Conference hydra::amiga_v1

1101.0. "PixMate - WoW!" by LEDS::ACCIARDI () Sun Jan 24 1988 17:01

    I picked up PixMate at the Software Shop for $47.00.  PixMate is
    advertized as a 'total image processing system', and it seems capable
    of every possible graphics effect you could ever dream of.
    
    Just a few examples of what I've found so far, and I haven't even
    opened the manual yet...
    
    * Convert any IFF format to any other format.  Even loads Atari
      Neochrome pics.
    
    * Scale any IFF graphics to any size and aspect ratio.
    
    * Extract anything you want from an image, such as R, G, B, Magenta,
      or gray scale any image.
    
    * Produce the negative or complement of an image.
    
    * There are about a half-dozen different types of edge detection
      and image enhancement.  You could take a blurry black and white
      photo, digitize it, and bring back all the details, just like NASA.
    
    The program seems totally bulletproof after about three hours of
    mucking around, and uses Intuition as nice as I've seen it done.
    Multitasking is no problem, but bring lots of memory.  It works
    fine on a 1 meg machine, but warns that you may have to close down
    the spare screen, especially on 640 x 400 x 4 plane images.  They
    provide a spare screen for a clipboard, ala DPaint, but you can
    get along fine without it, as long as you save your clips to disk.
    
    The files requestor is a work of art, and should be mandatory on
    all new Amiga software.  Just the file requestor alone could be
    described in a three page article.  Suffice to say that it is pretty
    perfect.  They have copywritten it as 'PathMaster' and hopefully
    it will catch on and become an Amiga standard.
      
    This program has so many features that it's hard to even remember
    them all.  The sanity checks are fantastic.  For example, if you
    had converted a 32 color image to HAM, and tried to do it again,
    it would throw up a requestor telling you that any further conversion
    to HAM would degrade the image; but it will let you do it anyway.
    
    I'm really impressed with this.  I don't think there is anything
    comparable to it for any micro.
    
    Ed.
    
                                                                 
    

    Yup, PIXMATE has enough features to keep you busy for quite a few
    evenings!!!  I have tried to load it on my hard disk, but couldn't
    get it to run (it was late though... probably cockpit error).  Ed,
    you running it from hard disk??
    
    -john-
    
    

    No, haven't tried to install it on the hard drive, though the preface
    to the manual (which I finally looked at) indicates that it's totally
    non-protected.  
    
    Ed.
    

     Have you compared this pkg. to Digi-paint? I now have both snd
    the functions are similar in regard to enhancement with different
    
    names used. The Pixmate has some refinements and other features
    image enhancement capabilities not found in Digi-paint. It can 
    work in the 32 color mode also as well as Ham. The speed is very
    nice also.

    It works just fine from a hard disk.
    
    Paul