Your Commodore - Commodore Is Awesome

program allows you to set up the
correct printer. Options inlcude
Commodore and Epson compatible
printers. Five sizes of printout are
available from I*1 to 5*5. However
certain printers can only print certain
sizes.
Since your pictures will no doubt
be in colour, the option of printing
your pictures in grey scale is present.
This simply replaces each of the 16
available colours with a shade of grey,
this is equivalent to a 3*3 dump.
Options are also available to print
your picture sideways, at the left of the
page, right hand edge or in the middle.
File
This option simply lets you select
whether you are using cassette or disk
and then allows you to keep your latest
masterpiece for future reference.
A facility is present for merging a
picture that has been saved with one
that is already in memory, though I
must admit I've not found a use for this
yet.
If you are using disk then a fair
range of commands are available to
you. It is possible to have up to four
different drives connected to the computer,
changing from one to the other
is simply a matter of selecting
DEVICE from the disk pull down
menu and changing the number. Commands
available allow you to
RENAME fi les. DELETE fi les,
FORMAT a disk, etc.
When using disk, selecting the
correct file for use is extremely easy.
simply select the LOAD option from
the menu and the list of files available
will appear in another window. Now
move the pointer to the picture that
you require press the button and wait
until it has loaded.
Attributes
Obviously colour plays a great part in
the actual look of your picture. This
option allows you to select the ink
(foreground) colour, paper (background)
colour and the border colour.
Once you have chosen an ink you can
set it to transparent, this means that
you cannot change it when anything is
drawn over it. Options also exist to
allow you to overwrite existing colours
or simply inverse them with the new
colour.
Paint
REVIEWS
Now we start to get to the fun part.
This option allows you to select the
YOUR COMMODORE november 1986:91
type of painting tool that you want to
use. Options available are, Pen, Spray
can and brush. There are 16 different
pens available, each one of a different
thickness or angle. Once you have
selected the correct pen you can start
to draw with it in the drawing area.
Eight spray cans are available. Each
one having a different density of spray
dots, this is great for texturing areas of
the screen.
Eight different brushes are available
ranging from a dot to a smiling
face. One of the brushes is totally
blank. This allows you to colour in
areas of the screen very easily once you
have finished designing a picture in
black and white.
If you require a special sort of
brush then you can design one with the
'Brush edit' function. This simply
allows you to design a brush in whatever
shape you require it.
Miscellaneous
This menu offers some extremely
useful commands. For a start, since the
menus occupy the top two lines of the
screen you can only see 22 lines out of
24 at any one time. It is possible to
move the screen up and down so that
you can get the extra lines. The View
Screen option gets around this by removing
the menu from the top so that
you can see the whole screen at once.
Clear Screen speaks for itself and
should be used with care since you
don't want to lose hours of work. The
change colour option is extremely
powerful since it allows you to change
one ink colour on the screen, or part of
it, into another specified colour.
Useful if you think the sea in your
latest seascape is too dark.