★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION GRAPHIQUE ★ Smart Plus|Amstrad Action ★ |
| SmART (Sizin Amstrad) | Smart II (Amstrad Action) | SmArt Plus (SmArt+) | SmART |
I've never really wanted to be an artist (which is why, most probably, I'm not). An art critic seems much more fun. Slagging four years of someone's work and making various references to potato shapes whilst watching someone's face crumple as their life falls down around their ears is much more my style. Besides, I don't look good in a nightie and floppy hat (despite the vicious rumours). Up until now. people who wanted the create nice artwork on their CPC have had to use the OCP Art Studio. This had one mam disadvantage - it couldn't take advantage of the extra capabilities of the Ptus range, Ail that looks set to change though, as Rob Buckley's new package, SmArt+, was written especially to use these extra abilities of the new (well, newer, anyway) range of CPC-type machine things. For the purposes of this review, we'll be comparing SmArt+ with the current hero of the CPC art world (what, like this is a culture thang?). Advanced OCP Art Studio. So here we go. Icon see for miles The first thing you'll notice when you load up SmArt+ is that the layout is completely different from OCPs top menu bar system. Instead, there are loads of icons at the bottom of the screen to do with what you will. The features are fairly standard:
SmArt+ may let you down in the 'reams of extra but wholly useless features' stakes, though. You see, OCP offers facilities for protecting inks, stretching boxes, rotating palettes, switching modes, grid locking, and so much more. But what do they do anyway? SmArt+ lacks these features, but if you ever find a need for them you're probably |ust an alien, and I refuse to consider aliens when reviewing software. So why SmAr(+? Well, Plus owners will probably be annoyed that the extra capabilities of their machines aren't catered for by a great majority of CPC software. Where, then, does SmM+ corne into action? Probably the biggest advantage is the huge amount of new colours you can access for your picture. Smoothly blended colours actually make up for the rather chunky pixels of the CPC in a lot of cases. Point two is overscan. Fab stuff is overscan, as it lets you display your picture until it actually drops off the screen, instead of having a square border on a minute rectangle that's laughingly called a full screen. But tell me, world, what use is an overscan picture, when 99% of the CPC owning population wouldn't have the first clue how to display it outside the cosy environment of the art package? Well, with a bit of luck, by the time this review hits the streets, Radical Software will have added a tab and useful liltle display routine, letting us all enjoy overscan pictures in our own programs. Let's cut the tosh here il you've already got OCP Art Studio, you probably won't be In the market lor another art package. If you've got a normal CPC. it won't work anyway (this isn't a fault - it's riot supposed to). But if you really want to see what your Plus can do, run out and get SmArt as it's got most of the stuff you'll need, albeit with a little less grace.
|
So how easy is it to use? Well, to be honest, Ihere's not much to choose between either the OCP package and SmArt+ in all normal artwork stakes, as most of the standard arty features have been included. On top of this, SmArt+ can handle more that one screen at a time, allowing you to cut and paste between pictures very easily (now if only someone would do that with a CPC word processor).
