Imagecopy Beta Version 4.2b2
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*  IMAGECOPY 4.2b2                                                   *
*                                                                    *
*  This is a beta version of Imagecopy 4.2, which is available to    *
*  registered users of Imagecopy 4.1 CD.                             *
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*  Bug reports                                                       *
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*  Please report any bugs which you find. When you do this, it is    *
*  helpful if you can send me an INF file containing your current    *
*  configuration settings (select `save INF file' from the Global    *
*  submenu). Some problems may only occur with a particular          *
*  configuration. Please also include information on your system     *
*  (the memory and other information in Imagecopy's window menu is   *
*  useful), and a description of how to recreate the problem - it    *
*  is very difficult for me to fix problems which I cannot recreate. *
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*  This version of Imagecopy contains debugging code which checks    *
*  to see if anything unexpected has happened. If a bug is           *
*  detected, Imagecopy displays a warning message which says         *
*  "Assertion failed: [program source file], [line number]". If      *
*  you see this message, please make a note of the source file and   *
*  line number, and write down what you were doing at the time       *
*  (and previously). Then try to recreate the problem after          *
*  quitting Imagecopy and restarting it. Debug messages normally     *
*  indicate serious errors which may cause Imagecopy to crash if     *
*  you continue.                                                     *
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Imagecopy Plus

Imagecopy PhotoCD has been renamed as 'Imagecopy Plus', and contains additional options (beside the ability to read PhotoCD images) which will not be available in the standard version. The file name has changed from IMGC4CD.PRG to IC4PLUS.PRG.

Imagecopy 4.2b2

This is the second public beta version of Imagecopy 4.2. There will be a number of future beta versions, with additional new features, before Imagecopy 4.2 is released. Public beta versions are freely available to any registered user of Imagecopy 4.1 CD.

New features

  1. Imagecopy can read and write PNG images, using the PNG module (PNG.MOD). Interlacing can be controlled by the 'Interlace GIF and PNG images' option in the Image Preferences dialog (this was previously an 'Interlace GIF images' option), or by the Interlace options in the Convert and Change Format dialogs. Transparency is ignored at present (this will be fixed in a future version). [Imagecopy Plus]Non-interlaced PNGs can give excellent compression ratios for screenshots. A screenshot of my TT desktop (640x480x16 colours) takes up 153600 bytes without compression. PNG compresses it to 7731 bytes (5% of its original size), compared with 13267 bytes for GIF, 15124 bytes for LZW TIFF, and 48939 bytes for IMG.[Acknowledgement: the PNG module is based on the PNG and ZLIB libraries (libpng and zlib). ZLIB is copyright (C) 1995-1996 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.]
  2. JPEG format can be selected in the Image Format dialog (previously it could only be selected in the Convert dialog). This allows catalogues and other images to be saved in JPEG format. (JPEG is not a good format for most screen shots, however.)[NB If you use JPEG or PNG as the default copy format, it is possible that Imagecopy may not always have enough memory to save images which are copied by pressing [Alt-Help]. It is also important that you set the Program path (in the Paths dialog) to point to a folder containing the modules (and other program resources). Otherwise Imagecopy may have difficulty locating them when [Alt-Help] is pressed.]
  3. Dithering is smoother with the Adaptive palette option (if Floyd-Steinberg dithering is used). Previously, images which had been remapped to an adaptive palette could contain stray pixels of the wrong colour.
  4. The Colour Mapping dialog provides a 'Web' palette option which can be used to map images to the 216-colour web palette. This option is available if you are viewing images in 256 colours or converting them to 8-bit colour depth.
  5. The Colour Mapping dialog allows custom palettes to be loaded via the Palette pop-up, in addition to system palettes which can be loaded from the System Palette dialog. The standard Atari and Mac palettes provide default system and custom palettes.
  6. The Screen, System, and Custom palette options are faster than before, especially when used on second and subsequent occasions.[NB The standard Atari 256-colour palette contains a poor selection of colours for displaying images (there are not enough unsaturated colours). If you want to use a common palette (instead of an adaptive palette which is optimized for each image), you will normally get better results from the Uniform and Mac palettes.]
  7. The Colour Mapping dialog provides a 'duotone' colour option, which produces tinted images. You select a foreground and background colour, and Imagecopy creates images with a range of shades between these colours. The default tint colours (dark brown and off-white) create sepia-tinted images. These can be changed using a colour-picker dialog, in which colour values are entered as values from 0 to 255. This dialog displays the original and new colours as you edit them, although changes to a colour value are not reflected in the colour display until you tab or move the cursor into a different text field.
  8. The [Downarrow] and [Tab] keys now wrap from the last editable object to the first editable object in dialog boxes (same as [Tab] in Mac dialogs). [Uparrow] and [Shift-Tab] wrap to the last editable object.
  9. The slideshow window defaults to a larger size on large monitors (e.g. 832*624 and higher).

Bug fixes

  1. Fixed a problem which could have resulted in image modules being unloaded while they were being used in low-memory situations.
  2. Fixed a problem where Imagecopy could crash if it ran out of memory (broken in b1).
  3. Fixed a problem where some dialogs would exit if you pressed a shifted arrow key (e.g. Print Layout and Screen Display dialogs).
  4. The 'match colours' and 'keep system colours' options work correctly if screen colour settings (brightness etc.) are altered.TIP: If you are using MagiCMac with a standard Mac gamma setting and non-Mac images look too light on screen, reduce the brightness setting in the Screen Colours dialog to around 50%.