| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ CREATION GRAPHIQUE ★ PICASSO ★ |
PICASSO (Amstrad Action) | PICASSO (CPC Attack) |
Picasso. the manual claims, runs on all CPCs and PLUS machines. It does too, except that 464 owners need a disc drive! Once the program loads, an icon bar. similar to those in 16-bit programs such as MacPaint or Deluxe Paint, appears down the side of the screen. All operations are selected from this by moving the mam crosshair off the drawing area onto it using the keyboard - there's no joystick or mouse support' At this point, the crosshair becomes an icon highlighter. Each icon brings up a further menu, from which the program's features can be selected. What are the features? First and foremost, Picasso only works in MODE 1. Those wanting to produce highly colourful masterpieces in MODE 0, or plans and diagrams in MODE 2, will need to look elsewhere. But don't dismiss it because of that; many of the features that it provides are well worth taking into consideration.
Picasso has 4k of memory devoted to "picture memory'. This means that up to ten individual pictures of any size (so long as they don't exceed 4k) can be loaded into memory and. at any time, picked out and placed anywhere on the screen. Where this feature really comes into its own is in the "manipulation" options. Each picture can be rotated by any degree (all ther packages only rotate in 90-degree steps), rescale. and using the powerful 'points-option, pictures can be given perspective. This feature is undoubtedly Picasso's strong point. Picasso's fill options are also powerful. In addition to the usual, single-colour fill, there is a pattern fill which works in a different way to other packages. Whereas most packages allow selection from a set of predefined patterns (which can be edited), with Picasso the pattern must be grabbed from the screen. This allows the creation of large and complex patterns. However, there is the disadvantage that an area cannot be filled with a pattern containing the original colour of the area: so if a pattern contains all four colours, it can't be used to fill! The other two fills are "random", giving an airbrush-type effect with the proportions of the two colours available and ' spherical ", which produces a sunburst effect, with one colour being more concentrated towards the centre of the fill. Great care must be taken when filling, because there's no "undo" function: if the fill leaks out. the whole picture could be destroyed. Line drawing features are pretty standard, although lines are not rubber-banded which makes it more difficult to see the precise effect of what is being drawn. One nice option is "curve", which will draw a curve between three specified points. There is also an option called "asteroid", a parabola-style shape. Text handling, unfortunately, is nothing special. Standard 8x8 fonts can be loaded (a few are supplied with the package), and can be used in normal or "highlighted" mode. The latter giving the text a different coloured outline. In addition, a thin font ("concise") is available. To obtain effects such as double height, a process of putting text into picture memory, reselectmg it. resizing and placing it on the screen must be accomplished. However, a bog-standard font editor is provided in the program Filtering is a powerful option (also available on Advanced Art Studio) to change any ink in a specified area to another. It's faster than filling, but not as versatile. The zoom (magnify) function is a simple enlargement at the top of the screen, but altering pixels is a very slow process. Picasso possesses some excellent features. The manipulation options are very versatile, and the different sorts of fill can be used to produce excellent effects. There are a few things that spoil it though: some bugs remain (such as erased graphics reappearing in an area of the screen) which SD Microsystems need to sort out. and it's slow in some instances. Also disappointing is that a small part of the screen (where the icon bar is) cannot be edited, and that a picture must be saved before exiting and loading into a new program to print it out! Overall, Picasso is a useful program, especially for more technical drawings: I should imagine that some experienced CPC artists are already dribbling at some of its original features. As a first art package, though, there are a number of alternatives... CPC ATTACK! |
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