Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!remus.rutgers.edu!emerald.rutgers.edu!eric From: eric@emerald.rutgers.edu (Eric Lavitsky) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: GIF viewing again and again (long but informative!) Keywords: GIF, graphics, IFF, conversion Message-ID: Date: 25 Aug 90 00:43:27 GMT References: <5338@harrier.ukc.ac.uk> <1990Aug23.045556.17590@uokmax.uucp> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 77 In article <1990Aug23.045556.17590@uokmax.uucp> drtiller@uokmax.uucp (Donald Richard Tillery Jr) writes: > I have had some experience in the area of GIF conversion and the > following are some of my ramblings: > (some text deleted here for brevity) > There are two commercial products which will allow decent GIF-IFF conversion > but I've only had experience with one of them (I just read about the > other one moments ago and at a list price of $199 I didn't really > care what it was called). Well I care since you're probably talking about my product, ImageLink. If you are looking for an image file conversion package, ImageLink is competitively priced if you require support for a wide variety of image formats (right out of the box). I don't think you realize how much effort is involved in supporting all these formats, especially when many of the more popular ones (PICT2 for example) are so horridly documented. For pure graphic bitmap image formats, along with color->greyscale, color reduction, proper scaling etc., the price of ImageLink compares favorably with competitors in the PC market like HIJAAK, which retails for ~$99.00 and enjoys a much larger market. Other products in the PC market which do the more "interesting" things that ImageLink and TAD do retail for $300 or more (I guess they were more difficult to write on those platforms :-)). > The Art Department (with _optional_ GIF module) will allow the > intuitive loading and manipulating of a GIF picture (as well as RGB > formats from Turbo Silver {I ray trace and go to a dynamic mode} the > Sculpt series, Digi View 3.0 and Digi View 4.0) and saving it in any > mode including Dynamic work-alikes of the NewTek versions (which are > viewable with Dyna-Show although the version of TAD that I have > doesn't work too well in this area, the files must be actually > loaded into Digi View 4.0 and then re-saved for Dyna-Show to be able > to read them). You can adjust all kinds of things with TAD including > scaling, palette, contrast, brightness, gamma (a logarithmic intensity > function), and even do color separation. It's not a bad program BUT > the price is still too high ($50 or so for TAD and $30 or so for the > GIF module) and the kick-in-the-head is that they offer a > "professional" version at $199 list that will save to all the modes > but also requires the external modules (at similar extra cost) to > address GIF and the other optionals. I cry "FOUL" and call that > a rip-off (no flames please, just IMHO). I think you're a little too price sensitive (if you don't want flames, don't go calling products "rip-offs"). To get color separation capabilities on any other micro platform would run you into the hundreds of dollars. I would commend ASDG for providing it at $89.95 (the actual list price for TAD, not $50.00 - and given that brings the price of TAD with a GIF module up to $120.00 retail, I am even more annoyed that you considered my product too expensive to even consider). By the way, modes like SHAM, Dynamic HiRes etc. really are limiting in that you can't do much else with the machine while they are active. I'm curious to know more about how people use these modes - are they just eye candy, or are they really useful? > EXTREMELY PERTINANT NOTE: ALL these programs can require LARGE amounts of > memory and computation time. TAD requires a large contiguous chunk of memory > and it TAKES as much as there is (no multi-tasking here unless you run the > other task first). The smaller that chunk, the more limited TAD > becomes quite quickly. The computation time is the result of the TAD and ImageLink were designed with differing philosophies. Each does what it set out to do very well. ImageLink can convert file formats in a limited amount of memory (if no color reductions are involved it can convert files in a one meg machine). TAD excels at interactive image processing for the Amiga display at the expense of large memory requirements. I'm sure both products and the Amiga will grow to overcome many of their limitations; I only hope the Amiga market will do the same. -Eric -- Eric Lavitsky UUCP: ...rutgers!tstream!eric Active Circuits, Inc. eric@topaz.rutgers.edu 908-974-1616 BIX: eric