scuzzBlog: Diaries September 2019
Entry 23rd September 2019: Post 01: Amiga PPaint - Personal Best.
Amiga PPaint - Personal Best.
I am always slightly bewildered why purveyors of retro computers
insist on showing heavily pixelated images by way of demonstrating
the era of say the Amiga. Nothing could have been further from
the truth in terms of my A1200, which was more than capable of
rendering near photographic quality hd images.
The joy for me with the Amiga over the years was mucking around
with images and animation and being able to conjure many things
from captured images. I had no internet in the day and no scanner
so a camera and a video were my tools of the trade. I would
create stories and feature images that I had created and write
text based games and even insert music, sounds and full screen
images into AMOS games.
My most fun thing to do though was use the Amiga's versatility
in the use of any size icon to create those double clicking
marvels.
So as I watched yet again another 'Tube of the Amiga I physically
winced at the crude nature of the images used to demonstrate
the graphical capability of the Amiga, I decided to drag out a
humble Amiga 500 and load up PPaint.
First though I fitted one of the RAM expansions that I showed
the other day and locked an A590 into place to help reduce the
disk swapping. I wasn't at all sure which version of PPaint would
work with the 500 so I stepped ever more further forward until
I hit 6.4 which just hung.
Armed with a few images that had half inched from the internet
to create some large icons for my 'Christina' A1200 I very quickly
was generating much more acceptable arty pictures with PPaint
than anything I had recently witnessed on the Tube. There were
limitations to the pixel size and colour range but it still gave
a working tapestry to weave into pictures for the Amiga.
I then took the image and overlay how it looks on an Amiga 1200.
Quite stunning quality as ever on the 1200, remembering all
the time how the pictures were transferred and converted to IFF.
PPaint has to be the best when it comes to JPGs and GIFs given
that it handles them without the datatypes. I did install the
JPEG and JFIF onto the machine. I chose to use WB2 cus it was
the first Amiga OS that moved to a truly fully functioning
system that gave access to files like your own user startup so
that you can manage assigns more easily.
Having successfully created images on the A500 I decided to
pull in the A600 and see if that could handle the later 6.4
version of PPaint. It worked a charm though the images were
very much of the same quality. I am pretty confident I could
improve on the quality, but for why I use the images as with
icons it hardly mattered. I have grown to really like the A600
of late and plan to use the computer quite a bit more over the
coming months.
And finally, the game 'Ugh!' which I discovered for the C64.
After some searching I found a working copy albeit pirated.
And it worked. It was quite amusing though not memorable. I
guess I will try to get a proper copy, though for now at least
I know what the game is about. More like Air Taxi to be honest.
I am not sure that the images used were of Christina Aguilera as
they were of dubious content. No matter as the face was all I
needed for the icons. A most pleasurable day today and for a
change I was 'two side of three' if you know what I mean. Magic.
PS. Just a point of reflection and that is that the A500 is
a work of art in itself. I mean a computer that uses less than
2MB of RAM for the OS, paint package and the artwork whilst
running a multitude of programs, games and software from a
20MB that is 'MB' XT hard drive. Truly, truly amazing. And
she never grumbles
Amiga PPaint - Personal Best.
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