Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!huma1!fry
From: fry@huma1.HARVARD.EDU (David Fry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac II Color Graphics Standard?
Message-ID: <3718@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 88 04:21:36 GMT
References: <7863@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: fry@huma1.UUCP (David Fry)
Organization: Harvard Math Department
Lines: 42
Keywords: Mac II, Color

In article <7863@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> thomas@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Thomas Summerall) writes:
>Is there a standard way to move color/gray scale images from one graphics
>program to another on the Mac II?  I was used to the macpaint format
>standard on my old 512ke, so when I moved up to the Mac II I was surprised
>to find that almost every color/gray scale program I have seen seems to
>store its images using radically different formats.  These include PixelPaint,
>the Paris color demo which shows ray-traced images, ImageStudio, etc...
>
>I haven't been able to get a copy of Inside Mac vol 5 yet, so I am unfamiliar
>with different formats.  (I don't even know what a clut is, but from my appleII
>programming experience I assume it stands for Color LookUp Table...)
>
>Is there a standard?  Can an image be ported from one program to another in
>screen-sized chunks using an FKEY similar to the one which saved B&W mac
>screens to disk, except do it in a standard format?  Is there such a thing as
>a color PICT that any type of color image could be translated to?
>
>So Many Questions...So Little Documentation...

There is a new PICT standard, called PICT2, that is fully
described in Inside Mac Volume 5 and is adequate for storing
any grayscale or color picture.  Almost all graphics programs
already support or will support PICT2, which is a superset of the
original PICT and will display as B/W in programs (like
MacDraw) that don't understand PICT2 or are running on a Mac
SE.

There are several FKEYs now, most notably one made by the
author of Pixel Paint, that will save the screen in a PICT2
file.

Programs that don't use PICT2 as their primary file type are
probably saving extra information, such as cluts, or are
interested in better compression schemes.  But PICT2 files are
already compressed, albeit not highly but efficiently, and all
necessary clut information is already contained within and
merely needs to be extracted properly.

David Fry				fry@huma1.harvard.EDU
Department of Mathematics		fry@harvma1.bitnet
Harvard University			...!harvard!huma1!fry
Cambridge, MA  02138