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ColorScan Version 1.00 Copyright 1992 Jeremy Lilley All Rights Reserved Before I explain anything, the following files are: Colscan.Doc - This file (documentation) Colscan.Exe - Color Plane Converter (more later) Order.Prn - Order form MooseW.PCX MooseR.PCX - 4 .PCX files to use Colscan with and to test it with MooseG.PCX MooseB.PCX Colscan.Bat - A sample batch file for Colscan Demo.Bat - A small little demo of a scan Also, this program takes a bit of effort to use and understand. Please be patient, as all things will be explained in due time. Before you rush to the bottom of this file to find the registration fee, and before you go off and delete Order.Prn, the registration is as low as $5. (More later) You may have to reread this file. Anyway, if you want to see the demo first, go ahead and run the batch file. Notice that it is not perfect, but could be improved. By the way, it is from a sticker from Radio Sweden International (shortwave). This is a program that can let you use your B/W scanner to scan in 16 colors! The process is MUCH more complicated and time-consuming than regular scanning, but it sure is cheaper than a color scanner! To use this program, you must have a VGA monitor and 384K. This uses only 640X480 pictures and anything else can be unpredictable. Your scanner must be able to produce images in Line-Art mode. WHEN YOU SCAN FOR THIS PROGRAM, YOU MUST ALWAYS USE LINE-ART MODE INSTEAD OF THE GRAY-SCALE MODE. Probably on the side of your scanner is a switch where you can select the dithering mode. It will say something like: Text Photo █ ■ ∙ · Switch the mode to text so that the gray patterns are not used. Everything will be explained in due time, so sit tightly, but first a synopsis of this program: This program allows you to create 640X480X16 (VGA, 16 colors) pictures with your B/W hand scanner and a few tools. The changes are meant to be temporary and this program is good for people who need a few VGA scans and have a lot of time and patience, but not $$$. If you are planning to make 50 scans a day and want 256 colors in Super VGA mode, or have as much money as you want for a scanner (HA!HA!HA!), you would be better off buying a 256 color scanner (or a 262,144 color scanner!!!) or even a flatbed page scanner. You need the following materials to temporarily scan in color: ■ A sheet of acetate (available at art stores, use 8½ X 11 sheet) (Also used in overhead projectors) ■ 3 filters discussed later ■ A guide for your scanner (many scanners have metal guides included with them, you can get one of the fancy guides from some places, or you can make one yourself) ■ The scanning utility included with your scanner ■ A VGA screen capture utility. If you have Frieze (included in PC PaintBrush, Colscan can automatically activate it. Otherwise, I can recommend VGACAP, included with VGACAD, a good shareware drawing program. VGACAP takes up about 5K and can save in PCX or GIF. ■ A VGA paint program is recommended too. You may need to patch things up. ■ Rulers, pencils, clear tape, etc. First of all, the acetate is used to place over the framing and the images to scan and makes things MUCH EASIER. You will need to take EVERYTHING in place (including the guide) because you need to make 4 PERFECT scans. You may even want to put *small* blocks on either side of the scanner to make things perfect. You should have lots of time and a steady hand. Now you may be wondering "WHAT'S GOING ON!?!?!?" Here it goes: The images you are scanning will be converted into 16 colors. There are 4 bits (2^4=16) for each pixel. These bits represent Red, Green, Blue, and Whiteness. If the Red bit were on, the color would be red. If both red and blue were on, magenta is made. Green and White make light green. If you are not familiar with the mixing of light, you may wonder where the yellow is. Yellow is red, green, and white. Here is a chart on what the colors make: THE COLOR CHART White Red Green Blue Color ________________________________________________________________ Off Off Off Off Black Off Off Off On Blue Off Off On Off Green Off Off On On Cyan Off On Off Off Red Off On Off On Magenta Off On On Off Brown Off On On On Light Gray On Off Off Off Dark Gray On Off Off On Light Blue On Off On Off Light Green On Off On On Light Cyan On On Off Off Light Red On On Off On Light Magenta On On On Off Yellow On On On On White Now I have to go into a little background. If you use PC-Paintbrush or many other paint programs, you may sometimes see when you go to the "Get Info" window. One of the entries may say "Planes: 4." When editing monochrome images in B/W, the entry may say "Planes: 1." What are planes ? On CGA monitors, the image was a direct representation of the video memory. There were 2 bits in a color so each byte was 4 pixels. (8 bits in byte). However, IBM came out with the EGA monitor and changed all of that forever. A new concept called planes was introduced. There are separate planes (4 in all for a 16 color picture) which control the 4 primary colors (White , Red, Green, and Blue) mentioned in THE COLOR CHART. You see, EGA required 64K and 128K to run properly. VGA requires a 256K video buffer to operate. SVGA requires 512K to operate and 1 Megabyte of a video buffer to work in 256 colors. IBM had taken the approach of mapping the video buffer (THESE REQUIREMENTS ARE FOR THE VIDEO BUFFER. THE VIDEO BUFFER STORES THE CONTENTS OF THE SCREEN AND LETS THE CRT CONTROLLER READ ITSELF WHEN IT NEEDS TO REWRITE THE SCREEN.) into the system ram (That's why you only get 640K) right above the 640K mark. All of the ROM is mapped above there too. Anyway, doing this was okay when the CGA adapter only needed 16K or 32K. This was impossible for 1M of RAM. That was a dilemma for IBM when it realized it must continue to map the video memory into the system RAM for backward compatibility. It divided the video memory into 4 areas called planes. A programmer sets the plane (white, red, green, or blue) and then every bit represents a pixel for that plane color to be on or off. To clarify this, I will give an example on how to set a pixel to yellow: Set Plane to White Calculate Memory Address Set Bit Set Plane to Red Calculate Memory Address Set Bit Set Plane to Green Calculate Memory Address Set Bit Set Plane to Blue (You must zero the blue bit or you'll have white) Calculate Memory Address Set Bit to off!!!! It is must faster when you set lines at a time, but everything is more complicated in practice. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY SCANNER!?!?!? You have to create these 4 planes and then combine them with Colscan.EXE. Colscan.EXE simply gets the 4 planes you have created, shows them, combines them, and then saves them using either Frieze (from PC PaintBrush) or another VGA capture utility like VGACAP (mentioned above). HOW TO I CREATE THESE PLANES!?!?!?! ********************************************************** HERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS: There are really two ways to do the scanning: the direct-filter method and the photocopy method. If you have easy and quick access to a copier, I highly recommend using the photocopy method. The direct filter method is MUCH harder and longer. I can guarantee it will take over an hour for your first color scan this way. Also, if you have a scanner that uses anything but white light, (like my scanner, for instance) it will cause the output to be distorted chromatically. However, if you have a scanner that uses a different colored light and you still want to use the direct- filter method, you must make sure to use a darker filter and position a 60-100 watt lightbulb directly over the scannerand move it along with the scanner (you will discover this is hard!) at a constant height which you have to calibrate and experiment with. Note: you should put something over the light to disperse it so that the picture is not too light in the middle and too dark at the sides. *********************Direct-Filter Method: First you need the 3 filters: Red, Green, and Blue. This may be the toughest part. You may see that there are 4 planes. The white plane is done by scanning with no filter at a pretty high brightness level. MAKE SURE TO TURN THE LIGHT LEVEL UP ALL THE WAY AND SET THE SCANNER FOR LINE-ART MODE. You may need extra light when you scan if the filter is too dark as mentioned above . Your contrast control is the darkness level switch on your scanner. You can use cellophane for the filters or photographic filters. GET THE CELLOPHANE IN AS LIGHT A COLOR AND AS PURE A COLOR AS POSSIBLE. Find a 7-Up 2 Liter bottle (the green ones) and look at the color of the bottle. That is the shade you want to have and the lightness. Even with that, I had to turn up the light..dark switch to the lightest level for it to scan properly. By the way, you can cut up a 7-Up bottle and use it as a filter. You need to obtain a Red, Green, and Blue filter. When you scan, you will scan once with red, green, blue and once without a filter. (4 Scans) If you are a photo-enthusiast, you may try photographing the image with filters or something like that. Tell me how it works! Here is how to temporarily put the filter on the scanner: Test your filters by scanning different colors with different filters. Test the color table. You will probably have to adjust the light levels up and add extra light. If you are using cellophane, you should just place a sheet over the page, but if you are using soft plastic filters like 7-UP bottles, you need to tape it like this: Your scanner: ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░ (Scan window) ░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ Tape filter so it just goes over the clear scan window: Tape Tape \ \ ░░░░██░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░██░░░░ ░░░░██▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓Filter▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓██░░░░ ░░░░██░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░██░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ If your B/W scanner uses white light, you will not have as much of a problem as if your scanner uses red or green light. You will probably have to get a desklamp and place it directly over the scanner. This will help. 60-100 watts will do. Calibrate the brightness level for the three filters and the whiteness plane. You must be thinking how you can make 4 perfect scans, especially in 400 or 800 DPI. This is how you prepare the scan surface: █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ ████Your Page in color to████████ ████████████scan█████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ Decide what area you want to scan. Make a right angle at the top with a ruler over the page: █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ ████Your Page in color to████████ ████████████scan█████████████████ ███████▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓██████████████████ ███████▓██████████You are scanning Border-▓███████\███right in this█ ███████▓████████\---box██████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ Now tape the surface down with masking tape!!! Also place acetate over it and tape it **firmly**!! Tape ░░ ████████████████░░███████████████ █████████████████████████████████ Tape\ █████████████████████████████████ ░░░░░█Your Page in color to████████ ████████████scan████████████████░░░░ ███████▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓██████████████████ ███████▓██████████You are scanning Border-▓███████\███right in this█ ███████▓████████\---box██████████ █████████████████████████████████ █████████████████████████████████ ████████████████░░███████████████ ░░ Now place scanner's metal guide over the right place and tape: (Also place any guide blocks in place) Tape ░░ ███░░░██████████░░███████████████ ████ │███████████████████████████ Tape\ ████ │███████████████████████████ ░░░░░█ │ur Page in color to████████ ████ │████░░scan████████████████░░░░ ████ │█▓▓▓░░▓▓▓██████████████████ Metal Guide-│░░███████You are scanning Bord │-▓███████\███right in this█ ████ │█▓████████\---box██████████ ████ │███████████████████████████ ████ │███████████████████████████ ███░░░██████████░░███████████████ ░░ Scan without the filter with the light..dark switch the lightest. You may want to bring in external light. Use your scanning utility to cut off the border at the exact boundary line (THERE MUST NOT BE ANY SKEW AND YOU SHOULD SCAN IN SOME OF THE BORDER. ALL THREE IMAGES MUST LINE UP EXACTLY, SO USE THE END OF THE BORDER AS A REFERENCE POINT.). Then cut off the bottom so the image is EXACTLY 640X480 pixels. Save the image as a B/W PCX file (1 plane). To aid you, you should use names like FileW.PCX, FileG.PCX, FileR.PCX, and FileB.PCX so you get the right planes. I SAY AGAIN: MAKE SURE THAT THE IMAGES ARE 640X480!!! It IS hard to do the first few times. Eventually, in another version of this program, I will make it easier to align the planes. Now put on the 3 other filters and scan and save. You can view the 4 files and check that they would be aligned. If you don't have a PCX viewing utility like the public domain "PICEM," you should probably get one. *******Photo-Copy Method: For this, you need a photocopier. You need to obtain a few small pieces of cellophane for red, green and blue. By the way, read the above method so I don't have to explain some of the last things again. You will have to play around with the brightness levels on the machine, but you should set them up as high as possible to start out. Also, get the lightest colored cellophane as possible. Draw a border at the top as a reference point. Place the cellophane (or other filter, such as colored plastic wrap) down on the copier and then place the item to scan in color on top. Do this with all three filters, noting the brightness level required by each one. If your scanner uses a color of light besides white light, you may also want to do the fourth (intensity plane) scan on the copier also. After the photo-copying, you simply scan the images in LINE-ART mode, and then you use your scan utility to cut the image to the reference point. You may have problems if you can't see it, so approximate the cut and also save the image un-cut in case you need to re-cut it. Now you have your four images *********All Processes: Now you have to run ColScan.EXE. The syntax is : ColScan WhiteFile RedFile GreenFile BlueFile (ResultFile) I said above that you need a VGA capture program. If you have Frieze, ColScan can automatically activate it by typing in the Result file. You should make a batch file if you want to use Frieze: ColScn.Bat: Frieze EpsonFx p1 0010 1cnq 640 480 4 Rem Load Frieze for Epson Fx printer (mine) Colscan %1W %1R %1G %1B %12.PCX Rem Use endings of W, R, G, and B. Result is 2 Frieze Rem Unload Frieze Note: The input files don't need the extension; however, if you use the built-in support for Frieze, you must have the extension. If you would prefer to use another Capture utility like VGACAP, exclude the Result File Parameter. Then Colscan will give you 7 seconds to activate your capture utility. The reaon for this is that I could not properly implement the save rountine. You may still want to use a batch file like: ColScn2.Bat: VGACap Rem Load Capture utility Colscan %1W %1R %1G %1B %1.PCX Rem Use endings of W, R, G, and B. Result is regular name Make sure to activate the capture utility. Here are some valid command line options: COLSCAN TESTW TESTR TESTG TESTB TESTRES.PCX (Use Frieze to save as TestRes.PCX) COLSCAN TESTW.PCX TESTR.PCX TESTG.PCX TESTB.PCX TESTRES.PCX (Use extensions anyway) COLSCAN TESTW TESTR TESTG TESTB (Use own capture utility) The program will display all four planes in monochrome, combine them, and save it. If any files besides VGA will cause unpredictable results, and if there are any errors, the program will halt. If you want to scan for Super VGA, you may want to try splitting up the image. If you want to scan for EGA, you way want to put the image together and then cut out the desired part. I know the explicit 640X480X16 rule is rigid. ***************************************************************** Jeremy Lilley ("The Author") makes no warranties about the usability of this program on The User's computer equipment. At no time shall the author liable for any claims, liability, or damages. This program was checked by the author to be free from "Viruses" and tested to work as shown above. The User must follow the above instructions when using the program. However, all warranties are disclaimed, expressed or implied, including but not limited to, any implied warranty of merchantability of fitness for a particular purpose. ******************Registration********************** You may decide that this is too much trouble and just delete this. However, if you want to be able to scan in 16 colors, you should register and use this program. Plus you get incentives for sharing this program and for registering. First of all, I believe people don't like to be harassed by INSIPID BEG SCREENS with MUSIC and ANIMATIONS on programs; people don't like being told that if they don't send in $100 to an author then they won't have a hard drive left. I am taking a different approach. The registration price is $10 normally and $5 if you can prove that you've uploaded this program to a BBS where it is not already there. To prove this, give me the NAME, TELEPHONE NUMBER, and LOCATION of the BBS. Also include a screen dump of right after you downloaded the files. You can either select your comm program's Toggle Printer option or press Shift-PrtScr. Most BBSes will tell you the name of the files you've uploaded and will show the verification of the files. That is what I want. NOTE: WHEN YOU SHARE THIS PROGRAM, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE ALL OF THE FILES. The documentation and program are the same for both registered and unregistered versions. By registering, you will: ■ Get rid of that nasty "Please Register" message ■ Get a clearer conscience (Unless you're one of those people that uses DEBUG to remove copyright messages, which is impossible anyway with this program because it is compressed with but not recognizable to LZEXE) ■ Help bring more updates which will make the process of scanning in 16 colors MUCH easier for YOU and other users ■ Be eligible for mail support from the author to help aid your scanning ■ Get some tips on scanning with ColScan All of this for $5 if you pass this along (and get some DL credits) or $10 normally. The order form is Order.PRN. To print it, use the COPY command: Copy Order.Prn Prn Although the address is on the order form, it is: Jeremy Lilley 27816 Radfall Ct. Santa Clarita, CA 91350 ******************** A Little More..........******************** Now I want to make a few last remarks. I first made up this program about 1 month after I first got my MarsTek M-105+ (R) hand scanner. A few weeks later, I wanted to find some way to scan things in color with my scanner. Then it dawned on me: I could use a few filters and combine them. It took a few weeks to make some basic PCX routines in Turbo Pascal v5.5. I am a high school student right now at Saugus High School with a 4.xx GPA. Right now, I work on an XT clone with VGA (It IS possible to put VGA cards on XT's - as long as you wait a bit longer for screen writes) . Help a student about to go through college: Register this program!!! I hope you find use for this program like I did. GOOD LUCK SCANNING IN 16 COLORS!!! REMEMBER, By registering, you will: ■ Get rid of that nasty "Please Register" message ■ Get a clearer conscience (Unless you're one of those people that uses DEBUG to remove copyright messages) ■ Help bring more updates which will make the process of scanning in 16 colors MUCH easier for YOU and other users ■ Be eligible for mail support from the author to help aid your scanning ■ Get some tips on scanning with ColScan ■ Et Cetera, Et Cetera, Et Cetera... Good Scanning!