Paint Shop by Robert Voit Version 1.0 Paint Shop is a Windows 3.0 program. The purpose of Paint Shop is to convert a picture file format to a different format. Paint Shop will convert picture file formats - BMP, PCX, and GIF. Paint Shop will convert the entire picture, not a clipped portion of your picture. If the original picture size is 900 by 900, then that will be the resulting picture size. Running Paint Shop: Start Paint Shop up as you would any other Window program. Once Paint Shop is running, you should select the file format that you want to CONVERT FROM. Just click the mouse on the format. Now select the file format that you want to CONVERT TO, just click the mouse on the format. Now select the file that you would like to convert, by selecting FILE, SELECT. Select the file in the same manner as you would select a file to open with any other Windows program. Paint Shop will now convert the file that you have selected. That is all there is to using Paint Shop, but you should know a few things about the formats that you are converting from and to, so please read the entire document. Acknowledgements: Paintbrush: Paintbrush is a trademark of ZSoft Corporation. PCX and BMP files are products of Paintbrush. (not sure if they are trademarks or Service Marks) Windows: Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. GIF files: The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated. For further information, please contact : CompuServe Incorporated Graphics Technology Department 5000 Arlington Center Boulevard Columbus, Ohio 43220 U. S. A. GIF files: There are 2 versions of the GIF file formats 87a and 89a. Paint Shop supports both versions. The specifications of version 89a was released summer of 1990. In these specifications some items that were not too clear in the 87a version were cleared up. Unfortunately, by clearing up some of these items some GIF files have become invalid in their format. When converting a picture from GIF to BMP, the file format of the GIF file must be correct. But, when you convert GIF to PCX the file format of the GIF is not as important. You can tell that the GIF file has an invalid format because the resulting BMP file does not look right. As a result, I have found that I can convert these invalid GIF files to PCX. I then convert the resulting PCX to GIF and now have a valid GIF file. Paint Shop will always CONVERT TO version 87a. When converting between file formats I find no advantage to creating the new version 89a. PCX files: PCX files come in many formats and versions. Paint Shop supports version 5, single plane. Version 5 is the version that Paintbrush (that came with Windows 3.0) reads and writes. Single plane is the type produced for vga. Paint Shop will always produce a version 5, 256 color picture. This is not to say that your picture will have 256 colors, but rather it will produce a file that has a palette capable of holding 256 different colors. Some viewers will see this as the number of unique colors within the picture. This is not correct. There is room for 256 colors, but the PCX file will only contain the palette information of the original file. As an example, if you convert a black and white GIF file to PCX the resulting PCX will have room for 256 colors, but the picture will still be black and white. BMP files: BMP files come in many formats. Paint Shop supports the format that is written by Paintbrush. SHAREWARE: Paint Shop is user supported software. You may use it for a free ten day trial period. If you find this program useful, please license the program by sending $25.00 ($26.50 for Minnesota residents) to: Robert Voit 17743 Evener Way Eden Prairie, MN 55346 CIS-72557,256 REVISION HISTORY: version 1.0 - original PRODUCT SUPPORT: Registered users may obtain support by contacting Robert Voit at the above address or CompuServe number. FUTURE FORMATS: More file formats will be supported in the future, provided that Paint Shop is adequately supported. If there is a file format that you would like to see supported please send me a note when you register Paint Shop. The formats that are requested the most will be the first ones to be added. Questions and Answers: Question- Why is Paint Shop altering the colors of the original picture? Answer- I assure you that Paint Shop does not alter the colors of the original picture. Here is a long explanation as to what is happening. As an example we will assume that you have converted a GIF file to a PCX file. First you must understand the graphics environment. Most of you are probably using a VGA card with your computer. You elected VGA for its 256 colors over EGA with only 16 colors. On a standard VGA system the 256 colors are only available in one mode. This mode is 320x200 (320 pixels (dots) across by 200 pixels down). The other modes of the VGA card only allow for 16 or less colors. With a standard VGA card Windows uses a mode that is 640x480 with only 16 colors. As a result, you can use a gif viewer to view a gif picture with 256 colors. But when you use the Paintbrush, you will only get 16 of the 256 colors. I hope you can now see why a 256 color picture would not look right with the Paintbrush program. Color Ranges: The different modes have there own color ranges. The mode with 256 colors can select its palette of colors from 262,144 different colors. The mode with 16 colors selects its colors from only 64 different colors. If you have a 16 color picture the colors may still be different. In a 256 color mode you could view a picture that has 16 different shades of grey. But with a 16 color system, only 4 of those shades fall within its range of colors. Thus, even though the picture is made up of only 16 colors, not all of the 16 colors can be represented on a 16 color system. In this example you would see the 16 color grey scaled picture as only having 4 shades of grey. Pictures that use 16 different colors (not grey shaded) have the same limits on them. If the picture uses any colors that are outside of the 64 color range, those colors will be different when viewed with the Paintbrush program. I can not fix Paint Shop to allow for the limits of your hardware. I tried to reduce a 16 color grey scale picture to the limits of the 16 color range. Since the 16 color range only has 4 shades of grey (black and white are 2 of them) the other 12 colors showed up as blues, greens, and reds. Thus there is no way of converting colors outside of the color range to a color within the color range without changing the color. What to do... In order to get your 256 colors back you would have to upgrade your video card to what is called SVGA (S stands for Super). I have a Video 7 card with 512k of memory on the card. This allows for 640x480x256. In addition, I have a video driver for Windows that allows me to run windows at 640x480x256. The standard driver that comes with windows is "vga.drv" ( you can check to see if you are using this by viewing "system.ini" with notepad, and finding the line that says "display.drv=??????.drv", your line probably reads "display.drv=vga.drv"). If you are using "vga.drv", then you are running in 640x480x16. Because it is a 16 color mode it can not select its colors from the full range of vga colors (262,144 different colors), but rather the range of the of a 16 color system (64 different colors). There are many boards out there that support 256 colors in Windows. To take advantage of the board, you need a Windows 3.0 driver with the board (this will replace "vga.drv"). Most major board makers have all ready produced this driver. By upgrading your board, and changing the Windows video driver in "system.ini" you can run Windows at 640x480x256 instead of 640x480x16. It may be that your present board is upgradable. What I mean is that some boards just need more memory added to them to allow for this new mode (you would still need a driver). Your video board may already allow for 640x400x256 (check with the manufacturer). You will still need to obtain the video driver from the manufacturer to use this mode in Windows. Question- I have a beautiful picture that I use as wallpaper. When I view a picture converted with Paint Shop it goofs up all of the colors in my wallpaper picture. If I close the painting program, everything goes back to normal. If I make the painting program an icon, the colors stay goofed up. Why? Answer- On a vga monitor there are 262,144 different colors. Windows picks 16 or 256 (depending on you video setup) to use as its' set of colors. The picture that you view (with Paintbrush) may use a different set of 16 or 256 colors than what your wallpaper is using. To allow your pictures to be viewed properly Windows gives the painting program the ability to change Windows' set of colors. In this way your picture will have the correct colors, but since your wallpaper uses different colors, it will now be incorrect. Windows should correct this when you close your painting program, or view a picture with the same colors as Windows normally uses.