Download issue 8 - Total Amiga Magazine

REVIEWSREVIEWSSomething FishyReviews are very subjective, what onereviewer may love, another hates. Suchis life. So we decided to have a generalscore, which the reader can take intoaccount along with the text.So we invented the fish... it’s easy towork out which we feel is a betterproduct... the more bones that show, thesmellier the fish :). We only award ourtop Caviar rating to products that arepractically perfect.CaviarThe best so far! We can hardly pickanything out of it, not even boogers.Rarer than Nessie.This product is definitely worth buyingbut, like most things, still has room forimprovement.Average, neither too good nor too bad— it works but there are areas whichneed major improvement or are waybehind competing products.SMELLYCrap, but hopefully getting better infuture versions (if there are any).Disgusting, multicolour yawn inducingabomination that insults the Amiga.DrawAs Kickstart re-release DrawStudio it’s a goodopportunity for Robert Williams to have a look atthis structured drawing program.DrawStudio is a structured drawingprogram, this means thatDrawStudio is used to make imagescomposed of mathematicallydefined shapes. It is a quite different tobitmap based paint and image processingprograms that work on images composedof pixels. For example if you drawa square in a paint program it is formedof a certain number of pixels on eachside, if you wanted to change the squareyou would have to undo or erase it anddraw it again. In DrawStudio a square isdescribed as four lines of a certainlength in a certain position, changing thesize of the square at any time is asimple matter of selecting it and movingits sizing handles with the mouse.Structured packages have advantagesand disadvantages compared to theirbitmap cousins, on the plus side structuredimages can be scaled to any sizewithout becoming pixelised and are easyto edit as each element can bemanipulated at any time. However structureddrawing is not suited to producingphotographic images and tends to beless spontaneous.InstallationInstalling DrawStudio from the CD-ROMis simply a case of copying the drawercontaining the appropriate version, FPUor non-FPU, onto your hard disk.Included on the CD are registered versionsof ImageStudio (a simple, verymemory efficient, image processor) andTexture studio (which renders Imagineprocedural textures) these were writtenProduct InformationDeveloper: Andy Dean andGraham DeanDistributor: KicksoftTel: +44 (0) 1737 215432WWW: www.kicksoft.co.ukPrice: $50 (about £35)by the Authors of DrawStudio and arewell worth having. To help get youstarted with DrawStudio Kicksoft haveput a collection of clip art on the CD too.InterfaceEven though DrawStudio uses MUI forits interface the authors have managedto disable some of MUI’s features soyou can’t do all the customising youwould normally expect, the most obviouslimitation is that DrawStudio must be runon its own screen. The display settingswithin DrawStudio are used to select thescreen mode used and also how thepage is rendered. Four rendering modesare available, mono, grey scale, 8bitcolour and 24bit colour, DrawStudiogenerates the page display in the modeselected and then renders it to displayon the selected screenmode. For exampleit will render a 24bit page to displayas well as possible on a 256 colourscreen. The render mode selected influencesthe detail which can be displayedand also the memory used.Obviously mono uses the least memorybut shows colours and grey shades inroughly dithered black and white.Greyscale shows the page in full detail,including transparency but with nocolour. 8bit uses 256 colours to give adithered colour display but does notshow transparency. Finally 24bit showsthe page in its full glory complete withtransparency, this luxury also uses themost memory for the display. This is oneof DrawStudio’s strong points, you cantailor it to work well on slower systemsby sacrificing quality for speed.DrawingEach DrawStudio document (you canhave several open at once) has its ownwindow, the main area of the window isthe page display with a set of toolbuttons down the left hand side. Eachdocument can have multiple pages andeach page can have a different size,either chosen from a list of commonpaper sizes or any custom size youenter. To draw on the page you simplyclick on the tool of your choice and thendraw it onto the page with the mouse. Allthe basic drawing tools are provided includingline, polygon, rectangle andoval, the last two can be constrained tosquare and circle respectively by holdingShift while you draw. There are alsosome more complex tools available suchas the beizer curve which allows you todraw curved shapes with any number ofpoints, the resulting path can be open orclosed. Once you have some objects onyour page you can edit them by selectingthe pointer tool, clicking on an objectselects it, then you can move or re-sizeit and apply other settings and effectswhich I’ll talk about later.A great deal of thought has obviouslybeen put into making DrawStudio ascomfortable to use as possible. Themain drawing aids are the excellentsnapping controls, as in most programsyou can snap to the user definable gridbut DrawStudio also offers a snap toobject mode so the point you’re drawinglines up perfectly with the corner, line orcurve of another object. When the pointeris close enough for an object snap tooccur it changes into an icon representingthe type of snap (corner, line orcurve), very neat and easy. In addition tothe different render modes mentionedabove DrawStudio can be set to displaypurely in wire frame to speed up displayon slower machines, intelligently whenyou scroll the display the programswitches to wireframe mode so it canscroll smoothly then redraws in full onlywhen the scroll bar is released. Anotherdisplay mode shows you whatPostScript output would look like as it isunable to display all DrawStuido’seffects, in particular transparency. Theicing on the ease of use cake is thatalmost every requester in DrawStudioincludes a neat preview so you can seejust what changes your settings willmake before you accept them.LayersEach page in a document can haveseveral layers, much like the layersystems in recent bitmap graphics programs.Objects are placed on a particularlayer then the layer can be hiddenor greyed, this can make working on acomplex drawing much easier as theobjects on other layers don’t get in yourway. If you like you can still snap toobjects not on the current layer. To givean example you could have a plan ofyour house on one layer and all thefurniture on another layer. If the furniturelayer was the current one you would beprevented from accidentally moving partof the house but you could still snap akitchen unit neatly to a wall.Fills and ColoursDrawStudio offers a range of styles thatcan be applied to the line and/or the fillof an object, these are selected in theObject Attributes requester. The availablestyles are colour, gradient, patternPick predefined gradients from the list (left) or mixyour own using the Gradient editor. The extensiveuse of thumbnails for the colours and gradientsmakes these requesters a pleasure to use.Warp Factor 10Stretch and squash objects intoalmost any shape using the envelopefeature the warp command:Just drag the handles to definethe envelope.Then double click the backgroundto apply!or bitmap. The colour style fills theobject or line with a solid colour, youselect the colour you wish to use from apre-defined list, each colour in the listhas a small preview so you know whatyou’re choosing. If the colour you wantisn’t available by default you can add anew colour to the list and choose itsshade using a colour wheel or componentsliders. You can set the transparencyof a colour so that an object filledwith it will reveal objects beneath, tintedwith the selected colour. Gradient fillsare a smooth transition between two ormore of the colours in your list, a selectionof sample gradients are supplied oryou can create your own. There areseveral different gradient types includingradial, linear and circular, you can setthe gradient direction and for the radialand circular types the centre point whichmakes creating “shiny ball” effects easy.You can include transparent colours inyour gradient, this feature can be usedto create great fade effects simply byoverlaying the objects you want to fadewith an object filled with a transparentgradient. Usefully, custom colour listsand gradients can be saved for use inother documents. Pattern fills are basedon a 8 by 8 pixel grid which is then tiledto fill the shape, you can select from predefinedpatterns or create your own. Thefinal fill type is bitmap, this allows you tofill Lines or objects with a bitmap imagesuch as a photo. The bitmap can be setto fit the shape or to tile inside, with thetiling option you can set the size of thetiles to get the effect you want.20CLUBBED - Issue 8Summer 200121