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2022-11-05
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Personal Paint (PPaint) CD-ROM Limited Edition V.7.0
by Cloanto
Reviewed by - Ben Gaunt
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PPaint as its name suggests is a paint program much in the vain of the now aged
DPaint, but saying that PPaint is far, far better. Not only does PPaint have all
the basic computer paint tools it also has many graphic manipulation tools that
puts many graphic manipulation programs to shame.
Are you an internet user, have your own web page? If so PPaint has some great
tools just for you. Saving and loading of progressive gifs and Anim Gifs and
also PPaont can be used to make image maps too!
Anyhow so whats new in V7 then....
- New and improved file formats, including PhotoCD (licensed by Kodak),
GIF (licensed by Unisys), BMP (Windows and OS/2), JPEG (not a DataType
any more), 24-bit DataTypes and PBM
- Professional Internet features like GIF animations, a map editor, and
everything needed to achieve maximum image quality in a compact size
- Enhanced user interface (pop-up gadgets, different sizes of user
interface fonts, NewIcons thumbnails, etc.)
- 180 ARexx commands, with scripts directly accessible from the toolbar
- New "plug-in" library system makes it possible to add input/output
formats (for files, scanners, screens, etc.) and to replace critical
Amiga blitter and CPU code with a combination of "virtual blitter"
and other logic fully exploiting the different configurations (68040,
PowerPC, etc.)
- Automatically create directory thumbnails for entire directories
- Advanced vector text functions (rotate, antialias, paths, etc.)
- CD-ROM edition includes: developer documentation, reorganized manuals
(no addenda - all in the right place), tutorial animations, extended
artwork
Thats whats basicly new in this version now onto what PPaint can do...
File Formats Supported
----------------------
Loading -
ILBM
PNG
GIF
BMP Win
BMP OS/2
PCX
ACBM
CRYPT
PBM
JPEG
PHOTO CD
PCD-OV
Any Installed Amiga Datatype
So as you can see most of the graphic file formats on the Amiga, PC and MAC can
be loaded stright into PPaint and even the Photo CD file formats too. Crypt for
those that wish to know is a encryption format that allows you to lock the image
with a key and the image can then only be viewed by people with the correct key.
Saving -
ILBM
PNG
GIF
BMP Win
BMP OS/2
PCX
ACBM
CRYPT
PBM
C Source
RAW
ASCII
Saving has one format missing and the reason for this is unclear. The format
missing ofcourse is JPEG. As JPEG is realy only used with 24-Bit images its
hardly a major loss but none the less it is an admission of which some users
will find unacceptable.
The C Source format saves the picture data in a format suitable for C
programmers to easily use and is very handy to say the least.
The ASCII format can produce some rather nice ascii art if used correctly and I
can see myself using this to produce some menus etc for my BBS. How it works is
to take the screen picture and convert it to ascii symbols.
Image Processing
----------------
As I mentioned above PPaint has some powerful image manipulation tools and one
of the most popular is the Image Processing menu. From the Image Processing
menu you can use PPaint to apply many differnt types of filter based processing
to an image. You can also apply the same filters to a selected part of an image
so only a part of the required image need to be manipulated if required.
PPaint has many inbuilt filters (too many to list and explane) my personal
favorite being the water colour filter that can turn a scan into a picture that
looks like its been drawn/painted. Not that I would palm a scan off as my own
work ofcourse ;)
And if a filter you require isn't in the list you can add your own or edit an
existing filter to your own requirements. The options here are almost limitless
as PPaint supports kernels and matrixs and even the alpha channels amoung other
things.
World Wide Web
--------------
As briefly mentioned above PPaint comes with some handy tools for internet users
and one that all Amiga owners have be gasping for since IBrowse added Gif Anim
support was obviously a Gif Anim editor.
Gif Anims
PPaint treats gif anims is a differnt way to the standard Amiga anim formats
Anim5+ but rather taking the whole screen as a animation PPaint saves animation
brushes as gif anims. An animation brush is very simular to a screen animation
but where a screen animation saves the entire screen information an anim brush
only saves the area of the screen as defined by you.
This results in the anim file being very small and the ability to have an
animation resolution of any required size. Which is perfect for little
animations on WWW pages and the such.
Image maps
With this tool you can turn an image into a Internet Server Side web map in the
NCSA httpd format. Thus any image can be loaded into PPaint and with this tool
you can edit the areas of the image and add links from it. The tool supports,
rectangle, circle, polygon and freehand generated map areas. Once you have
selected all the areas in the image to add links too you can then save the
links/map out as HTML source, ready to ad to your WWW page.
Speed & Compatibility
---------------------
As you can imagine PPaint isn't a basic paint package any more and has many
features that other packages just don't come close too. But when this happens
you exspect there to be a trade off some where.
Well I'm glad to say the speed of PPaint is very good in fact in some areas it
excells well beyound that usualy exspected of a paint package.
As far as I can tell (it doesn't say this is the docs) PPaint will work on any
Amiga. As I now only have access to AGA machines with WB3.x I can not test this
out. So if your using a AGA less machine check before you buy.
So is there anything wrong with PPaint CD-ROM edition?
------------------------------------------------------
Well no, not with the software. You see the CD-ROM is one of those little CDs
about the size of a standard jam jar lid. Yup about half the size of a normal
CD, it made me laugh when I opend the package to find a little biddy CD-ROM
inside. This is where the problem arises, as PPaint can be used directly from
the CD (though it can be installed onto a hard drive if required) you would of
thought it would have come in a normal style plastic hard case. But sadly all
it comes in is a little cardboard envelope, which in time will just fall appart
with use. Another thing is the documentation is all contained on the CD-ROM, no
printed manual, this I don't mind but there is no index (yes there is a contents
page) so finding some information takes some real digging.
Apart from the above points there is very little to fault with PPaint, it is
most definetly the best paint package on the Amiga at the moment. So if your
after a pant package then PPaint 7 is well worth considering, and if your into
the WWW then its a must have!
END
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