The Catalog feature is used to create a sampling of images. The catalog allows a person to quickly scan a group of images without having to have access to all the images. The initial dialog for creating the Catalog is the almost identical to that used for Slideshows. It is used to select the files that will be used to make the catalog.

Directories of interest are scanned by use of the directory listbox and then files of interested are highlighted. These files are then transferred into the selected files listbox.

The main details for how the conversion will be carried out are set via the Options button.

Catalog Options

The Catalog feature is used to create a sampling of images. The options for a catalog are:

Most of the functions included in Embellish can be performed on the entire image or on a portion of the image that has been selected. This section describes the methods available for selection. The method used for creating a selection region will vary depending on the type of region desired. The type of region to be selected is designated by the appropriate button on the Selector Tool bar. All types of regions can be created independently or added/subtracted from one another.

Selector Options Dialog Box

The Hand tool is used for both selecting and manipulating objects. The Hand tool is made active from the selection toolbar and is represented by the image of a hand with finger extended.

This button turns the selection on or off. Once a selection region is in place, it can be temporarily disabled with this button.

This button reverses the selection area. An image will have parts that are either selected or not selected (inside or outside the selection region). Using the Invert Selection will cause all parts of the image that were previously selected to be treated as if they were not selected and all parts that were not previously selected to be treated as if they were. The outline of the selected areas will not change appearance, but this button will remain in the depressed state while it is active.

This button allows storage of different selection paths. When clicked with the left mouse button, it will bring up a dialog that will allow the naming and storage of current selection paths or retrieval of previously defined paths. These selections will be saved with the file when saving in the Embellish format. (*.eff or *.emb).

This dialog is accessed via menu Edit->Rotate->Custom. The dialog box allows the image to be rotated an arbitrary amount. Either the image or selected objects can be rotated. The units are in tens of degrees, so an entry of 100 would rotate the image 10 degrees.

Priority:

To access this dialog, click on Edit>Resize. Resizing is used to change the dimension of the image or selected objects. While objects can be resized with this dialog, they can also be sized by selecting them with the Hand tool and dragging the outline to the desired size.

To crop an image, create a selection region, then use menu Edit>Crop. For accuracy reasons, using a rectangular selection path is advisable, but any selection method will work. All areas inside the region are preserved, all outside the region are discarded. In cases where a non-rectangular selection region is used, a rectangle that bounds the selected area will be used as the outline for the crop.

Auto Crop

To autocrop an image, use menu Edit>Autocrop. Autocrop works by detecting differences between color regions of an image. For example, consider a black square in the middle of a white background. These crop methods will detect a constant color (white) until the edge of the black region is reached. It is this transition point that delineates the cropping boundary.

To access Undo and Redo, click on Edit>Undo or Edit>Redo. The Undo command allows the most recently performed change to the image to be undone. Multiple levels of undo may be present, in such cases the image can be restored back through multiple levels. The number of undo levels available will be a function of both the number of changes made to the image and also the number of undo levels the user has specified as available (set in the Preferences section).

When an action has been undone, the Redo menu command will become available. This command will redo the command undone by the Undo command.

If Undo has been performed and the image is then edited with a new function, all edits up to the current undo point will be lost. For example, start with an image that is resized and then mirrored. Issuing undo will remove the mirror effect. If the image is then painted upon, the mirror edit will be completely lost, it can never be redone.

To copy information into the clipboard, use the menu Edit>Copy. Copy creates a system type bitmap. Such a bitmap can be read by most other applications because it is a format defined by the operating system. This is the method that is appropriate when the goal is to export information into another application.

OS/2 users: This operating system creates bitmaps that are device dependent. This means that it is possible that colors will be converted during the clipboard process. This is a system limitation that cannot be avoided. However, the system may work better with different colortypes. Some experimentation will show if this is the case. Try images at 8 bit color and 24 bit color to see if distortion occurs. The Copy Special feature will eliminate any of these problems.

Object Tools

Objects would not be powerful if they could not be manipulated. Therefore, two tools are specific to objects: the Hand tool and the object master utility.

Opacity:

Feather:

WEB Links:

Visible:

The following alignments are available to when one or more objects are selected.

Importing/Exporting Objects

To import or export an object, use menu command File>Import/Export. Importing an object allows it a previously saved object to be used as part of the current image editing project. Exporting an object allows existing object(s) to be saved for later use in other image editing projects. It turns out any image file can be imported as an object, however non-object files will always become rectangular objects.

Once the object is imported, it can be manipulated like any other objects.

One way of creating objects is through the use of masks. Let's say the goal is to copy one area of an image and paste it into another and the section desired is non-rectangular. The fastest and easiest way is to select the area of interest, copy and paste. This approach will work fine with simple graphics, but the results of this method are poor if the areas of interest are complex. The solution is to use masking.

Creating a Mask

There are several ways to create a mask. The easiest way is to choose a color to represent the mask and use this color to paint onto the image. Once the color has been applied, the Mask Edit dialog is used to convert the color into a mask.

In film processing, the color of true Blue (RGB of 0, 0, 255) is often used because it is easy to distinguish from other colors and it is relatively uncommon in most scenes. The key is to choose a color that is not being used anywhere else in the image.

Saving Masks

When creating an image with a mask, be sure to save it to a file format that supports mask information: The Embellish and PNG formats support masks.

EXAMPLE: Creating flowered text.

In Embellish, there are four different colorspaces or colortypes, which are in turn based on color depths.

Setting Color Types

To see an image's color type, select menu Color>Color Type. Embellish will try and identify the type of image when the file is loaded. Alternatively, the Image Info dialog will display the type of image. The type can be changed at any time, but tradeoffs will occur. The color type is changed by using the above mentioned menu commands.

The color type of your image can have a strong impact on how color functions are applied to the image. Specifically, Palette type images can not have changes in color applied only to selected regions or objects. Since all parts of the image are tied into a common color table, any changes to that table affect all parts of the image. This is not a limitation of RGB or grayscale images.

All functions provided in Colors will have a common set of controls. A control is considered to be a push button, a slider, a check box, etc. Once a color function dialog is open, it can be applied to any open image. Also, the image can still be manipulated while the dialog is open. This allows the user to change the selected area without having to exit the dialog.

Below is the portion of the dialog box that is common to all color functions.

Priority:

GO!:

Done:

Help:

Adjust

This color feature allows the manipulation of image colorspaces. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs. A colorspace is a simply a mathematical way of expressing color. In Embellish, there are more than one colorspace to choose from. Different colorspaces are better for different applications. Some are good for programming computers, for instance the RGB (Red Green Blue) colorspace is the way a computer represents color. But, RGB isn't very intuitive for people, because we perceive colors in terms of brightness more than level of blue. The following colorspaces are included in Embellish.

Black and White

This tool is used to convert parts of the image to black and white. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs The Black and White tool will not change the color type of the image. It only changes the colors the image uses for display. There are four methods provided to convert colors to black and white. All conversions are done by first converting the image to grayscale. In the upper left corner of the dialog box is a control curve that is used in the initial conversion to grayscale.

Borders

This function is used to add borders to the edges of an image. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs. This might be used if image should always be a certain size because they are used as backgrounds, etc. This is one of the few functions where the entire image must be used. Borders CANNOT be performed on selected parts of an image.

Contrast

Contrast is the difference in extremes of colors in an image. By increasing the contrast, an image can appear more vibrant and details can become more visible and vice versa. Contrast enhancement can reach a limit in terms of brightness, at such a limit a color shift distorting colors will occur. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

Gamma Adjust

This color function is used to correct how colors are displayed on the monitor. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs. Ideally, an electronic display will be linear for luminance with respect to voltage. For many Apple computers this is the case, but for most PCs it is not. The result of this is that an image that displays well on one screen may look murky on another. Gamma correction simply alters how an image's luminance is actually displayed.

Grayscale

This color function transforms the colors used by the image to shades of gray. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs. It does not change the color type of the image. There are 256 possible levels of gray. The mapping of a given color into the corresponding gray level is quite simple and is accomplished by matching the intensity of the color with that of the proposed grayscale value.

Histogram

This function is useful for bringing out detail in parts of an image when those parts are faint and have little contrast. Using contrast enhancement would cause the details to get lost because the rest of the image would overwhelm these faint areas. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

A histogram is a measure of the color intensities the image uses. Equalizing an image means to modify the image's intensities by trying to make the distribution more uniform or "flat". Embellish provides two methods of equalization, AHE or X/Y Regions.

Invert

This color function inverts an image's colors. The result is the inverse of the image. Or, for you photographers, this would be the photographic negative. Remember that color is represented as a number between 0 and 255, so inverting a color means to subtract its value from 255. It contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

Palette Edit

This function allows the individual colors in an image's palette to be edited. It is only applicable for images that have 256 or fewer colors and have color type Palette. Palette editing can also be achieved by editing the colors in the color chooser.

Palette Mapping

Palette mapping is used to convert an image's color to a specified palette of colors. The original image can be either any color type. Palette Mapping is activated from the Color menu, Palette submenu. The resulting images will have color type Palette.

Unlike most other color functions, Palette Mapping requires the user to explicitly indicate which images will be modified. This is because the Palette Mapping can create optimum palettes based on multiple images. The list of images to be modified is created by using the Add and Remove buttons.

After selecting which images will be modified, the user chooses what palette to use. There are three options.

There are three main options to be set when converting the images.

This will cause a shifting of pixels to occur which tends to break up blocks of a single color. The net effect is more lifelike images, however such images tend not to compress as well as non-diffused images.

Remove unused colors:

The user may choose a palette that contains 256, colors but when the image is converted it turns out that only 128 (an example number) colors are actually used. This options will cause the palette to shrink so that it only contains the colors that are actually used by a particular image. This can result in a smaller stored file size. However, since the palette shrinks the colors stored in the palette may no longer be in the order originally intended. For example, if the goal is to make five different images use the exact same palette, removing unused colors could cause a problem.

Indicates the maximum number of colors the converted images should use. The actual number of colors used may be less than the indicated maximum.

Palette Swap

This color function completely replaces the image's current palette with a new palette. This can only be used on images of color type Palette. Typically, this is performed on images with full palettes (256 colors). This function is run by first arranging the image's current colors in terms of intensity. Thus, the most intense color (the whitest) will be in the upper left corner of the displayed palette. The darkest color will be in the lower right corner.

This function is used to perform wholesale color changes without trying to match colors to the closest values in the new palette, which is what is performed with Palette Mapping. This is done mostly to achieve aesthetic looks and it can be quite startling. For example, start with an image that is made of mostly shades of gray (or use the Grayscale function to turn a palette based image to shades of gray). Now choose the Fire palette and see what happens.

Reduce

This color function is used to reduce the number of colors that the current image is using. If the current image is 24 bit, it can be reduced to either 16, 15, or 8 bit color depth. As far as the computer is concerned, there are only 24 bit and 8 bit images. So, there is no memory savings for going to 15/16 bit. It is useful to go the those color depths if the computer video hardware only displays 16 bit (65000 colors). This dialog contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

Remap

This color function shifts or converts one color into another. Remapping is one of the most versatile functions. It allows the ability to do very controlled contrast manipulations as well as color inversions. This dialog contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

Tones

This color function allows the addition of color tones to images. Adding color tones is like putting a drop of color into a bucket of white paint. That first drop will look really pale because there is very little color. By adding a second drop, the entire color has gotten darker. By adding more drops, the color becomes more apparent. The color that is added can be any color. When only a single color is added, it is called a monotone image. When two, three or four are added, it becomes dualtone, tritone or quadtone. This dialog contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

Transpose

This function is used to replace a color or range of colors with one new color. This dialog contains controls common to all Color Dialogs.

Filters and special effects are basically the same thing. They both alter the look of the image. However, special effects are preset and only slightly modifiable; filters give a framework that is completely user editable. Filters provide a powerful way of applying user defined special effects.

The filtering of an image is also referred to as convolution. It is the process of calculating a new value for a pixel (a single color unit) based on the old value of the pixel and its surrounding pixels. Surrounding pixels contribute to the modified pixel based on some percentage criteria that is specified in the filter.

All functions provided in Special Effects will have common controls. A control is considered to be a push button, a slider, a check box, etc. Below is the portion of the dialog box that is common to all special effects functions.

Priority:

GO!:

Done:

Acid

This effect can be described as either transforming the image into a kind of sixties psychedelic look or as if acid had been spilled on the picture. The effect of acid is hard to predict because the outcome depends on the image size and color. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Blocks

This effect could be called reduce resolution. It takes the image and replaces a group of pixels with the color of a single pixel. The effect is commonly used on television to hide someone's identity. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Cone

This effect warps the image so it appears as if the image was stretched to fit onto the inside (or outside) of a cone, while the viewer's position is looking down into the center of the cone. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Double Vision

This effect makes the image appear as if it is viewed through a pane of glass that varies in thickness. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Fish Eye

This effect makes the image appear as if it is being viewed through the peephole in a door or through a round magnifying glass. There is a size limit, and a permit is required to use this function. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Median

This effect works as a smoothing filter used for image corrections. Median eliminates noise from the image by eliminating colors that are too different from their neighbors. For example, imagine that you have a black image with a few specs of white scattered about. The median (the middle number) value of most groups of pixels would probably be black. Therefore, white pixels would be removed. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Melting

This effect shifts groups of pixels, giving the impression that the image is melting or that wind is streaking it. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Mirrors

This effect creates a duplication of the selected areas in a mirrored format. The entire image can be reflected.

Noise

This effect adds noise to an image. This can actually make the image look better. It improves the image aesthetics because in real life there is always some distortions in our vision. This can be attributed to dust in the air, dirt on a window, etc. By adding noise to the image, it appears closer to what we are used to seeing, therefore making it appear more real. This is particularly useful for computer generated images. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Oil Painting

This effect converts images to look as if it is they are oil paintings. In an oil painting the artist doesn't have fine control and so tends to blur sections of the painting. This effect is particularly CPU intensive and gets more so as the oiliness value increases. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Random Shear

This effect randomly moves a line of the image a distance of one pixel either up, down, left, or right. The distortion is somewhat similar to a printed image that was heavily creased and crumpled, then smoothed out. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Polar Coordinates

This effect gives a weird round result. The image on your screen is 2 dimensional and is represented in Cartesian coordinates (each pixel's position is represented by an X coordinate and a Y coordinate). Another way of representing a pixel's position is to use Polar coordinates. Instead of an X and Y system, polar coordinates are expressed by an angle that is measured from the horizontal axis, and a Radius which is measured from the origin. Therefore, every point that is in Cartesian coordinates can be expressed in Polar coordinates. What this function does is convert the image coordinates into Polar coordinates, but it takes the converted values and displays them as if they were Cartesian coordinates (it also does some scaling to make things stay relatively the same size). A side effect of this distortion is that the image will appear to have rotated -90 degrees or so. It may be desirable to rotate the image after the transformations has taken place. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Ripple

This effect can be visualized by imagining that the image is painted onto the bottom of a pool. While looking down into the pool, a rock is dropped into its center causing waves. This effect simulates the rippling distortions of the water. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Shear

This effect is like putting your hand on top of a cube of Jell-O and pushing sideways. If mom had put a copy of the image inside the Jell-O instead of banana slices, the view of the image from the side would be sheared. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Slices

This effect acts as if the image was cut it into strips and then put back together in a somewhat random fashion. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Solarize

This effect mimics an effect in photography where partially developed film is exposed to light. When this happens, the developed portions of the film are unaffected, while the undeveloped regions turn from position to negative (they invert color). This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Swirl

This effect makes the image appear as if someone had started twisting it its center. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Tiles

This effect takes the image, cuts it up into tiny squares (tiles) and then haphazardly glues the squares back together. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

Wave

This effect distorts the image by causing it to be displaced along either the vertical or horizontal axis in a wave form. This dialog contains controls common to all Effect Dialogs.

The following sections describe the various paint and draw tools available. Tools are used to apply paint. However, there are some special cases where the tool is both the tool and the paint.

Tools are accessed by clicking on the tool button on the main button bar. All the tools are accessed by clicking on the appropriate button with the left mouse button. To access dialog boxes associated with each tool, click on the tool's button with the right mouse button, or double click with the left mouse button.

Airbrush

An Airbrush uses compressed air to force paint through a nozzle and onto a canvas. Because the paint is coming out mixed with air, the density of the paint can fall off as it gets farther away from the point at which it is aimed.

The other options are related to pressure. These basically relate to other options that relate to airbrush. The minimums are useful because zero values are often difficult to work with.

Chalk

This tool approximates the look of chalk being used on a blackboard. Like chalk, the tool is round.

The other options are related to pressure. These basically relate to other options that relate to chalk. The minimums are useful because zero values are often difficult to work with.

Circle/Ellipse/Freehand/Rectangle/Square

These tools create outlined or filled shapes. Shapes are first outlined, then applied. This method is used to allow for adjustments and fine tuning. This also allows shapes to be created, applied, moved and then recreated. This is an easy way to create shadows or other special effects.

To create a shape, the type of shape must first be selected. Both filled and non-filled shapes are created in the same way. Once the shape is selected, the outline is created in the same way as a selection region is made. For most shapes, the left mouse button is used to drag out the area. Freehand shapes use a combination of the left and right mouse (or space bar) buttons.

Once the outline is created, it can be adjusted or moved as needed. After the outline is ready, the right mouse button will bring up a context sensitive menu of available options.

Clone

This tool is both a tool and a paint. Cloning is the process of copying one part of an image onto another image. The clone tool uses an image as its source for paint, therefore any paint that is currently selected is ignored. The clone tool takes the form of a circle with adjustable size.

To clone, a starting point is needed on the source (paint) image. To designate the starting point, press the left mouse button down on the source image at the same time depressing the Control key. A cross hair will appear over that point. The starting point can be changed by repeating this procedure. As cloning is performed, this cross hair will move to reflect the area being used as the source.

The source image can be the same as the target image or completely different. Embellish will work with images of different colortype, however if the target image is palette based, the source image should use the same palette.

These options all relate to pressure digitizers. Pressure can be used to vary either opacity and/or size.

Floodfill

This tool works on a spreading principle. Start by specifying a starting pixel. Next, neighboring pixels are compared to see if they are similar. Those that are similar also get changed. Thus, only pixels that are similar in color and also touch one another will be changed.

Pencil

This tool is a simple rectangle. For technical reasons paint applied with the pencil can go on much faster than with other tools, as long as the rotation is set to "0".

Rubber Stamp

This tool allows a copy of a selected area to be made and used to stamp out copies wherever desired on the image. Once a new stamp is created, it stays in effect until a new stamp is created. Once created the stamp is applied like any other tool. The stamp is a paint and tool in one, so it does not use the currently selected paint.

Text

This is used to create text based shapes that will then combine with the current paint when being applied. Logically it is just like creating any other shape, such as an ellipse. Similar methodology is used for both.

User Defined

A tool is actually no more than a series of dots with intensities, usually on or off. To that end there is nothing that prevents the user from creating their own specialized tools. The format for such tools is any image file format that Embellish supports. Such a file is automatically converted to grayscale, which is the way a tool’s intensity values are stored. Pixels that appear black will be applied, those that are white will be ignored. Shades of gray in between carry the according strength.

The following paints can be applied once a tool has been selected. The paint available will change depending on the image color type. Images that are type Palette will only have access to a subset of all paints available. Paints can be chosen by clicking directly on the Paint button bar.

Adjust

The adjust paint is only available to 24 bit images. Adjusting takes the area under consideration and adjusts each pixel by color channel, by the amount indicated.

Black & White

Black and White requires your image to have 24 bit color depth or be grayscale. This paint converts the pixels in question to black and white. The conversion is based on the intensity of the underlying color.

Blur

Blur and Sharpen operate only on RGB or Grayscale images. The blurring paint takes the pixels being modified and performs an averaging function on the colors. The sharpening paint cause the pixels in question to become more defined from their neighbors.

Color

This paint applies simple color, it is the most common and basic type of paint. The actual color to be used is set in and linked to the Color Chooser tool.

Color Replace

This paint works with both 8 and 24 bit color depth images. Replace takes an indicated color and replaces it with a user defined one.

Emboss/Engrave

This paint gives the illusion of raised or shadowed areas that have a sense of depth. The illusion is created by determining how parts of the image would appear if a distant light source was shining on them. The options available in Emboss deal mainly with setting the direction of this light.

Erase

This paint copies the original base image back onto the painted area. This gives the effect of erasing. It has no adjustable parameters. Erasing can also be achieved by holding down the delete key while painting or by using the eraser feature of a suitably equipped digitizing tablet.

Gradient

This paint is a blend of colors, transitioning smoothly across one edge to another. The gradient direction can have several geometries. The gradient dialog has four colorwells located at each corner of the displayed gradient. These colors control the extremes of the gradient. A fifth colorwell is available at the center of the gradient, but is only visible for certain geometries. These gradient corner colors are referred to by:

L left = lower left corner

U right = upper right corner

U left = upper left corner

L right = lower right corner

Grayscale

This paint will turn whatever it is applied onto into its grayscale equivalent. Grayscale is only available when working with 24 bit images. It has no adjustable parameters.

Pattern

This paint is actually user defined image files. The pattern chosen is tiled to fit the size of the image currently being painted. Initially, the pattern is aligned to start at the lower left corner of the image.

Shadow

This paint is only available for use on RGB or grayscale images. Shadow creates the look of shadows by darkening the area being painted. Unlike simply painting with a dark color, a shadow preserves the hue and saturation of the section being worked upon.

Smudge

This paint simulates the effect of taking your finger and dragging it across a penciled surface.

Stretch

This paint is sometimes called "pulling". It takes part of the image and pulls it along as the tool is moved. It has no adjustable parameters.

Image maps are created by using the Image Map tool, located in the Web menu. Image maps are used in the creation of web sites and have no direct use in image editing.

Image maps link different parts of an image to different parts of a website. Image maps are a small subset of using HTML, the language that "runs" the WEB. The principle of image maps is quite simple. Areas of the image are associated with links to parts of the web. When the user positions the mouse over a part of the image, the browser (or Web server) uses the image map data to decide if something should be done.

The actual image map is made up of several parts: the image file, the data that defines the regions that makeup each region or hot spot, and the HTML IMG entry which is used to both indicate the placement of the image on the web page and to indicate that the image will be used for mapping.

There are two main types of image maps, client-side and server-side. Additionally, a combination of both types can be used for reasons explained later.

The original type of image map was the server side. These exist as separate text files from the main HTML page. All browsers will support server side maps. Unfortunately, these run as CGI scripts. Some ISPs (service providers) charge extra for the ability to run CGI scripts and you made need special authorization from your ISP to be able to place files into the CGI script area. An additional disadvantage for server side maps is that they require the Web server to perform the calculations involved with the map. Client side maps run on the machine running the browser and so tend to be faster.

Most Web servers require server side maps to be in the NCSA or CERN form, both of which are supported by Embellish. You will need to find out the form your Web server requires and the location where the map files need to be stored.

The entry in the HTML code to use a server side map would look like this:

<A HREF="my_server_map_file">

<IMG SRC="my_image" ISMAP>

</A>

where my_image is the name of the image file and my_server_map_file will be the file containing the server side map coordinates.

Because of the limitations involved with server side maps, client side maps were created. These run on almost all browsers today, but may not work on older versions. They solve the two disadvantages of server side maps because they run on the local machine. They are faster and don't require CGI access. Because there is no control over the browsers viewing a web page you can never be sure that client side maps will work.

A client side map entry would look like this:

<IMG SRC="my_image" USEMAP=#my_client_map>

where my image is the image file and my_client_map would be a reference that is used to link to data stored in another part of the HTML file.

The combination method acts like a client side image map when the browser supports client side maps. Otherwise it runs the server side map. It gives the advantages of both types of maps, but will still require CGI access.

This type of hybrid would look like this:

<A HREF="my_server_map_file">

<IMG SRC="my_image" ISMAP USEMAP=#my_client_map>

</A>

This is the most basic overview of image maps. There are many other special tags that can be used with image maps and these tags will change over time as new ones are added. If you are interested there are many books and on-line resources available that discuss image maps in detail.

Image Map Dialog

Image Map Region Creation Dialog

At the top of the creation dialog is the geometric type of region to create. These are:

The active region (the region highlighted in the region listbox) will be displayed on the image by a blinking outline. Other inactive regions will be displayed as hatched areas. Specific colors can be set in the Setup dialog.

If a region is set to active (highlighted) but no region is outlined, then the region is empty. Simply layout the region as described in Regions and their creation.

Image Map Region Edit Dialog

This dialog is displayed when a region is to be edited after creation. It is accessed via the Edit button of the main dialog.

The top line of the dialog will display the geometric type of region being edited. This will be Rectangle, Circle, etc.

The second area of the dialog is labeled "URL to activate". This field is required for proper working of the image map and is the Web link that will be activated when the user clicks on the region.

The third area is labelled "Frame". This entry is optional and refers to the HTML TARGET tag. If text is entered, when the image map is created the region will have a TARGET tag associated with it. The TARGET has to do with the use of frames, see third party HTML resources for more information.

The forth area is labelled "Comment" and is optional. Text entered here will be shown in the main dialog's region listbox under the heading Region. This provides a simple way of differentiating regions based on text description. Creating a comment will also create an ALT tag in the image map. The ALT tag causes a text description of the region to be shown while the image is downloading. This allows users to knowledgeably click on areas of the image map before the image has completely downloaded. This makes navigating the Web much faster and is strongly encouraged. Brief descriptions are best, such as "Downloads" instead of "Link to the downloads area".

The final area is a multi-column entry area labelled "Other HTML Tags". Into this area place any HTML tags desired. Each tag must be complete and multiple tags can be on the same line or multiple lines. Any entries here are optional. Any tag possible can be used here, even those not existing at the time of this writing.

When the region being edited is the Magic Polygon, the value listed here can be set to the change the level of tolerance used in the polygon process.

One special case exists for the Region Edit dialog. When the Base region is edited, a check box labelled "Use background" will be visible and the Type will be listed as Base Image. The check box is used to designate whether the Base region will be used in creating the image map. The Base region is also known as the Default URL and is used when the mouse is clicked on an area with no region defined.

Multiple Image Maps in File

This dialog is called when the user has indicated an image map should be loaded from an existing HTML file and that file has multiple image maps defined. A list of the image maps is displayed and the user will choose which one should be used.

Image Map Insertion Dialog

This dialog is called when the user is trying to save the image map into an existing file that does not currently have the IMG tag for the indicated image URL defined. (i.e. they want to add a brand new image). By using the cursor, the user will indicate exactly where to insert the new image map. This will also position the image, it is up to the user to understand where in the HTML to place the new information. The placement can be anywhere, not just the beginning of the lines.

Replacing Image Map Dialog

This dialog is used when the user is saving into an existing client side image map and will be replacing image maps. This allows the user to choose which maps get replaced.

Image Map Setup Dialog

This dialog is started from the Setup button on the main image map dialog. It is used to customize the Image Mapper. The first area of the dialog deals with testing of the image map. The details of testing are described in Testing the Image Map, but the options available can be described here.

Testing of the image map involves the creation of a new image window which displays the image and the regions. The regions are displayed in a cross hatched pattern of a particular color. The color to use is set in the Region Color colorwell. This color is also used to display non-active regions in the normal image window.

The testing image can optionally show areas where no region is defined. To display such areas, the Show check box in Uncovered Areas must be set. The color shown in Uncovered Areas will be used to tint the uncovered areas.

The testing image can optionally show areas where regions overlap. To display such areas, the Show check box in Overlapped Areas must be set. The color shown in Overlapped Areas will be used to tint the overlapped areas.

As the mouse is moved in the test image, the URL under the mouse will be shown in the titlebar. Additional feedback can be achieved when the mouse button is clicked.

When the mouse is clicked on a region in the test image, there are two choices for feedback. This is listed under the Hit Test group. Choosing Show link text will simply cause a small window to appear which displays the URL assigned to the region. The alternative is to Launch the link. This can be used to launch the browser of your choice to go to the URL link. To do this the browser program must be entered in the Launch link entry field. The entire path is recommended, such as c:\program files\netscape\netscape.exe, and any optional command line arguments can be entered here as well. Consult your web browser documentation on how to execute it from the command line.

Most URLs that are entered will share a common prefix, such as http://www.my_site.com//. This can be entered here so that when a new region is created, this prefix will be shown as the URL. The URLs can be changed to any value desired at that time, this is merely a time saving device.

When creating objects, the Object Master Utility provides the ability to associate URLs and ALT text with each object. If your image has objects and the objects have URLs associated with them, they can be automatically included in the image map. If they are to be included, they can be either on top of the manually entered regions, or underneath them. See Region Ordering for more info on Z ordering.

Creating the Actual HTML Code

Once the regions have been created and tested, the actual image map can be created. The process is started by pressing the Create Map button on the main dialog. This will bring up the dialog for setting tags specific to the image map.

First, the type of map needs to be decided. This can be a server side map in the NCSA or CERN style, or a client side map. A combination client side - server side map can be created by checking the Combination check box. In such a case the type of server side map format still needs to be selected.

After the map type is decided, various tags and other information can be set. These are:

Once the desired and required fields are filled in, the map can be created either to a file or to the clipboard.

The Web came along and the GIF format became even more popular. Although GIFs originally had the capability to store multiple images, such files were extremely rare until Web browsers used the format to create small animation sequences. Most animated GIFs today actually deviate slightly from the official GIF description and different browsers may implement GIF features in different ways or choose not to support them at all. Because of this, the animation sequence as presented by Embellish may appear different on a particular browser (or older versions of browsers). Remember, the Web did not create GIF and so it often bends GIF a little to suit its own needs.

The animation in a GIF file is achieved by storing multiple images in sequence. These images are then shown one after another (like a child's flip book) to create the illusion of animation. Typically at the end of the sequence, it starts over again (it loops). There are actually two versions of GIF, GIF87a and GIF89a. The 89a version is the one Embellish uses for animation sequences because it contains numerous enhancements over 87a. Aside from simply storing the image data, the GIF contains the following parameters which are useful for the animation:

One of the main advantages of animated GIFs relative to other animation formats such as AVI or QT is that the software to view them is built into the browser. This means the web designer can be close to certain that people viewing the Web page will see it as intended. Animated GIFs are not suitable for doing full screen animation sequences, mostly because of bandwidth limitations. As long as a simple quick animation is the goal, animated GIFs do nicely.

As mentioned, the animated GIF consists of several independent images that appear in sequence. There is no requirement that the images be similar in terms of size or colors used, as long as the total number of colors for any given image is 256 or less. While such a configuration is possible, it is fairly uncommon. The reason for this is that such a configuration is inefficient in storing information. First, a common palette of colors can reduce the file size considerably and also allows a more fluid viewing on computers with limited color display. Second, it is rare that one image is completely unique from the next image in the sequence. Instead of storing each image separately, it is more efficient to store the changes in each image in the sequence. Thus, the most common animated GIF file will consist of a global palette of colors that all images use and then a sequence of images representing the changes in going from image to the next.

Embellish can perform all the palette manipulation and image differencing automatically during the GIF creation. However, the user will often receive superior results if they convert the source images to the desired palette before performing GIF creation.

Animated GIF Options Dialog

All GIF animation tools will have the same set of options available for creation of the actual animated GIF file. The first consideration is the palette to use. As mentioned, GIFs are limited to 8 bit color and so will always use a palette. A still GIF image must consist of 256 or less colors and an animated GIF consists of a number of still GIF images. While each image that makes up an animated GIF can consist of a unique set of colors, doing so requires the storage of each image's palette. Each palette will take approximately 756 bytes of storage. The advantage of using these individual palettes is that each image will display as best as possible, if the browser can display multiple palettes (not all do). The alternative to using individual (referred to as local) palettes is to have a single global palette. In such a case all the still images will use the same palette, and so it need only be stored once. For Embellish's GIF options, there are three choices for a global palette: the Netscape palette, an Optimum palette, and a user defined palette.

Animated GIF Filesize Optimization

Optimizing the size of the animated GIF file is achieved via the Optimize GIF File Size dialog. This dialog is started via the Optimize Size button on the main dialog. This dialog gives real-time feedback on how the large the GIF will be given the images that make it up and the settings of the parameters available on the dialog.

In the Statistics area of the dialog will be listed the expected file size and also the approximate download time for a given modem speed. Changing the listed modem speed will have no effect on the GIF file, it is provided for feedback purposes only. As various parameters relating to the animation are changed, the file size will update automatically. This allows for real-time feedback in order to easily optimize size.

Animated GIF Frame Settings Dialog

The Frame Setting dialog will also be the same for all GIF animation tools. Frame is the term used to specify the display characteristics of a given image in the animation sequence. For the GIF Animation tool it is accessed via the Frame button. For the Object Animation tool, it is accessed via the Info button in the Frame group.

GIF Animation Dialog

This dialog is labelled Manual GIF Animations and is accessed via the Web menu, GIF Animation submenu. This tool is used to assemble preexisting images into an animation sequence. This tool also provides the ability to load an animated GIF, allowing individual frames to be edited.

The editing of images is still functional while the animation is being assembled. Individual images can be painted or edited and these changes are automatically reflected in the animation sequence - even automatically updated into the preview window if it is running.

The most prominent area of the dialog is the upper left section which is dominated by a scroll region. This control displays the images (frames) that will makeup the animation. From this control, a given image can be made active by clicking on its representation with the mouse. The active image will have its parameters displayed in the various controls in the dialog, as well as in other dialogs described elsewhere. Beneath the image control will be text describing the size of the image, its frame number and the image name.

Also in this area are several buttons. Add and Remove are used to control which images are included in the animation. For an image to be included it must have already been loaded into Embellish. When Add is pressed, a small dialog appears listing all available images. Multiple selections can be made from this listbox and it is possible to select the same image into the animation sequence more than once.

Image List shows all the images being used in the animation with the top entry corresponding to the first frame. This list can be modified to change the ordering of the frames by highlighting the desired image name and using the Shift Up and Shift Down buttons.

Transition will bring up a dialog showing transition methods for going from the current frame to the next.

Frame brings up the dialog for setting specific frame parameters. This dialog is common to all GIF animation tools and is described elsewhere.

Underneath the main row of buttons are two spin boxes labelled X Offset and Y Offset. To understand these settings an understanding of how GIF stores the animation is required. GIF requires that a rectangle be specified that is large enough to contain all the images that make up the animation. There is no requirement that the images be the same size though. This rectangle becomes the reference rectangle. Because an individual image can be smaller than this rectangle, it becomes necessary to specify where inside this rectangle the image will be positioned. The GIF standard uses the upper left corner of the rectangle as the reference origin, or 0,0 point. As you move right the X value increase and as you move down the Y value increases. To position an image then, the X and Y position of its upper left corner is specified relative to the origin point. X Offset and Y Offset are merely these X and Y positions.

This area is used to give feedback about the display size of the entire animation. See the description of X Offset and Y Offset above.

The upper right side of the main dialog contains settings for running a preview of the animation. The preview is particularly powerful and will run in its own window. The preview is designed to run even as parameters are being changed, frames are being added, etc. The preview will automatically update as changes are made. Because the preview will need to recalculate as parameters are changed, it may be useful to leave it off until feedback is truly needed.

The preview is open or closed by checking the Preview check box. The preview can also be stopped by closing the preview window.

The preview will typically use all the frames in the animation. This is set by choosing the All check box. However, when fine tuning the animation only a few frames may be of interest. In this case, uncheck All and enter the range of frames desired in the Range fields. In this case only those frames will be used in the animation preview.

Normally the preview window automatically displays the frame sequence as dictated by the frame delay value. The Manual option will cause the frames to increment or decrement by user interaction. To cause the frame to change, the user can use the left and right buttons on the mouse while over the preview window's image area. Alternatively, the < and > keys can be used. If desired, automated play can be started by hitting the "L" key (loop mode). Even while the preview is in automated mode (Manual is not selected), it can be switched to manual mode by use of the mouse or keyboard keys as outlined above.

Fast is used to cause the animation preview to be created as quickly as possible. The preview created will not use the color palette specified in the GIF options and it will use other shortcuts not found in the final version of the real animation. This option can substantially decrease the time it takes to generate the preview and so is recommended when doing substantial editing of the animation.

This button is used to save the animation into an animated GIF file.

This button is used to open an existing animated GIF file. Only animated GIFs can be loaded via this method. The animation will be automatically appended onto the current animation sequence.

Options and Optimize Size bring up dialogs that are common to all Animated GIF tools. These are described elsewhere.

The images that make up the animation sequence come from images that are currently open in the main Embellish window. To unclutter this area, this check box will cause only the currently active frame image to be visible in the main Embellish window.

Animated GIF Transition Dialog

This dialog is accessed via the Transitions button off of the main dialog. Normally the animation is made up of individual images that have already been created. When the next frame is to be displayed, it simply overwrites the previous frame. It is often desirable to transition from one frame to the next, particularly when the frames have little to do with each other. This is often the case with banner ads which contain wildly contrasting images. To provide this capability, Embellish implements Transitions. The indicated transition will take place from the currently active frame into the next frame. If the active frame is the last frame, it is assumed that the animation will loop into the first frame.

The top part of the dialog shows the Transition Method. The method dictates how the transition will look. Next to the listbox, which is used to select the transition method, is a display showing what a particular transition will look like on a set of fixed images. Instead of describing the transitions here, it is easier simply to click on a given transition and use the display feedback.

The transition will cause a certain number of frames to be inserted in the animation sequence. The number of additional frame is specified in the # Frame For Transition field. More frames will give a smoother transition, but this will also increase the GIF file size.

Just as with normal frames, a delay value is associated with the newly created frames. It is simpler to think of how long the transition should take, instead of the amount of delay each frame should have. For this reason, in the Duration of Transition field the number of seconds for the entire transition to take is specified. The per frame delay will be automatically calculated.

Frame Removal is the same as is described in the Frame Dialog section. In almost all circumstances it should be left as Do nothing.

Pad Color. It is possible that the frames which anchor the transition are made from images of different sizes. Unfortunately, the transition requires that the frames be of the same size. To achieve this, the frames will be automatically padded with color as needed. The color used for this padding is specified here.

A natural extension of Embellish's object methodology is the automation of creating animated GIFs. The Object Animation tool was developed to exploit this area. The tool is available under the Web menu, Object Animator submenu. The Object Animator alleviates much of the drudgery of creating animation sequences. The basis of the animator is to start with a complete image that includes objects that will be animated.

Before exploring the actual Object Animator dialog, it is useful to think about animating objects in general. An animation sequence is made of a sequence of frames. When animating objects then, each object will have certain characteristics for each frame. This results in a lot of bookkeeping. It is usually best to animate the most complex object sequence first, then animate other objects as needed. There are two ways to indicate how an object should change during the course of the animation. One is relative positioning, the other is absolute. With relative positioning, changes to the object are specified relative to the values in the previous frame. With absolute, the values exist independently of any other frame. Embellish uses the relative positioning method.

The Object Animator dialog may appear complex. In reality it merely presents many options which can safely be ignored. Many of its features are shared with the GIF Animation tool and so may already be familiar to you.

The top of the dialog shows information about the currently selected image. Only one image can be animated at a time. To select an image, the Image button is used. This button causes a listbox to be shown, showing all images that currently contain objects. Highlight the desired image to select it.

Underneath the image description area is the Current Object group. Controls in this section are used to select and control which objects will be animated. The Add and Remove buttons work to add/remove a given object. The Initial Position button controls the positioning of the object at the start of the animation. Pressing this button brings up the Object Initial Position dialog for the current object. The scroll bar at the top of the Current Object group is used to select which object is to be edited.

There are three broad choices for the object's initial position. The position can be explicitly set with Set initial position. The coordinates for this are the object's lower left corner, relative to the image's lower left corner. The next choice is to use the object's currently displayed position, Use displayed position. The final choice is Position on screen. With this option, Embellish will position the object on the base image as indicated. For example, positioning the square on the location control in the upper left corner will cause the object to be placed in the upper left corner of the image. The object can also be started offscreen so that during the animation it will appear to come from nowhere.

Next to the Current Object group is the Frame group. In this area, frame information is set. The current or active frame is set via the Current spinbox. The first frame is 1, etc.

The Info button brings up the dialog for setting parameters specific to the current frame.

Insert and Remove are used to control the number of frames used. The After check box dictates whether a newly created frame will be inserted before or after the current frame.

The most basic animation settings are located on the main dialog's lower area. The first of these is titled Movement Settings. Two check boxes are available here. Same as previous takes all object manipulations for the current frame and makes them the same as the previous frame. Remember that Embellish uses relative object positioning, not absolute. An example may make this clear. Let's assume you have a simple image with a single object, which is located on the left edge of the image. All that is desired is to move the object towards the right of the image. You could edit the positioning of the object frame by frame, having it change the X position each time. Or, you could specify the change in X for the first frame and then have all subsequent frames use Same as previous. The result would be the same for both methods. However, if you decided to increase the change in X, the first method would require you to manually change every frame. The latter would require only that the first frame be update - the rest would do so automatically.

All frames same causes changes made in any frame to be copied to all other frames. It is easier to use this option instead of Same as previous, however it is loses some of the subtle power of the latter option.

The Position group is used to change the position of the object. This is the most common thing to perform during animations. The values here are relative changes or deltas, in pixels. The total change will be the sum of all the changes in previous frames. Change X and Change Y alter the X and Y positions of the object respectively.

The Select Area group deals with selection regions and their relationship to the current object. Only one selection path can be used for the image, it cannot vary object to object. The Set button will bring up the selection toolbar, from which a selection path can be created as normal. An object can ignore the selection path, or be visible when inside or outside. Since the selection path is any Embellish selection outline, very creative effects can be achieved by having objects move into an out of the selection area. Particularly striking results can be had by syncing two different objects to move in the same way but to have different visibility states when moving through the selected area.

The upper right side of the main dialog contains settings for running a preview of the animation. The preview is particularly powerful and will run in its own window. The preview is designed to run even as parameters are being changed, frames are being added, etc. The preview will automatically update as changes are made. Because the preview will need to recalculate as parameters are changed, it may be useful to leave it off until feedback is truly needed.

The preview is open or closed by checking the Preview check box. The preview can also be stopped by closing the preview window.

The preview will typically use all the frames in the animation. This is set by choosing the All check box. However, when fine tuning the animation only a few frames may be of interest. In this case, uncheck All and enter the range of frames desired in the Range fields. In this case only those frames will be used in the animation preview.

Normally the preview window automatically displays the frame sequence as dictated by the frame delay value. The Manual option will cause the frames to increment or decrement by user interaction. To cause the frame to change, the user can use the left and right buttons on the mouse while over the preview window's image area. Alternatively, the < and > keys can be used. If desired, automated play can be started by hitting the "L" key (loop mode). Even while the preview is in automated mode (Manual is not selected), it can be switched to manual mode by use of the mouse or keyboard keys as outlined above.

The last option for previewing is the Fast check box. Normally the preview will be an accurate representation of the what the final animation will look like. The Fast method substantially reduces the time needed to calculate the preview animation, but will shift colors from what the real animation will use. When making the initial animation sequence the Fast method should be used. Once the movements of the objects is satisfactory, turn off the Fast method to fine tune the animation.

This button is used to save the animation into an animated GIF file.

Options and Optimize Size bring up dialogs that are common to all Animated GIF tools. These are described elsewhere.

Spreadsheet is used to open a separate dialog that gives a snapshot of all the object's settings for each frame. The format is similar to that used in spreadsheets, where each column represents a type of data and each row is the frame. Aside from showing all the parameters at once, the bottom row is used to show the cumulative values for a given frame. This is done by selecting a frame (highlighting the row), the last row will then calculate the total value of a particular column up to and including that selected row. For example, if the object will rotate it may be desirable to have the total rotation be 360 degrees. The Totals row would show if and when a value of 360 was achieved.

The Spreadsheet is not limited to simply viewing parameters, it can be used to change them. Editing is accomplished by either double clicking, or using the right mouse button on the desired parameter (at the row - column intersection). If the parameter can be edited, an edit field displaying the current value will be displayed. Make the desired changes, and press the Enter key to process the change or the Escape key to abort the change.

Patterns are used to store and retrieve sequences of movements for a given object. For instance, over a ten frame sequence an object might be set to rotate a total of 180 degrees and move up 30 pixels then down 40 pixels. This pattern of movements can be saved for future use. Any time this same sequence of movements is desired, it can be loaded for use on any object. Over time a library of animation patterns can be built, allowing extremely complex sequences to be built from groups of simple patterns. When Saving a new pattern, the only decision is which frames make up the sequence, either all or a range can be used. Loading a pattern requires some thought. The pattern will be applied to the current object starting at the current frame. The pattern can be automatically repeated a number of times by using the Repeat setting. When the pattern is saved it will also save the delay values for each frame. These new values may not be desired when loading the pattern and so can be set to be ignored with Ignore frame delay value.

Save Animation and Load Animation buttons are used to save and retrieve the entire animation for the current image. Because the animation is saved separately from the image file, there is the possibility of the files becoming out of sync. To avoid this, do not edit the image file without the Object Animation tool being open. One advantage of this method is that an animation created for one image can often work on another image. For instance, if there are two image of roughly the same size with the same number of objects, the objects in one can be easily made to mimic the animation of the other simply by using the same animation file.

Advanced Animation Dialog

The last button on the Object Animation dialog is labelled Advanced, and is in the Movement Settings group. Up to this point the types of animations that could be created were built on fairly simple movements of the objects. Advanced brings up a new dialog containing numerous specialized animation tools. Each of the animation settings can be run concurrently with any of the other settings. Remember these all work on a relative basis and so the effects at any given frame will be cumulative. This means that if an object is rotated 15 degree in frame 1, it continues to be rotated 15 degrees in all other frames until it is rotated back (negative) 15 degrees. The advanced settings are:

3D Rotate: This causes rotation about the X or Y axis (horizontal or vertical) if the Z axis is specified as coming out of the computer screen. The units used are degrees. This can give really interesting effects, as if a billboard was spinning out in space. The perspective setting gives a sense of distance to the object. More perspective will make the object seem closer to the viewer.

Explode: Used to create a dissolving effect. A value of 100 roughly translates into the object doubling in size at the same time the number of pixels used actually decreases. When values total less than 0, no effect occurs.

Fade: This will only have effect on grayscale or 24 bit images. The object will blend into the background. The value given is the strength of the object's opacity, where 100 means the object is completely visible. Most objects are created with an opacity of 100, so it is this is the initial value that the fade value will begin to modify. By giving a negative fade value the object will disappear into the image.

Flip: Will cause the object to flip, either horizontally or vertically.

Rotation: Causes the object to rotate about its center point the specified number of degrees. A total rotation of 180 degrees would have the object turn upside down, 360 degrees would have no effect because the object would be back to its starting location.

Scale: This treats the X direction and Y direction separately. The scale is in percentage terms, so a total scale of 100% would double the size of the object. A total of -100% would reduce the object to 1 pixel.

Shear: Given in degrees relative to the appropriate axis, this acts just like the Shear effect under the Effects menu. An example of shearing is when text is italicized. An object can only be sheared to about 75 degrees. After this the distortion causes the object to become too large to be practically handled. When the total shear gets above 75 degrees it will be treated as if it were 75 degrees.

Swirl: Units are in percentage of rotations of center area. This effect is the same as Swirl under the Effects menu. This causes a twirling of the object. A total swirl of 100% would cause the center of the object to rotate one complete turn relative to its edges.

Visible: Make the object visible or invisible.

The Advanced Dialog also has a check box labelled Show preview. Choosing this will cause the dialog box to expand to expose a specialized preview window. This area is in addition to any other preview windows. The preview will only show the current object animation, all other objects are ignored. This preview will update real-time to any changes made to the current object. Its purpose is to give quick feedback on changes being made. The normal preview window will also show changes as they are made, however it may take longer to process and will show all animated objects.

When a file is created with a word processor, the application stores the file in a format that is probably unique to that application. A format is simply a set rules describing what information will be placed where in the file. For image files, there are a number of different file formats. Some of these formats were created to suit a specific application, for instance the PCX file format was created for use with the PC Paintbrush application. Other formats, such as GIF, were created to allow images to be compressed so that they could be more easily transmitted over phone lines.

There are three or four dominant file formats. The dominant forms are JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and Win\OS/2 style bitmaps.

JPEG offers the best compression of the dominant formats and is used by many individuals to create libraries of images. It is also becoming increasingly popular in the Internet and on-line services. The weakness of JPEG is that the true image can suffer a degradation in quality when it is saved.

GIF is another dominant form of image storage. It does not degrade the image and offers good compression. It is extensively used in the Internet and in on-line services. Its major drawback is that it is limited to images with 256 or fewer colors.

TIFF was designed to be all encompassing and very flexible. This flexibility has made it difficult to work with and allowed different variations to emerge. Therefore, a TIFF file that works with one application may not work with another application. TIFF is widely used the in the desktop publishing world. It does not degrade the image, will handle 24 bit color, and can offer good compression.

Bitmaps offer little to no compression and are rarely used to build image libraries or transmit files. This format is required by the operating system when images are used as backgrounds or in other system related ways. It is in this capacity where they will be most often used.

Embellish Format

This format allows the storage of maps, objects and selected areas. These features are unique to Embellish and are not supported in most file formats. If the image is stored in a format other than Embellish, these features will be lost. There are no options when saving in this format.

To save a file in this format, use the File menu, submenu Save As.

Because of the ability of this format to support objects, always use the Embellish format when saving files that are being edited. Use other formats for distributing the finished images.

Bitmaps

The two important types of bitmaps supported are Windows and OS/2 style bitmaps. Bitmaps can save any images in any color depth. Embellish should read any of these type of bitmaps with the following exceptions. The lack of support for these variations of bitmaps is usually of little consequence.

1) Black and White images that are stored by using modified Huffman encoding cannot be read.

2) Embellish cannot read or write images that have halftone encoding.

This dialog is accessed when choosing menu File>Save As and then selecting the Options button after the Bitmap format has been selected.

When saving bitmaps, choose either Windows or OS/2 style. Both styles additionally support RLE compression. The purpose of RLE is to compress the image file to make it smaller. The RLE (Run Length Encoding) encoding scheme is not very useful in for most real world images, however it can be useful for cartoon like images that contain few colors.

GIF

The GIF format limits the number of colors in the image to 256 or less. When saving a 24 bit image to the GIF format, it will automatically have its colors reduced without warning. GIF is a compressed format that is widely used.

GIF can be used to store single images or multiple images within a single file. When using the Save As menu command to store a file, the file created will contain a single image. Similarly, when using the regular Embellish file open procedures only the first image found in the GIF file will be loaded. For situations where it is desired to work with all the images in a multi-image GIF file (often called Animated GIFs) use the GIF Animation tool, available under the Web menu.

This dialog is accessed when choosing menu File>Save As and then selecting the Options button after the GIF format has been selected.

When choosing options for GIFs, the user will be presented with a representation of what the image will look like given the particular settings for the GIF. This provides the user with the ability to fine tune the image's stored size VS the quality of the image. The saved image is presented on the right of the dialog while the current image is presented on the left. The text above the stored image shows the approximate file size. The actual file size may vary slightly depending on the save parameters chosen. A Download Time is also provided. This parameter is for feedback purposes only and shows the approximate amount of time the image will take to download for a given modem speed.

There are two GIF standards, GIF87a and GIF89a. GIF89a has added capabilities to the GIF87a standard. This format should always be selected unless user specifically needs to create an image for use in older applications that only read GIF87a files. 87 and 89 represent the years that the standards were released, so an application would have to been produced before 1989 in order not to read the GIF89a format.

"The Graphics Interchange Format (c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(SM) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated."

The LZW algorithm used in processing GIF files is licensed under U.S. Patent No. 4,558,302 and foreign counterparts.

Kodak PhotoCD

JPEG

A digital image is a series of pixels that hold color. JPEG uses algorithms to create a mathematical approximation of these pixels. Because the result is only an approximation, JPEG is considered to be "lossy". The advantage of this ability to allow error in the stored image is extremely high rates of compression. JPEG allows the user, by virtue of the quality setting, to determine how much error is tolerable and so affect how much compression will be achieved. This flexibility means that the user has several parameters that can be set when storing an image into the JPEG format. These parameters are discussed below.

This dialog is accessed when choosing menu File>Save As and then selecting the Options button after the JPEG format has been selected. When choosing options for JPEGs, the user will be presented with a representation of what the image will look like given the particular settings for the proposed JPEG. This provides the user with the ability to fine tune the image's stored size VS the quality of the image. The saved image is presented on the right of the dialog while the current image is presented on the left. The text above the stored image shows the approximate file size. The actual file size may vary slightly depending on the save parameters chosen. A Download Time is also provided. This parameter is for feedback purposes only and shows the approximate amount of time the image will take to download for a given modem speed.

This setting affects the size of file that the JPEG save routine will create. It causes a trade off between compressed file size against the aesthetic quality of the saved image: the higher the quality setting, the larger the JPEG file, and the closer the output image will be to the original input. The goal is to choose the lowest quality setting (smallest file) that decompresses into something visually indistinguishable from the original image.

For this goal the quality setting should be between 50 and 95; the default of 75 is often about right. If defects are visible at quality 75, then go up 5 or 10 units at a time. The optimal setting is an aesthetic judgment that varies image to image.

Quality values above about 95 are not recommended for normal use; the compressed file size goes up dramatically for small gains in output image quality. Values below 50 will produce very small files of low image quality. Settings around 5 to 10 might be useful in preparing an index of a large image library. Such files can be of use when designing web pages for use with a LOWSRC image. In such a web page, two copies of the image are provided, one normal image and a second copy of very small file size. The small file is downloaded first so that the user can quickly begin working with the web page. After the page is setup, the higher quality image is downloaded.

NOTE:

Quality values below about 25 generate 2-byte quantization tables, which are considered optional in the JPEG standard. Some commercial JPEG programs may be unable to decode the resulting file.

This option will cause extra effort to be used in compressing the file. The compression will take longer to achieve, however decompression time will remain the same. This setting will usually be left on.

This causes the information that makes up the image to be stored so that the image will be read in blocks spaced about the image. This is useful when the image is being downloaded from the Internet. It makes the image appear more complete when only part of the data is available. The file size will increase slightly. Interlacing is somewhat new to the JPEG standard. Applications written before 1997 may not be able to read interlaced JPEGs, however most current applications have adopted the standard.

This smoothes the input image to eliminate dithering noise. The value selected, ranging from 1 to 100, indicates the strength of smoothing. A 0 value will turn off smoothing. The Smooth option filters the image to eliminate fine-scale noise. A smoothing factor of 10 to 50 gets rid of dithering patterns in the input file, resulting in a smaller JPEG file and a better-looking image. Too large a smoothing factor will visibly blur the image.

This method can be either Fast, Slow, or Float. The DCT refers to the transform used to create the actual JPEG data. This mathematical process works best in what is knows as floating point arithmetic. If you computer has a floating point coprocessor (almost all do), choose Float. Otherwise, a fast but slightly inaccurate method can be chosen, Fast or Slow.

Embellish utilizes JPEG support based on the works of the following individuals. The Independent JPEG Group has no direct connect to Dadaware, nor do they endorse or recommend Embellish.

The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG software

This software is the work of Tom Lane, Philip Gladstone, Luis Ortiz, Jim Boucher, Lee Crocker, George Phillips, Davide Rossi, Ge' Weijers, and other members of the Independent JPEG Group.

LEGAL ISSUES

The authors make NO WARRANTY or representation, either express or implied, with respect to this software, its quality, accuracy, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. This software is provided "AS IS", and you, its user, assume the entire risk as to its quality and accuracy.

This software is copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, Thomas G. Lane. All Rights Reserved except as specified below.

Permission for use of this software is granted only if the user accepts full responsibility for any undesirable consequences; the authors accept NO LIABILITY for damages of any kind. Permission is NOT granted for the use of any IJG author's name or company name in advertising or publicity relating to this software or products derived from it. This software may be referred to only as "the Independent JPEG Group's software". We specifically permit and encourage the use of this software as the basis of commercial products, provided that all warranty or liability claims are assumed by the product vendor.

MetaFiles

Embellish will only read MetaFiles, it will not write them. MetaFiles are actually a series of drawing commands, not pixel data. Because of this, MetaFiles are resolution independent. Embellish loads MetaFiles and will display them, but it will not allow any operations to be performed on them. MetaFiles must first be converted to raster data. They are then treated as any other type of file. Because of the peculiarities of MetaFiles, Embellish will not perform batch conversions or slideshows with them.

Image information can be stored in two different ways, bitmap (raster) or vector. A bitmap breaks an image down into discrete bits of information or pixels. In vector storage, an image is stored by mathematics that represent the parts of the image. For example consider an image that is a white circle on a black background. As a bitmap, this image would be a series of dots that are either black or white. For a vector map, the image is the described by the position of the circle, its radius and the width and height of the background. To display the vector map, the mathematics are used to generate pixel data.

The important difference between bitmaps and vector maps is that a vector map can be continuously resized without causing any deterioration in the image. When a bitmap's size is doubled, the edges get noticeably jagged. If the bitmap is reduced by a factor of ten and then increased

back to the original values, the bitmap will suffer a tremendous loss in quality. A vector map going through such resizing would suffer no changes.

Metafiles are a form of vector maps. BTW, metafiles are often referred to as clipart. Embellish operates with bitmaps. It is a simple matter to convert a metafile into a bitmap. But because of the deterioration that results when resizing bitmaps, it is desirable to convert the metafile into a bitmap only after the metafile has been sized correctly. Instead of automatically converting metafiles into bitmaps, Embellish retains the image in metafile format until the user explicitly converts it to bitmap format.

Once a MetaFile has been loaded, the menu will change to reflect options unique to MetaFiles. The one menu command of interest is "Convert Metafile". This will bring up a dialog that allows the user specify the dimensions to use when converting the MetaFile into bitmap format. Once converted, the image can be treated like any other bitmap. It is a one way procedure, bitmaps cannot be converted into MetaFiles.

PBM

PBM files are an excellent choice when writing custom image manipulation code and there is a need for a simple input and output method.

This dialog is accessed when choosing menu File>Save As and then selecting the Options button after the PBM format has been selected.

Saving as ASCII means any word processor can read the file, so it is editable if needed. ASCII files will be much larger than the alternative, Binary files. But, Binary files can not be simply edited.

PCX

The PCX format handles all color depths supported by Embellish. Embellish should handle up to version 5 PCX. This is not a particularly efficient format. Users should avoid it unless they specifically need to use this format for exchange purposes. There are no options for this format.

PNG

PNG is an excellent choice for archiving images. It supports virtually all color depths, and provides good compression. Embellish supports PNG in all its variations. PNG does support masking, so it will save masks created with Embellish.

This dialog is accessed when choosing menu File>Save As and then selecting the Options button after the PNG format has been selected.

If the color depth of the image is 8 bit, a transparency color can be used in the same capacity as with GIF files. This is optional.

This indicates that the application reading the file should present the image against this background color. It is optional.

Alpha channel is another way of saying mask. If the image has a mask, this includes it. This is optional.

This causes the image to be stored in chunks so that during reading the user can see an outline of the image. This is used mostly with the Internet.

Sun Raster

This format is used mostly with Sun UNIX computers. It supports all color depths and has no options.

TARGA

Embellish does both RLE and non-RLE style files. TARGA files are somewhat uncommon, but their ease of use makes their support easy to add and so many popular software packages support its use. TARGA does support all color depths that Embellish supports. There are no options for TARGA, other than RLE encoding. This is not a particularly efficient format, especially the non-RLE version. Users should avoid it unless they specifically need to use this format for exchange purposes.

The code to read Targa images is based on tgatoppm.c by Jef Poskanzer. This is the copyright information from that file.

tgatoppm.c - read a TrueVision Targa file and write a portable pixmap. Partially based on tga2rast, version 1.0, by Ian MacPhedran. Copyright (C) 1989 by Jef Poskanzer. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

TIFF

The TIFF formats supports all color depths that Embellish supports. The TIFF format is very popular in desktop publishing and is widely supported.

This dialog is accessed when choosing menu File>Save As and then selecting the Options button after the TIFF format has been selected.

The TIFF format supports several choices for compression methods. These are No Compression, LZW Compression, and PackBits Compression. LZW Compression uses an algorithm similar to that used with the GIF file format while PackBits is another type of compressed output. The best choice will vary depending on the image being stored.

The TIFF formats supports encoding for use in fax transmissions. These are Group 3 and Group 4 which are dictated by the Fax standards. All fax type storage will be black and white.

TIFF allows the image to be stored in a variety of orientations. Embellish, allows it to be specified as top down or bottom up.

A black and white pixel value will be either 0 or 1. Normally, black corresponds to 0. The TIFF format allows this to be specified either way. Black is minimum means that the 0 pixel value corresponds to black. Otherwise, 0 corresponds to white.

Normally the image data stored in a TIFF file uses the RGB colorspace. As an option, the data can be stored in the CMYK colorspace. Not all programs that support TIFF are required to be able to read the data when stored in CMYK format. This option is only available when the Embellish image is 24 bit, it will not be used on palette or grayscale images. The typical reason for choosing this option is that the file will be taken to a printing service to make hard copy. Most printing services are designed to work in the CMYK colorspace, so there is less confusion if your image is setup that way.

The code for reading and writing TIFFs is based on code written by Sam Leffler. The following copyright notice is required as terms of using his library.

Copyright (c) 1991, 1992 Sam Leffler

Copyright (c) 1991, 1992 Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Utah RLE

This is a fairly esoteric format, Embellish only supports the reading of Utah RLE files, it will not write them.

X11 Bitmap

The X11 format is for black and white images only and is used in the X Windows environment. There are no options.