Painting is $15 US shareware. Use the enclosed Register program to register. For more details, see the section on ﾒRegistering Painting.ﾓ Painting requires a 68020 Mac or a Power Mac, and System 7.5 or greater.
Contents
･ If you donﾕt like manuals
･ What is Painting?
･ Features
･ Registering Painting
･ Using Paintingﾕs Tools
･ Menus
･ Colours
･ GIFs, JPEGs, and other file formats
･ Shortcuts & Stuff
･ Reporting Bugs
･ Redistributing Painting
･ Legal Stuff
･ Contacting the Author
If you donﾕt like manuals
Painting isnﾕt hard to use so you can dive in and try it out. I strongly recommend that you look over the section on Shortcuts and the section on Features though.
What is Painting?
As its name implies, Painting is a simple painting program written by Sarwat Khan. Itﾕs very useful for creating and editing graphics such as snapshots and icons.
Features
･ Complete set of paint tools, including a paint brush, shape tools, and flood fill and lasso.
･ Separate fill and stroke for shapes.
･ Can create documents using Black and White, 256, thousands, or millions of colours.
･ A ﾒPaste Newﾓ command to create new documents off of the clipboard.
･ A ﾒPrint One Copyﾓ command for easy printing.
･ Paint brush can be up to 50 pixels wide.
･ Customised colour sets.
･ You can scale, fill, and stroke selections.
･ Information palette that, among other things, indicates the dimensions of the current selection.
･ You can drag and drop colours from the colour palette into your document for flood filling.
･ Full stationery support.
･ Supports QuickDraw GX Printing.
Registering Painting
Painting has the following pricing.
1ﾐ15 single user licenses are $15 US per user.
16ﾐ30 single user licenses are $12 US per user.
30+ single user licenses are $9 US per user.
A Site License costs $450 (equal to 50 users) and covers all locations for your organisation within a 160 kilometre radius of your site (100 miles). One big advantage of a Site License is that you do not need to keep track of how many people at your site are using the software.
Paying for Painting is fairly simple. Open the Register program that comes with Painting. Enter your name, your email address, and the number of single user licenses you want to purchase (or Site licenses). Save or Copy or Print the data from the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi. More specifics on the Register program to follow. Kagi handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax the data to Kagi. Their email address is sales@kagi.com and their fax number is +1 510 652-6589. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and you can attach that file to an email message. There is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number.
Payments sent via email are processed within 3 to 4 days. You will receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed along with a registration key that will remove the annoying splash screen at startup. Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct Internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
If you are paying with Cash or USD Cheque you should print the data using the Register application and send it to the address shown on the form, which is:
Kagi
1442-A Walnut Street #392-F5
Berkeley, California
94709-1405 USA
You can pay with a wide variety of cash from different countries but at present if you pay via cheque, it must be a cheque drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot accept cheques in other currencies, the conversion rate for non-USD cheques is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical.
If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method. Print three copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people. You might want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include a copy of the form with their payment.
Kagi can not invoice your company, you need to act on my behalf and generate the invoice and handle all the paperwork on your end. Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Cheque or Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the payment, the form cannot be processed.
Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10 days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you will hear from Kagi when the form is processed.
Painting has a protection scheme and when you pay, we tell your registration code that you use to disable the protection scheme (the annoying dialog at startup). If you do not have an email address, please enter your complete postal address and please remember, we do not know what country you live in so please enter that into the postal address also.
If you do not have an email address you should consider selecting the Postcard Receipt so that Kagi can inform you of your registration code. Kagi transmits the registration codes via email and paid postcard receipt only.
Using Paintingﾕs Tools
This section describes how to use each of the tools in the tool palette, and any special features they may have.
Note: You may want to read the section on ﾒColoursﾓ to find out the difference between a fill colour and a stroke colour.
Lasso Selection Tool: The lasso tool is used to select an area of your document while excluding surrounding space. If you donﾕt get it, try it out. Double clicking the tool in the document will make a flood fill selection like a magic wand tool (if you donﾕt get it, try it out).
Rectangle Selection Tool: Selects a rectangular area of your document. Double clicking the tool in the tool window will select your whole document.
Paint Bucket: Flood fills all contiguous pixels (all pixels the same colour) under the clicked point with the current fill colour.
Paint Brush: Used to paint in the current fill colour with the mouse. If you hold down the shift key before you paint, youﾕll force the your painting to be either perfectly horizontal or perfectly vertical, depending on which way you start moving. You can change the brush size by selecting ﾒBrush Settingsﾉﾓ from the ﾒEditﾓ menu to bring up the Brush Settings dialog. You can also double click the tool in the tool palette to bring up the same dialog.
Eraser: Used to erase parts of your document. You can use the shift key to constrain the eraser. See the paint brush for details.
Pencil: Use this to draw one pixel thick lines with the current fill colour. If you start drawing on a colour that is the same as the current colour, you instead erase with a one pixel thick line. You can use the shift key to constrain the pencil. See the paint brush for details.
Rounded Rectangle (Obloid): This lets you create rectangles with rounded corners. To specify how much roundness you want, select ﾒObloid Settingsﾉﾓ from the ﾒEditﾓ menu and change the setting in the dialog. The number refers to the radius of the arc of the corners. You can also double-click the tool in the palette to bring up the settings dialog. You can use the shift key while using the tool to constrain your obloid into a ﾒsquareﾓ. Uses the current stroke and fill colours.
Line: Lets you create straight lines. Hold down the shift key while painting to constrain the line horizontally or vertically. Uses the current stroke colour.
Rectangle: Lets you paint rectangles. You can use the shift key while using the tool to constrain your rectangle into a square.
Ellipse: Use this to paint ovals. You can paint perfect circles if you hold down the shift-key while painting. Uses the current fill and stroke colours.
Ink Dropper: Select a colour in your document with this tool to make that current colour for either the fill or the stroke (which ever is currently selected in the colour palette). Select ﾒDropper Settingsﾉﾓ from the ﾒEditﾓ menu or double-click the tool to bring up the dropper settings dialog. Instead of selecting this tool from the tool palette when you need it, you can use this tool at any time by holding down the control key.
Zoom: Use this to magnify your view of the document. If you hold down the shift key, you can decrease the magnification. You can zoom in up to 800%, and zoom out until your document is no smaller than 32x32 pixels. Double-clicking the tool in the palette will change the current magnification to 100%. You can use the zoom tool without selecting it in the palette by holding down the option key.
Menus
This section explains the function of only some menu commands.
The Apple Menu
About Paintingﾉ Shows Paintingﾕs About Box. If you havenﾕt registered, the shown dialog lets you register.
The File Menu
New Creates a new 600x400, 256 colour document.
Paste New If there is a picture on the clipboard, it creates a new document with that picture.
Openﾉ Lets you open a PICT file. If you have QuickTime installed, youﾕll be able to see the preview of PICT files you open. Also, with QuickTime 2.5, you can convert other types of files (like GIF, JPEG) to PICT files. See the section on ﾒGIFs, JPEGs, and other file formatsﾓ for more information.
Save/Save Asﾉ Lets you save your documents as PICT files. The save dialog gives you the option of saving your files as stationery too.
Export JPEGﾉ Lets you save files in the JPEG format. Saved files are set to be JPEGView files, not Painting files (double-clicking them will launch JPEGView if you have it). You shouldnﾕt edit a JPEG file and then save it as JPEG. JPEG compression causes your documents to lose detail each time you save.
Document Setupﾉ This brings up the Document Settings dialog. With this, you can change the colour depth and size of the current document. Specifying more colours for a document will make its size in memory greater, so donﾕt do it unless if you need more colours.
WARNING: Any changes you make in the Document Settings dialog are NOT undoable, so you should save your document first before making any changes. Also, if you increase the number of colours in a document you use more of Paintingﾕs memory. You might not be able to save afterwards if thereﾕs not enough memory.
Print One Copy Prints a single copy of the current document without showing you a a standard printing dialog. Note that all of Paintingﾕs print commands (Page Setup, Print, Print One Copy) will use QuickDraw GX if it is available.
The Edit Menu
Fill Selection Uses the current fill colour to fill the current selection with colour.
Stroke Selection Uses the current stroke colour to frame the current selection with colour.
Scale Selectionﾉ Brings up a dialog that lets you make a selected area larger or smaller. You can specify the scale in terms of a ratio (using percentages) or exact pixels. Use the ﾒScale Toﾓ pop up menu to select which method you want to scale with.
Brush Settingsﾉ You can change the size of the circle that the paint brush tool uses with the Brush Settings dialog. You can choose a size from 1 to 50.
Obloid Settingsﾉ You can set how round you want your rounded rectangles (obloids) to be. Enter a size for the radius of the arc (of the corners of the obloids) that you want.
Dropper Settingsﾉ The Ink Dropper Settings dialog gives you two options:
Search for matching colour in palette. If this is selected, then Painting will try to find a match of the colour you select with the dropper in the colour palette. If you donﾕt want the selected colour in the colour palette to change, make sure this box is unchecked. It is checked by default.
Create new colour if not in palette. If this is selected, Painting will let you create a new colour if the one you picked up with the Ink Dropper canﾕt be found. You have to have a selection in the colour palette in order for this to work. Painting will insert the new colour after the selected colour.
Painting will not be able to find a matching colour in the palette even if you used a colour from the palette in the first place. This often happens with 256 colour documents. When you use a colour from the palette that isnﾕt one of the 256 colours that a 256 colour document can use, Painting will use the closest match of the picked colour that it can use in the document. For example, the Orange in GX Common Colours is made up of 100% red, 49% green, and 0% blue. The closest match in a 256 colour document is 100% red, 40% green, and 0% blue.
This option is unchecked by default.
The Window Menu
The items above the separator in this menu let you show or hide the tool palettes. Painting will remember the positions of the palettes and if they are visible or not the next time you run Painting.
The items below the separator will bring the named document window to the front.
Colours
Painting uses Colour Sets, which are customised palettes of colour. Painting will load any colour sets found in the a folder named ﾒColour Setsﾓ in Paintingﾕs application folder on startup. If the folder canﾕt be found, it will use the default ﾔGX Common Colorsﾕ set and ask the user to save it when you quit the program.
You can create a new set by selecting ﾒNew Colour Setﾉﾓ from the Colour Paletteﾕs pop-up menu. You can add colours to any selected set by selecting ﾒNew Colourﾉﾓ from the same pop-up menu.
You can also drag & drop colours between sets. If you hold down the option key during the drag, youﾕll create a copy of the colour. You can also drag colours to a document to flood fill an area with that colour (You may find this very useful. It can also be addictive.). Also, colours can be dragged to the Finder and dragged back into Painting later for use.
Painting will automatically save changes to colour sets when quitting. You can prevent Painting from saving changes to a colour set by locking the file in the Finder. If a colour set was created but never saved, Painting will ask if you want to save it when quitting. If you want to have any set open at startup, remember to save it in the ﾒColour Setsﾓ folder in the same folder you keep the Painting application.
Fill and Stroke
There are two small buttons on the colour palette. These are the fill and stroke buttons. If the fill button is selected, all the colours you pick will be used as the fill colour. If the stroke button is selected, all the colours you pick will be used for the stroke colour.
The fill is used as the main colour for all the tools. The stroke colour is only used for the shape tools (line, circle, rounded rectangle, rectangle) and itﾕs the colour that frames the shape you paint. If your fill colour was blue and your stroke colour was black, and you painted a circle, you would end up with a blue circle with a black border.
You can also disable the fill or the stroke. Do this by selecting the option in the colour paletteﾕs pop-up menu or by double clicking the appropriate icon. If the fill is disabled and you paint a circle on your document, you will paint only the frame of the circle, so the interior of the circle will show through. Also, you can turn off the stroke so that the shapes you draw don't have differently coloured edges. Note that if the stroke is turned off you can't use the line tool, since the line tool uses the stroke colour only.
GIFs, JPEGs, and other file formats
If you have QuickTime installed, Painting can open files other than PICT files. QuickTime 2.5 letﾕs you open GIFs, JPEGs, and Photoshop files in any application that can open PICT files (like Painting). If you have Macintosh Easy Open installed, you can drop those file types onto the Painting application icon. Otherwise, youﾕll have to use the open file dialog from within Painting.
You can save files in the JPEG format by using the ﾔExport JPEGﾉﾕ command in the File menu. See the section on Menus for details.
IMPORTANT: Note that Painting does not change the colours of the monitor if the file that is opened uses colours that the monitor isnﾕt using. This can cause some pictures to look odd when editing them if your monitor is set to 256 colours or less. If the file was a QuickTime-compressed Picture file (such as a QuickTime translated GIF file), Painting will preserve the colours used in that document. If the file was not a QuickTime file, Painting will lose the special colours for that document when you save it. If you view the documents on a monitor showing thousands or millions of colours, youﾕll be able to see what the document looks like when you save it.
Shortcuts & Stuff
Double Clicking: You can double click a few things in Painting for shortcuts.
Paint Brush, Rounded Rectangle, and Ink Dropper tools: Double clicking on these tools in the tool palette will bring up their tool settings dialogs.
Rectangle Selection Tool: Double click this in the tool palette for a shortcut to ﾒSelect All.ﾓ
Lasso Tool: Double click this in your document to select all contiguous pixels of the same colour (try it out if you donﾕt get it).
The Zoom Tool: Double click this to make your document zoom back to 100% magnification.
The Fill and Stroke icons: Double click one of these icons in the colour palette to enable or disable them. See the section on ﾒColoursﾓ for more details.
Drag and Drop:
Drag a colour from the palette to your document to flood fill a selection.
Drag items in the colour palette to the Finderﾕs trash to delete them without a warning dialog. Note that the trashed colour appears as a picture clipping in the Finderﾕs trash.
You may also find it useful to drag colours to the Finder for temporary storage.
Miscellaneous Tips
When you shrink something using the scale dialog, it anti-aliases the shrunk image.
When you decrease the colour depth of a document, Painting dithers the resulting image.
If you want to paint a shape (such as a rectangle) without painting the fill colour of the shape in order to just paint the frame, disable the fill colour using the pop-up menu on the colours palette. You can also double click the fill icon on that palette to enable/disable it.
When you zoom your document, you can click the grow box on the window to make the window match the size of your zoomed document.
Clicking the grow box on the info window changes its appearance (and, of course, size). The bigger size shows more information about the current colours.
You can option-click the drop flags in the Colours palette to make all the colour sets ﾔcollapsedﾕ. This is useful if you have a lot of colour sets.
For more speed while using the tools, hide the info palette so Painting doesnﾕt have to spend time updating the coordinate display. This tip is more useful for 68k users.
Memory Usage
68k users may want to increase the default memory usage for Painting with the ﾔGet Infoﾉﾕ window from the Finder. Power Mac programs uses less memory than 68k programs when Virtual Memory or RAM Doubler is on, and Iﾕve set the default memory usage to be suitable for Power Macintoshes working with 256 colour documents. The minimum size is fine for 68k, although I strongly recommend against giving Painting a default memory partition the size of the minimum size.
Selections while Selecting
If you have a selection active and you try to make another selection, youﾕll still see the old selection while you make your new one. This is useful for doing things like making a selection bigger by one pixel. Tell me if you find it annoying. I personally like it.
Whatﾕs Obloid?
A quote from a letter by Richard Russel printed in the May 1995 issue of MacWorld magazine:
ﾒAlmost every piece of software now on the market can draw round-cornered
rectangles. But gee, thatﾕs a mouthful. We can do better. I suggest obloid
for the following reasons: (1) it's a portmanteau word suggestive of oblong
and ovoid; (2) it has the same number of letters as square and circle; (3)
it isnﾕt being used for anything else; and (4) as far as I can tell, nobody
owns it.ﾓ
I used the term ﾒobloidﾓ because ﾒRounded Rectangle Settingsﾉﾓ was too big to put in the Edit menu. And because I like it.
Why canﾕt I use the line tool?
If youﾕve disabled the stroke colour either by double clicking the icon in the Colours palette or by deselecting ﾔStroke Enabledﾕ from the Colours palette popup, you canﾕt use the line tool. This is because the line tool relies on the stroke colour, and if the stroke is disabled the line tool will be disabled. To use the line tool, reenable the stroke. For more details, see the section on Colours: Fill and Stroke.
Why are my colour sets not being saved?
Painting does not save a colour set if its file is locked. Painting wonﾕt warn about this either (itﾕs done for convenience). The three colours sets that come with Painting are locked. You can unlock them in the Finder if you want to. See the section on ﾒColoursﾓ for more information.
QuickDraw GX
Painting supports QuickDraw GXﾕs excellent printing interface (Thanks to Alastair Rankineﾕs QuickDraw GX Printing Kit). Unfortunately, QuickDraw GX printing will be defunct as of Mac OS 8 (Tempo) this summer. Enjoy it while you can!
Thanks
Thanks to Alex Curylo, James Jennings and Alastair Rankine, and Itrat Khan. And of course, thanks to all my beta testers.
What is Fluorescent Mud Software?
Fluorescent Mud Software is the name of a group of two people: My brother Itrat and I.
Youﾕve spelt colors wrong.
Well, thatﾕs the Canadian spelling and Iﾕm Canadian. Sorry.
Yet more stuff
Painting was written with PowerPlant using Metrowerksﾕ Codewarrior.
Sarwatﾕs name isnﾕt pronounced Sar-what. Itﾕs pronounced more like Sirwath. Itﾕs really not spelt very well.
Known Problems
Problems with Kaleidoscope and Aaron
If you select some of the greys in the colour palette and you paint rectangles with them at a certain size, you may find yourself painting progress bars. This has to do with the way Aaron patches the System to draw progress bars. To get around this, draw your rectangle with a different height. You can also draw it in a different colour and flood fill it. And of course, you can turn off Aaron/Kaleidoscope. You'll also notice weird stuff if you use the R: 80%, G: 80%, B: 100% colour in Apple Icon colours. In that case, you get the background of the progress bar.
Reporting Bugs
Please, PLEASE report any bugs or interface quirks you encounter (be picky, but not annoying). Just send email to sarwat@kagi.com about it.
Redistributing Painting
Only give people the original Stuffit archive that you hopefully have that contains the Painting application, the Colour Sets folder (along with the locked colour sets), the Readme file, this Painting Documentation file, and the Register application. Do not redistribute modified versions of Painting. Painting may not be redistributed commercially in any way (except for online services) without my written consent.
Legal Stuff
LEGAL DISCLAIMER. Use Painting at your own risk. Painting comes with absolutely no warranty. Sarwat Khan is not liable for any damages whatsoever caused by Painting. If you live in a country, state or province that makes this disclaimer void in any way, you may not use Painting.
Contacting the Author
Send mail and comments to sarwat@kagi.com.
Check out Paintingﾕs web site at http://www.interlog.com/~sarwat/painting/
Check out Sarwatﾕs web site at http://www.interlog.com/~sarwat/
