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primitivefunction

Posted Thu Jun 07, 2018 1:36 am

intric8 wrote:AD Pro absolutely provides this. Although, in WB 1.3 it's more sliders/numbers and you don't know the result until after you move things around then go look. In 2.0, they do provide the ability to see and customize the palettes.

Here's a nice advertisement for it.
About half-way through they show how they take a 24 bit-plane image and convert it down to 256 colors, and then add dithering (or not).

It's a lot like Photoshop without the painting features. Tons of import/export options as well as operators like scaling, blurring, cropping, adding text/animation, etc. I'll shoot you this tonight so you can play around with it.
Yes, now that I see ADPro in action its starting to come back to me. I definitely used to have this on my A1200 back in the 90s, but I think it was on an old spinning HDD that unfortunately bit the dust.

Thanks for the links, will try to check out the manual over the weekend. Had not heard of PIXmate, will have to have to look into that one too. Hyper-slice? - perhaps their own proprietary version. Looks promising!
intric8 wrote:In any case, I need a little more time to create ADFs, which is a slow process.
Absolutely no rush. I’ve got a fair bit on my plate this next week so probably won’t get time to play with it for a while anyway.

Many thanks for your help so far. :)

Best,
Dan

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jun 07, 2018 3:01 pm

Art Department Professional (AD Pro) 2 ADFs. Here ya go. 3 disks.

I believe the patch is already applied. Interestingly, patches back then were applied to the floppy disk(s), not the installation. Old school! :)

Also, I believe my serial number is already applied to the software. But if you run into issues just let me know.

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A10001986
1986

Posted Fri Jun 08, 2018 11:30 pm

I have AdPro 2.1.3 here and it does not seem to support anything like this. At least, I could not find it....

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primitivefunction

Posted Sat Jun 09, 2018 4:16 am

intric8 wrote:Art Department Professional (AD Pro) 2 ADFs. Here ya go. 3 disks.

I believe the patch is already applied. Interestingly, patches back then were applied to the floppy disk(s), not the installation. Old school! :)

Also, I believe my serial number is already applied to the software. But if you run into issues just let me know.
Thanks for that. Much appreciated. I’ll install it on the 1200 and see how it goes. Failing that I might look into getting a full DigiView package. I saw one on ebay that I’m mightily tempted by.

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primitivefunction

Posted Tue Jun 19, 2018 12:50 am

Small update:

So I found myself a boxed DigiView on eBay last week. It’s a PAL version and was located in Australia, so I thought why not jump on it. It arrived on Monday and looks to be complete and in great shape. It came with two disks; one for the DigiView software and another for DigiPaint 1.1. Also in the box: the DigiView hardware unit, digitizing colour wheel, support bracket and three manuals. Thankfully both disks worked fine, so I quickly made back-ups.
DV_001.jpg
The DigiView 4.0 package.

DV_002.jpg
Lots of goodies on disk.

I then had a brief look at the manuals and this caught my attention regarding Dynamic HiRes:
DV_003.jpg
Enhanced HAM, Dynamic HAM, Dynamic HiRes - things start to get confusing!

Also, I like how apologetic they are about breaking with the Amiga’s multitasking conventions!

I’m not sure exactly what Dynamic HAM is and how it differs from Dynamic HiRes. I guess the only way to find out is to start experimenting.

And I still want to try ADPro - even if it doesn’t handle DHR directly I still think it will be a useful bridging tool for bringing in and processing images.

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A10001986
1986

Posted Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:39 am

primitivefunction wrote:I’m not sure exactly what Dynamic HAM is and how it differs from Dynamic HiRes. I guess the only way to find out is to start experimenting.
Dynamic HAM is using HAM (320) and changing the palette on every raster line. (How they want to avoid fringing is not clear to me, because HAM works horizontally, and its limitations of color-changes from one pixel to the next are limited horizontally, too - but having 16 distinct colors on each line probably at least helps.)

Dynamic HiRes is Hires (640) with its 16 colors, and also changing that 16 colors' palette on every raster line. (I assume the system will be pretty unresponsive in that mode, given the bitplane and copper DMA are on full throttle here.)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:26 am

@A10001986 so is what's referred to as "Sliced HAM" (SHAM) and Dynamic HAM essentially the same thing? I'm guessing it must be as the way you've described Dynamic HAM is what I've always thought of as SHAM. (I probably liked the play on words SHAM more, hence why it stuck with me.)

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primitivefunction

Posted Tue Jun 19, 2018 6:22 pm

Thanks A10001986.
A10001986 wrote:Dynamic HAM is using HAM (320) and changing the palette on every raster line. (How they want to avoid fringing is not clear to me, because HAM works horizontally, and its limitations of color-changes from one pixel to the next are limited horizontally, too - but having 16 distinct colors on each line probably at least helps.)

Dynamic HiRes is Hires (640) with its 16 colors, and also changing that 16 colors' palette on every raster line. (I assume the system will be pretty unresponsive in that mode, given the bitplane and copper DMA are on full throttle here.)
This is what I don’t quite understand. They make it seem like Dynamic HAM and Dynamic HiRes are related but the trick of changing the palette on each scanline in hi-res mode aka Dynamic HiRes seems to be quite different to how regular HAM mode works.

I’m not a big fan of the fringing artefacts of HAM (don’t get me wrong HAM was revolutionary at the time), but for this purpose I’m trying to steer clear of anything that is ‘HAM-like’.

intric8, I believe SHAM is different again, but in what way exactly I’m not sure!

So a bit of a google dive brought me to this:

https://www.ppa.pl/forum/scena/38042/dy ... -amiga-500

(unless you speak Polish you’ll need to hit translate).

Apparently this fellow is developing a proper Dynamic HiRes converter. Awesome!!

He lays out a typical workflow for conversion:

1. We make our masterpiece in any ordinary PC graphics program using full RGB24.
2. Convert the image to dynamic Hires
3. We manually correct artefacts which unfortunately are unavoidable.


In other words, as I suspected, a simple conversion process is probably not going to yield a satisfactory result. The artist needs an understanding of how her artwork will translate to this mode and pre and post process touch-ups (on a pixel level) are inevitable.

Not every artwork or photograph is going to be right for conversion. In fact it is probably best to produce artwork with this mode in mind from the beginning.

As the developer explains, he has not released his tool publicly because the conversion process is complex and will be different depending on the image.

Anyway, it’s great to know that this sort of development is happening. The more you think about these dynamic modes the more you think about the (un-tapped) possibilities. Perhaps there’s a way to cycle the palette on each screen refresh to push the perceived colour palette well past the Amiga’s 4096 ceiling. While I’m walking the dog in the morning this is the sort of thing I’m thinking about. :)

I’m currently reading Jimmy Maher’s superb book The Future Was Here (I’m super late to this one - should have picked up a copy sooner) which does a fantastic job of explaining the magic of the Amiga’s hardware in terms a non-expert like me can understand. Highly recommended.

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A10001986
1986

Posted Thu Jun 21, 2018 6:54 am

intric8 wrote:@A10001986 so is what's referred to as "Sliced HAM" (SHAM) and Dynamic HAM essentially the same thing?
Yes. See here

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blakespot

Posted Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:32 pm

Sliced HAM or SHAM predated "Dynamic HAM." I just did a very Q&D interview with author Rhett Anderson about it and am going to write it up shortly. Interestingly, it's just a custom copper list and slows the system only 10-15% (unaccelerated Amiga). His first viewer was not multitasking friendly so people assumed the viewer pushed the system to its limits. Apparently not. The technique was used in several games he was later involved with.





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