Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I saw it at System Eyes and was also impressed, but not enough to buy
    one.  The device is much better than mounting a camcorder on a copy
    stand to read 2-d pictures.  However, before I spring for the device
    I want a way to _see_ the picture: the Amiga just doesn't have enough
    different colors to do a good job on anything but cartoons or pictures
    with very few different colors.  I'm looking for 16- or 24-bit
    Super-VHS I/O.  (I want the input side for 3-d graphics.)
        John Sauter

    John,
    	While at the present time your statements are correct there
    are several products on the horizion that have the ability to display
    24 bit color.DCTV from Digital Creations is the one I am looking
    into. The scanner will capture 18bit data,and when the picture is
    output to a frame buffer or similar device the full available color
    will be seen. For DTP work ProPage has the ability to output color
    seperations that will also take full advantage of the scanned image.
    I ordered an program from ASDG(The ART Department) That will allow 
    me more flexability in dealing with the scaned images,and also enable 
    me to use ReSep on the images.I disagree with you on one point however.
    I don't consider 4096 colors to be very few colors. Considering
    the impact that the Amiga has had on the cottage industry of DTV
    I believe these products will be made available.
	I have overlayed the glass font from Kara Fonts onto video,and
    for titling it looks as good as any of the black,and white fonts
    we see everyday on TV.I admit I don't fully understand your need.
    It appears you want the ability to actually take the input from
    a S-vhs deck,camcorder,etc and capture the image. In your statement
    "I want the input side for 3-d graphics" are you refeering to input
    to the amiga,or input to another device from the amiga?
    								bill

>the Amiga just doesn't have enough
>    different colors to do a good job on anything but cartoons or pictures
>    with very few different colors. 

I don't want to get into any usenet-style whining about the Amiga falling
or not falling behind the 16, 24 or 32 bit color systems, but I too want to
take a shot at John's comment. Amiga graphics capabilities are far beyond
what is required by cartoons. 

Mostly, I am always amazed when people feel they need millions of colors.
Advise from my art training was, "Try to keep your color palette simple.
Using too many colors takes away from the impact of artistic statement".
Or, "Repeat the color, or tints and shades of the color throughout the picture
to control the viewer's eye. The eye likes repetition etc, etc."

I use Digipaint, a HAM (4096 color) paint program and get VERY "painterly"
effects with no problem whatsoever, never feeling there is a lack of colors.
And, I have run complex-looking HAM pictures through the Transfer24 program
changing them into 32 half-bright etc.with impressive results. Much quality 
art on computers and otherwise is done with a limited palette and superb 
control over lights and darks. No one comes away from seeing these pictures
thinking how much better they would be if 2 million colors were available.

Even color photographers, who are more likely to pick up millions of colors
in one picture, discard or filter the complex palette pictures as they develop
their final prints.

The Amiga isn't a Ferrari, but it is closer to that than the bicycle
John implies it is.

    re: .3
    
    Well, I've seen some pretty good cartoons.  The animated parts of Roger
    Rabbit are astonishing to anyone who grew up with the cartoons of the
    late 50s, as I did, and Little Mermaid is also quite good.
    
    I think the terminology of painters and color photographers is
    different from the terminology of computer artists.  On the Amiga,
    "red" is not very many different shades, but to a painter or
    photographer, even a "single shade" of red includes subtle variations
    that a computer artist would have to allocate an additional color
    in his pallette for.  Even something as simple as a solid fire-engine
    red cube is not a single color from a computer's point of view, because
    of the variations needed to provide three-dimensional cueing.
    
    Even the best cartoons (today) don't use color for depth cueing, hence
    my statement.  If your picture has very few colors, such as the cube I
    used in the previous paragraph, then the Amiga can provide 3-d depth
    cueing.  However, with complex pictures the Amiga can't keep up.
    Has anyone seen the Dr. Gandalf animation with the pool table?  The
    table has a bullseye in its center because the gradual effect of moving
    away from the light source can only be rendered with a few colors.
    
    A good artist can produce good art with limited tools.  The fact that
    no one cames away from seeing your pictures thinking how much better
    they would be if they had two million colors says more about you as
    an artist than about the Amiga.  Moving pictures were OK in black and
    white until color became available---now everybody wants color.
    
    My father-in-law is a professional color photographer: he does
    landscapes and nature pictures for calenders, etc.  As far as I know he
    has never discarded any colors or done any filtering of his pallette.
        John Sauter 

    re: .2
    
    I make it a rule never to buy something in anticipation of a future
    product.  If and when the DCTV becomes available I will reconsider
    my decision not to purchase the scanner.
    
    According to advertisements I have seen in magazines there is also
    a full-page version of the scanner available.  I don't know its price.
    
    When I expressed the need to take input from SVHS, I was referring to
    input to the Amiga.  I am in the market for a 16- or 24-bit deep frame
    capture device, which will capture a single frame in real time and
    in color.  I am resisting buying the output side until the input side
    becomes available, since the input device may very well provide output
    also.
        John Sauter 

>  Well, I've seen some pretty good cartoons.
Me too. I don't want to belittle cartoons! I thought you were refering 
to the coloring-book approach used for cartoons, where the drawings 
start out in black and white, and colors are filled in.  

>    I think the terminology of painters and color photographers is
>    different from the terminology of computer artists.  On the Amiga,
>    "red" is not very many different shades, but to a painter or
>    photographer, even a "single shade" of red includes subtle variations
>    that a computer artist would have to allocate an additional color
>    in his pallette for.

I agree somewhat. There are certainly a lot of differences technically,
and I am sure that more bits/pixel allows for easier translation from analog
terminogy to digital terminology. However, using DigiPaint I have
produced pictures with wonderful blends of color that "to the eye" match
the subtle variations of water color washes laid on top of each other.
Technically, this is produced through the magic/crazyness of HAM calculations
and dithering, which is very different from the way it works on paper. 
I does seem to work though.  Ray traced pictures from URAY  or Turbo Silver
don't seem to suffer much from too few colors.  

>The fact that
>    no one cames away from seeing your pictures thinking how much better
>    they would be if they had two million colors says more about you as
>    an artist than about the Amiga. 

 Actually, I wasn't talking about my own pictures as much as those of the
 more "famous" Amiga artists, like Brad Schenck (sp?) whos uses a very limited
 palette, or Louis Marakoya (spelling again?) who gets lots of color, or the
 appearance of color.

>Moving pictures were OK in black and
>    white until color became available---now everybody wants color.

Thats a little dramatic isn't it John? :-)   

>as far as I know he
>has never discarded any colors or done any filtering of his pallette.

I knew that filtering comment would come back to haunt me... I can't prove
it, of course, but I believe that your father-in-law does do some filtering
when he hones in on a finished product.  This is not like with computers
where I say I can't do a ham animation with 1 meg so I'll make do with
16 colors, but just part of the artistic process when you are making a
statement. Experienced artists don't say, I need to take out some 
colors to make it better, they just concentrate on making it better. 
I contend that simplification is closely related to quality. Thus your
father-in-law simplifies his palette as a by-product of making it better.

Anyway, I don't mean to argue and hope no one is offended or too bored -
I just like the intersection between technology and art, and could go on
and on...

Dave

    
    Actually, I've seen some remarkable images produced by dithering the
    (nowadays) relatively small Amiga pallette.  There is a demo image from
    ASDG's TAD (The Art Director) that is a 640 x 400 x 4 plane image, but
    it looks almost like a photograph due to excellent palette selection
    and insanely clever use of dithering by ASDG's ScanLab software.
    
    Ed.

    A friend of mine is seriously researching the JX-100.  He said he
    talked with someone working on the software.  The quote he got was
    "The number of colors in the pallette is not as important as which
    colors you choose."

    re: .8
    
    How very strange.  Surely there is an interaction between the number
    of colors in the pallette and the which colors you choose.  If I have
    a pallette of 2^18 colors, it literally doesn't matter which colors I 
    choose: the scanner will render them all correctly.
    
    Also, If I've done a good job of choosing 16 colors in which to render
    a scene, then going to a 32-color pallette consisting of those same
    16 colors plus some additional ones can't hurt.
    
    On the other hand, if I have a million colors, all shades of grey, then
    some colorful scenes aren't going to look as good as if I had used just
    the eight primary colors.
        John Sauter

    
    re .5
    
    	I don't know all your requirments but I have a mimetics Framebuffer
    that does almost everything you have stated. It has 24 bit per pixel,
    NTSC out ( not S-vhs ), and has NTSC in ( real time frame capture ).
    
    	The frame buffer is a standard Amiga 2000 card ( zorro II ). It 
    has composite in and out. Amiga software controls the framebuffer.
    It has a pass-through mode which allows you to capture a frame
    at the click of the mouse. The data can then be saved to disk in
    a number of formats ( 24 bit, IFF ham, IFF 32 color ... ).
    
    	The frambuffer can also be used to display 24 bit or IFF pictures.
    The board has 2 MB of onboard RAM. I have used it to display Sculpt
    3D/4D, Turbo Silver, and DW render pictures as well as saved frames.
    
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    Steve,
    	I'd be interested in getting together with you an seeing how
    an 18bit picture scanned on the jx100 would look coming out of the
    framegrabber. I could possibly upload a pic,and you could try it
    out.The problem is the size of the file may be to large for a floppy
    even compressed. I'll look into it this weekend.
    								bill

    re: .10
    
    Except for its lack of SVHS, the mimetics Framebuffer sounds like just
    what I am looking for.  What is the list price for this device?  What
    is its horizontal resolution?
        John Sauter

    
    
    re .12
    
    	The framebuffer with capture option cost about $750.00 . If you
    look in the magazines for a mail-order place called ( Briwall ) SP ?
    they seem to have a good price. Thats where I got mine.
    
    	The buffer has 2 basic resolutions 640 x 400 or over scan mode
    than is a little better ( 73? X 46? ).
    
    		Steve Peters
    

    Well I just started using the scanner this last weekend. I wanted
    to get some logos scanned in,and traced. I also did a scan of a
    pic of a butterfly,and is looks real good. Looking back at the 
    discussions on number of colors.I have this to add. I use mostly
    16 color hires mode. I have found that in the majority of cases
    I get an exceptable picture for my purposes. I believe this may
    be true because often the original picture does not contain many
    more than this to begin with. I also avoid using any dithering at
    present because it tends to make cleanup of the backgrounds harder.
    The butterfly was scanned at 200 dpi,the logos at 100 dpi. As
    I work with it my appreaction of the scanner climbs. I plan on doing
    some 4096 hires scans for comparision.  
    	Other observations ! Regardless of the quality of the scan you
    will probably be doing touchup of the pick. The butterfly as a good
    example of this. The wings came out great,but the body,and head
    leave something to be desired. looking at it now I realize that
    this was mostly because the actual picture did not have a lot of
    detail. I want to go into depaint(16 color hires) and add a touch
    of detail to the body.This will be mostly highlight type of stuff.
    I don't believe scanning at a different brightness,or contrast would
    help in this situation. The ART Department complements the scanner
    wonderfully. It takes the image rendering ability of the scanner
    software too further limits. For example if you scan a 18bit pic,then
    take it into TAD(the art director) an reduce it to grayscale you
    get an almost photographic quality print.This ia opposed to simply
    scanning in grayscale. TAD also allows you more flexability in color
    selection,sizing,and has a function that removes stray pixels.
    My next step is to work in ham mode,and see how the results compare.
    I went to 16 hires first because it is the most compatable with
    the many software packages I own. I have been basically working
    with printed matter,I believe that Photographic images will push
    the scanner to it't limits. It will be exciting to find out!! 

       I would like to get a scanner for my 2000, but I don't want to
    pay $850.00 for the Sharp JX-100 system.  I see in the Want-Adds
    book, scanner for MAC and IBM ,  but none for the Amiga.
    Could I get one of these used scanners and buy the software the Sharp
    scanner uses?  or is the Sharp unit the only one that works with the 
    Amiga ?

    Thanks  Bob