-bit BMP image into Windows Paint results in a noticeable color shift. This appears to be a peculiarity of Windows Paint. EPS FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 8 --------------------------- The EPS format... encapsulated PostScript... is not really a bitmapped format at all. However, it may contain bitmapped data. PostScript cannot be interpreted directly by most PC applica- tions. As such, an EPS file which is to be imported into an application such as Ventura Publisher or PageMaker also includes a "preview". A preview is a small black and white TIFF image which will show you a rough idea of what the EPS file will look like. PCXLAB will not generate a preview. If you import an EPS file into Ventura, for example, the screen image you see will be the preview but the data printed to your printer will be the PostScript data itself. PCXLAB can transform PCX-files with between 1 and 24 bits of color information ... between two and 16.7 million colors ... into EPS files. Images with more than two colors will be turned into PostScript halftones. Please note that the EPS files which PCXLAB creates are only intended to be printed. You cannot read them into applications such as Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. These applications will not accept the large mounts of bitmapped data which a PCXLAB EPS file contains. For the most part, using EPS files in this way is no longer necessary. Applications which import EPS files will usually allow you to import TIFF files as well, which will provide you with much better halftoning and screen control. TIFF FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24 ----------------------------- PCXLAB generates 1, 4, 8 or 24 bit TIFF files. Color TIFF files are useful in Corel Draw, among other places. Corel Draw 3.0 will import color TIFF files for inclusion in CDR graphics. Due to the complicated nature of TIFF-files PCXLAB will only dump uncompressed TIFF. This will allow almost any TIFF- reader to read the files generated by PCXLAB without choking. IFF/LBM FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24 -------------------------------- These started out on the Amiga. The IFF file standard is extremely flexible, and allows all sorts of things besides images to be stored in IFF files. IFF files are found on the PC having been ported from Amiga systems. They are also created on the PC by several applications such as Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint package and Digital Vision's Computer Eyes video scanner board. In the first case they are given the extension LBM. In the second they are given the extension CE. The basic file structure is the same, however. The standard IFF image files are called ILBM, compressing all images as planes. This is much slower, but such files will be readable by pretty well all IFF readers... even if you port them back to the Amiga. This is how PCXLAB creates IFF files. Unfortunately, there is a problem with old versions of Deluxe Paint which will occasionally stop reading some files part way through the image. This happens to IFF files from sources other than PCXLAB, so it is probably a bug in these versions of Deluxe Paint. TGA FILES - MAXIMUM BITS: 24 ---------------------------- The Truevision Targa format is used by several high end paint programs and things like ray tracing packages. It can handle images with up to sixteen million unique colors. PCXLAB will generate 1, 4, 8, or 24 bit TGA files. As with TIFF files, PCXLAB will only generate uncompressed TGA files. COLOR TRANSFORMATION - F4 ------------------------- This function allows you to create destination files a different number of colors than the source files they are derived from. You can use this function, for example, to reduce a 256-color file to a 16-color one. It is particularly useful for reducing 24-bit files to 256-color files, or promoting 16-color files to 256-colors files. You can choose dithering or remapping as color transformation method. Dithering is a sort of magical process by which color images can be converted into pretty attractive black and white versions for reproduction on a monochrome screen or a black and white laser printer. Note that source files for dithering must have more than one bit of color information per pixel. Dithering often works a lot better if you scale the original image up. PCXLAB lets you dither with images from "size as" up to 300 percent expansion. Dithering is a fairly slow process, and the better the dithering algorithm, the slower it gets. The two dithering algorithms use what is called "error diffusion". These produce really nice looking dithers, but they are quite slow. The fastest, and least attractive, is Floyd & Steinberg. The better, and slower, is Burkes (in my opinion). It is possible to adjust the brightness and contrast of dithered images with the GAMMA and CONTRAST values. It is also possible to invert the dithered image. Remapping. Whenever you reduce the number of colors in a file, some image information will get lost. The simplest form of color reduction is "remapping". This simply means that the destination image will have the best "all around" color palette, and that all pixels are chosen to match this palette. The results are usually not very attractive. When a color file is transformed into a new file with less colors, it is possible to choose "Dithering" or "Remapping". When a color file is transformed into a new file with more colors, PCXLAB always uses "Remapping". PRINTING - F6 ------------- You can print PCX-files to a either an EPSON compatible printer or a HP LaserJet compatible printer with PCXLAB. However your PCX-file must satisfy the following conditions: 1) It must a monochrome PCX-file 2) It must be no wider than 640 pixels (MATRIX-printer) (2000 pixels for a HP LaserJet) You can only print one file at a time, no matter how many you have tagged. You will be asked if you want to invert the output, the density on the printer, output resolution and which printer port (1, 2 or 3). AUTO/LOCK - F7 -------------- Pressing F7 goes to AUTO, which automatically selects a resolu- tion which will display the whole picture. Pressing F7 goes back to LOCK, which forces the default resolution (above) no matter what size the image is. VIEW SLIDESHOW - F8 ------------------- Pressing F8 will do a slide show of the tagged files until ESC is pressed. Alt+D prompts for a new slide delay time in seconds. You must tag at least 2 files to start the slideshow. RESCAN DIRECTORY - F9 --------------------- Pressing F9 will cause PCXLAB to rescan the current directory for PCX and ANS-files. If you activate PCXDUMP from within PCXLAB, PCXDUMP will create new PCX-files that does not appear in the file selection window. If you press F9 PCXLAB will scan the directory and the new files will appear in the file selection window. CHANGE DRIVE - F10 ------------------ Press F10 to change drive. ------------------ End of document ---------------------------