** 3 page review / 1780 words **

"You will return to Art one day"

Shiuming Lai enacts the prophecy of his erstwhile Art teacher and lives to tell the colourful tale...

** PIX4LOGO.GIF here **

PixArt had never spun on my hard disk, so when version 4 arrived for review sans documentation (that I could understand, therefore a German hypertext file doesn't count) I faced two options: run away, or grab the bull by the horns. In retrospect I needn't have thought twice - the fact you're reading this now rather than next issue is testament to its ease of use. With this in mind we'll be looking at it from the ground up.

Many of the ST's best colour paint programs have divided the canvas and tools into two separate screens, toggled by a right-click of the mouse. Higher screen resolutions have negated this, favouring fixed or, more recently, floating tool boxes alongside the image that can be opened and closed as necessary. PixArt offers extra flexibility by using a hybrid - the tool groups may be opened permanently from the drop down menus or selected from a customisable popup which is just a right-click away.

** POPUP.GIF here **

If the tool has a little square to the bottom-right (such as the paint brush highlighted in this screenshot) this means it has some user settings, similar to the bevel cornered buttons in Apex Media. Each tool has its own settings dialog, though in my opinion a more elegant solution would be to have a single one corresponding to the currently active tool.

An impressive array of drawing tools is available combined with the concept of producing composite functions from the logically separated tool, path and medium operators. You can define a polygon then use that as a spray-brush, for instance. By default (and this applies to block operations as well) you define the shape, rotate then place it. The rotation takes some getting used to but is extremely useful and may be turned off if it's not required. To top it off, all tools work in zoom mode, it's excellent and will make you wonder how you managed in other packages without it.

Tool response time is generally good (in some cases there is a noticeable delay) and cursor tracking is roughly the same. The sample points can be joined or disjoined - thoughtful.

** BLOCKDRW.GIF here **

Powerful block manipulation

Defining a block initially seems to have no apparent effect, because it's actually copied to a visible scratch pad where all the processing takes place. This "Block window" needs to be opened manually but can be set to automatic. In many ways I like this approach, it doesn't clutter the source image and is subconsciously relaxing, I want to spread out a bit over my workspace. Careful use of this feature can produce spectacular pseudo texture mapping.

Adding text to pictures is easy, again, it's prepared separately, in a rudimentary text editor - I tried to write this review with it and found the buffer space was too small. Otherwise, save for the odd dropped character because it can't keep up and quirky line wrap, it's more than adequate. For best results and access to thousands of (vector) fonts you should use either SpeedoGDOS or NVDI. Text can be rotated too.

Creative scope is further extended with image acquisition via scanner, it works a treat with Titan's Microtek bundle and together they form a top value art workstation. Scanned images are opened in normal picture windows to be manipulated at your mercy and if you want the whole works you can also use a Wacom pressure-sensitive graphics tablet. Most of the tools are programmed to take advantage of this, reflecting the design philosophy of giving maximum technical freedom. At some point you'll want to print your masterpieces, drivers are included for a number of popular printers and the page setup can be tuned manually.

In monochrome PixArt is a formidable pixel cruncher, you'd be hard pushed to find such a wealth of features and intuitive interface elsewhere. The real fun starts in colour and it's here I experienced my first disappointment using the drawing tools. Specifically, running in the Falcon's 16-bit true colour mode, certain tools caused a crash. I also found the colour selector counter-intuitive which lead to unpredictable results. The crashing has been fixed in the latest German update but the actual tool behaviour remains unchanged.

Many paint packages simulate the action of a spray can very well, randomly dispersing dots of a single colour under the cursor. The problem is the dot pitch of monitors, even the best of which can't match the minuscule size of droplets from a spray nozzle. Gradients on a video screen have to be made with solid areas of colour because the more technically accurate method produces a visible stippling. While this is a useful effect in itself, 16-bit resolutions should be sufficient to allow a convincing "real" spray option which is offered in 24 and 32-bit resolutions. Considering most Atarians, even running accelerated Falcons, will be hard pushed to display 640x480x16-bit TrueColor, I think the authors should look into this. 68030 optimisation and DSP support would also be useful to add a much needed speed kick in some areas and tap into the real power lying dormant in the big bird.

** FALC_TC.TIF here **
** caption **
All those lovely Falcon colours, alas they can't be used properly
** /caption **

By contrast palette modes are a pleasure to use - use 256 colours if you have the hardware. A choice between snap or dither reduction takes care of importing pictures with more colours than the palette which brings me to the file import/export routines - it seems compressed TIFFs are not supported and the GIF export doesn't work. To minimise the possibility of an oversight I tried saving and reloading but images were consistently corrupted!

Everything considered, whether it's suitable for your machine depends on the screen you've got connected rather than the number of colours it can display. A dialog will inform you a minimum resolution of 512x350 is needed; unless Atari made a machine I don't know about this means ST high or above.

Since writing the first draft of this review I've had a test run with PixArt 3 and made comparisons. I'm happy to report that PixArt 4 has attained new heights of sophistication and power, without sacrificing user friendliness. In fact my first thought was to liken it with Papyrus, they share a similar feel. I hope 16/32 will improve the English manual, despite being well written it's a solid mass of text with no screenshots and slightly poor quality given the asking price - the German release includes a professionally printed manual, superbly presented with copious illustrations throughout.

Last orders

PixArt 4 is the culmination of thorough design and user feedback, it's highly evolved which shows the moment you scratch beneath the surface - there's far more to PixArt than we could ever cover in a review. PixArt copes admirably across a range of hardware configurations and, generally speaking, what it does it does very well. I look forward to the next version.


** BOXOUT **
Bullet from a gun or snail on the run?

Out of interest we tried PixArt 4 on a Hades060 to see how well it would perform. Ben Hills reports:

MiNT and Geneva 6

PixArt loaded fine and I could create new pictures. Right-clicking on the open window produced the popup box containing all the various drawing options. Actually using the drawing tools was fine, and reasonably fast with the exception of a few tools, especially freehand, which did not draw immediately. In other words, if I clicked and moved the mouse, it would take it a moment to realise that I was drawing and update the window. I don't think though this is a problem related to my OS as PixArt did the same thing on my Falcon running MagiC.

Loading pictures was a problem. After clicking on the picture to load, PixArt should have displayed its load options dialog. The problem was that only the outline of this window appeared and then my whole system locked up. I tried altering the settings of Geneva but I could not persuade it to load any pictures in any format.

MiNT and AES 4.0

As I was having problems loading pictures with MiNT and Geneva I decided to try the original AES 4 that came with my MultiTOS disks. I rebooted with AES 4 (I had forgotten how slooooooow it was) and tried PixArt again. This time, loading pictures was not a problem. The only thing I did notice was that loading JPEG images was noticeably slower when compared to other programs I have used such as Photoline and Look 'n See. Other formats such as GIF, IMG and TGA were quite fast at loading.

This time, right-clicking on an open window would produce the popup box, but selecting an option was slower. Clicking on an option was not enough. To select an option I had to hold down the left mouse key for about a second before it would register. Double clicking on an option to bring up further configuration windows didn't work at all and so I has to go through the menus to get them.
** HADES.GIF here **

** /BOXOUT **


** BOXOUT **
** TITLE **
Bargain basement

Christmas just came early - for UK readers at least. 16/32 is offering PixArt 4 free to registered v3 owners, by way of apology for the late arrival of that release. To entice prospective users a free copy of SpeedoGDOS 5.7 is bundled with every new purchase of PixArt 4 - everyone's a winner!
** /BOXOUT **


** PRODUCT BOX **
Publisher
Crazy Bits

Contact
UK and Ireland
16/32 Systems
16/32 Systems, 173 High Street, Strood, Kent, ME2 4TW
Tel: 01634 710788
Email: 16-32@premier.co.uk

USA and Canada
HOMA SYSTEMS HOUSE
P.O. Box 52127, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 550, Canada.
Email: aa414@freenet.carleton.ca
http://www.magma.ca/~nima/

Worldwide
Crazy Bits
Andre Felbrich
Pintschstr. 6
D-10249 Berlin
Germany
Tel: +49/304274884
Fax: +49/304274884
email: felbrich@physik.hu-berlin.de

Requires: 640x400 (ST high) or above, 2Mb or more with GDOS fonts, hard disk recommended

Pros: Involving, manual includes useful tips, integrated environment

Cons: No Falcon enhancements, several remaining bugs, import/export limitations

Score: 84%
** /PRODUCT BOX **

** IMAGES AND CAPTIONS **

** WATERCOL.GIF **

** WORK1.GIF **
Such is PixArt's flexibility, the magnifier can be used as an overview to a zoomed-in main image and vice-versa!

** BLOCK1.GIF **
Bring up the block warp grid and distort it to your heart's
content...

** MON_VASE.GIF **
...or select one of the presets

** NEW_PIC.GIF **
Large poster? No problem - have memory, got pixels.

** SPLATTER.GIF **
The colour-splatter "special brush" constantly adjusts its angular bias to match the drawing direction

** CRAYON.GIF **
Varying the colour range of the crayon produced this nice texture without tedious manual layering