ADPro Q's
30 messages in this thread
I have just learned of the impending release of ADPro 2.0! I have been
using 1.0.3 just long enough to fall in love with it and here comes another
version!
My quick questions are:
Will this be an affordable upgrade?
Will we have JPEG support?
And might I ever be able to output to my Montage FR-1 film recorder using
ADPro?
Lastly, will there be a neccessary upgrade to my Epson 300C scanner loader?
Thanks in advance.
// \X/ -BiL
Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes.
The upgrade will be affordable. Especially so if you purchased ADPro very
recently. Yes it has JPEG support for both compressing and decompressing.
Yes we may someday do support for the Montage however the FR-1 is a getting
a bit obsolete. We currently support the Polaroid CI 3000 and 5000 and the
Lasergraphics LFR. Yes, you will need to patch your EPSON driver for ADPro
but this patch will be made available at no charge.
pk
Could you tell me if there is a PICT format loader available for ADPro?
(PICT is a format used by some pictures on the Macintosh. I found that
there are some 8- and 32-bit pictures in this format which I would like to
convert.) I am currently using ADPro v. 1.0.3. Many thanks.
PICT is currently unsupported as most of the elements of PICT have to do
with structured, rather than bit-mapped graphics. It is being worked upon
however, as a lower priority project. No dates, no promises. But progress
is being made.
pk
Thank you for the information about a possible PICT loader for ADPro. I do
not have any pressing need for it, but it would be nice to have. Many
thanks.
Wonderful,Wonderful,Wonderful, and Wonderful.
I upped to ADPro fairly recently, but how do we estimate our upgrade costs?
Very glad JPEG is present in 2.0 to be sure. I would love to be able to
output to my FR-1 from ADP. I know FR-1 is a couple of years older than
other film recorders but obsolete!?! I see them being sold still to this
day so they must still be in production, and FR-1 has higher resolution
than most other units, of which I havn't seen any higher. Lastly, does the
new Epson scanner driver make use of any more of the scanner's native
functions… such as the built in dithering and ability to 'drop' colors?
Thanks for all your efforts.
// \X/ -BiL
First, ADPro is changing its list price. From $240 to $299. The upgrade
will cost $75 including shipping in the US, $90 elsewhere. But, if you got
ADPro on or after September 1st, 1991, the upgrade costs $30. The upgrade
is the full new product sans binder, which you should already have. Notices
will be going out shortly to those who are registered… information and
instructions will be included.
Our EPSON support doesn't use the scanner's drop-out color capability, but
you can do this in ADPro so there's no loss. Dithering modes are supported
since we added the monochrome mode.
FR-1 support? I don't see it as likely – but things change.
pk
I'm curious as to why I have to pay $75 for the upgrade, while others who
have purchased ADPro after 9/1 only have to shell out $30. I believe I
purchased my version in July or August, and as far as I know, there have
been no upgrades since then. At least I wasn't notified of any.
John – K7KB (via Whap!)
Have you, in the time that you have owned ADPro, derived any benefits from
having owned the product? People who purchased recently (the definition of
recent is totally subjective – we picked September 1st) have derived less
benefit from owning the product, therefore we are providing an additional
discount to them.
Would you feel better if we had picked a different date closer to the
present? (Thereby making the discount available to fewer people and putting
more distance between the time that you purchased the product and when the
discount would apply). A date had to be picked.
The bottom line is: We believe you will derive MORE than $75 in benefit
from the upgraded ADPro. If you liked ADPro 1.0.3, then you have reasonable
grounds to believe that ASDG has done its homework and is offering a good
value at the costs they have chosen.
pk
Yes, I have derived some benefit from owning ADPro 1.0.3, but I'm not
so sure I will with 2.0 unless I know more about it. The price of $75
seems kind of steep for an upgrade unless it is a MAJOR upgrade,
almost a totally different program. So maybe a little more
information from ASDG is in order just so that we know what to
expect. I do know that it will incorporate JPEG compression, but what
else? Probably the best way to handle this is charge $50 for the
upgrade period, no matter when you bought the program. Oh sure, the
recent purchasers would grumble more, but a lot of others would
grumble less. Sometimes you have to balance the scales of fairness.
I don't think for one minute that I've given you all the information
you'd need to make an informed choice about the upgrade. All
registered users will be getting a detailed explanation of the new
capabilities in the package we are sending out beginning this week.
It is, as you put it, a MAJOR upgrade. The information kit you will
receive will explain how and why.
If anyone reading this is unsure if they are registered or not, please
call Ann or Gina at (608) 273 – 6585.
John, I don't think I agree with you. If ADPro 2.0 is "…almost a
totally different program" I'd say that ASDG is being more than fair
charging $75 for the upgrade. If it were a totally different program
you'd have to go to your dealer and pay retail for it. Many times
upgrades to existing programs require as much time and effort as
creating the original version of the program. The cost of that time
must be paid for if small developement houses expect to stay in
business. ASDG has been in the Amiga market since the beginning,
they produce quality products, and I want to see them stick around —
they can't do that it they give away "feature enhancements".
Steve, well you are not the only one who has disagreed with me on
certain subjects, and certainly won't be the last 8^) I haven't
posted any more messages on the ADPro 2.0 upgrade because I was going
to reserve my final judgement based on the features described in the
update notice. But it does seem like $75 is a little high for an
upgrade unless 2.0 includes some major new features. I've spent money
on upgrades before where the only thing that was done is change the
user interface a little and/or fix a few bugs that sh be free anyway.
I fully realize that developer's should be compensated for the time
spent on program development and I will probably get the upgrade when
I get the notice in the mail. ASDG did a good job on ADPro, but the
only other ASDG product I have ever purchased was FaccII, which was
never enhanced to include support for Hard drives, so I was
disappointed with that.
I can assure you that ADPro 2.0 is a MAJOR revision to ADPro 1.0.3. Also,
if you recall, we did do an entirely FREE upgrade from 1.0.0, 1.0.1 and
1.0.2 to 1.0.3, so we haven't shied away from no charge updates when they
were appropriate.
The mailings, which should give you the information you need, are starting
to be mailed this week. Mailing will probably last all of next week as well
lest we break the back of our kindly ol'postal officer.
pk
What's new in this upgrade?
Steve, all registered owners will be getting a detailed information
packet in the mail very shortly. There are literally hundreds of
things new in the upgrade, about a dozen or so stand out as major
points. These are detailed in the packet being mailed.
dear asdg, will owners of art department get the mailing, or only adpro
owners? kevin
Both will Kevin. We will be offering upgrades to TAD owners as well.
dear asdg-thanks for the response-you mentioned in an earlier message that
you were not supporting pict,pict2 for the Mac,because they usually contain
structured graphics-can you think of any reason why there ARE no structured
graphics type programs on the Amiga on the level of Mac stuff ? No combo
paint structured graphics stuff, no high end postscript illustration stuff,
no major CAD stuff…i always thought it was the interlace flicker that
kept em away 🙂
Thanks, Perry. I look forward to getting my information packet.
I was in such a hurry to send in my upgrade voucher, I forgot to put down
my suggestions for improvements. I thought of one the other day that would
be really nifty for those of us who do cross-platform stuff: Bring the GIF
stuff up to full specification. I've had a number of requests for
converting Amiga side animations (with really slow frame rates) to GIF
animations. Right now, the best we can do is to transfer the frames one at
a time to GIF and then do the bulk of the work on the Pee Cee side.
Conversely, all I can do is either load the first frame or do some sort
of a composite when I get a GIF animation. I think that it would be
wonderful if we had an OPTION of full GIF89a capability. The nice thing
about asking you here is that I know you have access to the specifications.
Lee Bosch
– via Whap!
I will relay this information to the keeper of GIF. General answer: ADPro's
dealings with animation require a careful rethinking of the hows and whys
that make up the program. We have begun this thought and hope to provide a
comprehensive solution when done.
pk
Your reply here reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask. Hope it
is not a redundant question.
I'd love a utility prog that would
1) take as input any ANIM file.
2) have ARexx commands to move frame by frame through the file.
(ie. NextFrame, Frame 15, FirstFrame, LastFrame, etc)
3) deliver those frames to ADPro one at a time for processing.
(could be by just saving the frames as IFF files; or actually
converting the image to ADPro data in memory, and ADPro 'grabs'
the info via a ANIM input handler.)
4) then you would process the frame.
5) then another utility that takes the ADPro data and remakes an
ANIM file out of it.
I realize above can already be done by splitting an anim up into seperate
IFF files, processing them, and then remaking it into another ANIM file.
Above only integrates it with ADPro better, and adds ARexx (or ADPro)
commands to manipulate the anim frames with. Sure would make ADPro
processing of anims easier!
But I'll live on. Just thought I'd bring this up. Any chance, ever?
Thanks for listening…. am looking forward to 2.0!
–jp–seattle–
Your suggestion is exactly along the lines of one thing we have been
thinking about. Something like this is likely to happen in the future.
pk
Thanks… will look forward to it. Whenever.
Leslie B. suggested that I use the Director 2 to do anim support for ADPro.
Great suggestion, huh? Marry these two babies 🙂
–jp–seattle–
Try leaving your message to "Right Answers" here in AmigaVend. I am not
sure if The Director version 2 can do ALL you want to do but it can control
anims VERY well and they do support ARexx rather extensively.
Excellent thought!
Yeah, of course the Director 2 could take apart and put together your anims
for you. Shoot, probably more flexibily than ADPro, cause Director is
*made* to do just that. Great! Thanks Leslie.
–jp–seattle–
Thanks, I think…
"ADPro's dealings with animation require a careful rethinking of the hows
and whys that make up the program. We have begin this thought and hope to
provide a comprehensive solution when done."
You people sure talk funny out there in Wisconsin. I think I've been
diplomatically told "not at this time" in so many hundred words.
I can guess what the problems might be, but I was hoping maybe to even
work one frame at a time. I'm sure something could be done with
compositing if I could only get it to stop at a specified frame.
I'll word this in the form of a suggestion:
When the GIF loader encounters a animated GIF, it should ask what frame
to load (more importantly, through an AREXX script) and then do a composite
with 100% replacement of the affected regions until the frame number is
reached. In this way, we could convert the animation to an individual
frame or frames for later conversion and assembly in a "real" animation
format.
Lee Bosch
– via Whap!
Yes received upgrade info in the mail. Figures that I had mine 45 days to
long to get the cheaper upgrade but thats my dumb luck! ;{) Maybe the
monochrome support will give me what I am really after…1 bitplane
scanning. Makes scanning logos so much easier…no clean up! If there is
anything I can do to help get FR-1 support just let me know… short of
packing my recorder to your place that is!
Looking forwar to new product…
-BiL