Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

Ot seems to have taken an eterni
ty to get hold of a copy, but
finally I have managed to get
my grubby mitts on this latest
Amiga art package. At a time when the
Amiga's future is no more clear than it has
been at any time in the last couple of years,
it is quite a shock to find a company show
ing as much faith in the Amiga as Haage
and Partner. Following the release of its
C/C++ compiler just a iew months ago, it
now has what is supposedly Photoshop
the Amiga, a bold claim for any package
make on any platform.
It has to be said though that any riffl
Amiga art package is going to have to be
something special to make its mar
Looking at the current range of programs
out there, Amiga users have a great deal to
choose from already.
For bitmap work there is DPaint,
Brilliance and the latest version PPaint. For
image processing you have lmageFX and
AdPro not forgetting public domain entries
ImageStudio and ImageEngineer. And then
for 24 bit work you could again choose
Brilliance, XiPaint, Photogenics or, for the
rich, TV Paint. So for ArtEffect to succeed it
may very well have to be as good as
Photoshop.
TWO DISKS
The whole ArtEffect package only takes up
two disks so installation using the Amiga
installer takes no time at all. When you first
run it you must choose what screen mode
to use. ArtEffect can use any Amiga screen
mode from 16 to 256 colours and if you
have a CyberGraphX card you will be able
to make full use of it and take advantage of
the 15 and 24 bit screen modes. One point
to note is that ArtEffect needs a screen at
least 400 pixels high, other wise the GUI
will not fit.
EW FORVl.5
Support for Ham8 mode
(A1200, A4000)
This is a bit of a mixed blessing depending on how you look
at it With the Ham8 mode you generally get a much better
colour representation of the picture, indeed it is much better
than Photogenics' own HamB mode. On the down side,
screen update is dog slow and Haage & Partner themselves
only recommend it for when you are image processing
Plug-In MotionBlur
A free new plug in allows you to add motion blur to your pic
tures, hence the name MotionBlur plug in, H's all clever stuff
Plug-In Tile
This module fills the complete picture with the current brush
Plug-In Makefile
This module creates a tile that can be used with the module
tile to create an 'endless' texture. This actually has a useful
application for Web pages as you will be able to make seam
less backdrop images in no time at all
Plug-In ScanQuix
This module calls the external scanner software ScanQuix if
it is installed on your computer
Amiga Computing
MARCH 1997
Could an j art package
even come close to challenging
Photoshop? \ r sees if
the rumours are true
ArtEffect has one of those all singing
multi-window front ends and thanks to
BGU!, everything is font sensitive and
aspect correct. A nice touch is that when
you shut it down all the current windows,
Using the magic wand and the main
settings you can easily mark out areas
in pictures and so protect them from
the image processing effects
1
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positions and status are recorded for the
next time you run it. One puzzling thing
though is why the tool box is so big - are
Germans not very dextrous? It could easily
be half the size and still be big enough, but
workbench Screen
ODDQD
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