You can start generating a Cellular Automaton picture with the New command in the File menu. You can generate as much pictures simultaneously as allowed by the amount of memory available to the program (or by your patience, the more open windows you have, the slower rendering will be).
After choosing the New command, you are presented with a settings dialog to specify the settings for your picture.
You can start generating your first picture with the default settings right away, by clicking the start button. Or you can fiddle with the settings described below.
# of start points
The settings in this frame determine the number of starting points (point that will be colored initially) and their placement.
The Minimum slider sets the minimum number of starting points.
The Variance slider sets the maximum for a random number. The result of this is added to the setting of the Minimum slider.
For instance if you want to have a random number of points between 3 and 10, set the minimum slider to 3, and the variance slider to 7. If you want a fixed number of points, set the minimum slider to that number and the variance slider to 0.
The Random position button determines placement of the starting points. If checked the points will be placed randomly accross the width of the window, otherwise the point will be spaced evenly along the windows width.
Picture width
The width slider controls the width in pixels of the generated picture, which is also the width of the window in which the picture will be displayed.
Colors
The number of colors that will be used in the picture is displayed in this frame.
The Color button brings up a dialog that allows you to set the number of colors used. This is by far the most dramatic way to influence the resulting image, because the number of colors is also the number of possible 'states' for every pixel.
(A cellulair automaton is a 'State machine', more colors: more states)
The color Dialog is described in more detail below.
Saving Picts
Since generating the images is a time consuming process, the program allows you to save the results to disk, for viewing them later. If you check the "Save PICTs" button or the "Save As..." button, you can specify a file name.
The picture is saved as a series of PICT files with the dimensions of the rendering area.
This is the width you specified, and twice the height of the initial window size. Every time the program finishes rendering an area of that size, the picture is saved, and rendering starts again at the top of the rendering area, Note that you can resize the window, but the rendering area will stay the same size. The maximum window size is the same as the size of the rendering area.
The program will start numbering your pictures starting with 0000, and append the number to the file name you specify.
If your filename is "myFile" the PICT files will be called "myFile0000", "myFile0001", "myFile0002" and so on.
The Color Dialog
When you click the color button in the settings dialog, the color dialog will come up.
This presents the current color set as a grid of color chips. The current number of colors is displayed in the edit field above the window. You can change the number of colors in the current set by typing a new value into this field. The field will accept values between 2 and 256. The color chips will be redrawn each time you set a different number of colors. An attempt is made to map the old colors to the new palette. This feature is not yet completely functional.
The number of colors chosen is independent of the screen depth, although not all colors will be visible on 8 or 4 bit screens. This is true even though the maximum number of colors is 256, since currently the program uses the system palette on an 8 bit screen, not all generated colors will be visible. For best results set your screen to 16 bit or higher (thousands of colors or more).
Preset colors
You can use the presets popup menu to set the palette to a predefined one.
Currently only one palette is available in this menu.
Selecting colors
You can select individual colors by clicking on them. You can also select contiguous ranges of colors by clicking and dragging. Depending on the selection you made, several editing options become available. The buttons to the left will be enabled or disabled depending on your selection.
Copy/paste
Selected colors can be copied and pasted. So far this works reliable with single colors only.
Edit color
You can edit a selected color by clicking the Edit button, or double clicking the color. This will bring up the color picker, allowing you to specify a different color for the selected slot.
Random
The selected color(s) will be replaced by a random rgb value
Invert
The selected color(s) will be inverted (in rgb space). The color will change into it's negative. Note that performing this action twice will revert the color to it's original value.
Reverse
(Only available for ranges of colors)
The order of the colors in the selected range is reversed: the first color in the range becomes the last and vice versa. Note that performing this action twice will revert the color range to it's original order.
Blend
(Only available for ranges of colors)
A color blend is made from the first to the last color in the selected range.
Lumsort
(Only available for ranges of colors)
The colors in the selected range will be sorted according to luminance (lightness) in the order from darkest to lightest, you can, of course, reverse this order with the reverse button.
Known bugs and shortcomings
Color Dialog:
Copying and pasting ranges of colors doesn't work properly.
There is no undo available in the color palette.
There is no option to save color sets accross sessions.
The number of predefined palettes is rather limited
Future developments
Ñ Fixing the above problems
Ñ Providing a way to save color sets
Ñ Importing color palettes from various sources (palette resources, pict files etc.)
Ñ Option to open a series of saved PICTs and scroll through them as one (very long) picture.
