CompuServe Thread

Wes, do you have AD Pro? If so take the iff in there to convert or save it out from the pc as a tiff or gif and convert it in AD Pro. I have done this numerous times with no problems. Also you might want to rescale it to video dimensions. jmb

TPaint doesn't load 256 color iff images at this time. Please convert it to a 24 bit RGB it should load then.

Wesley, I have just started doing what you are attempting. We've been at it for about a month. Sometimes files came in fine and other times I had the distortion problem. Then last week a light bulb went on above my head. What should the size of the file in TPaint be. So, I pulled several framestore files into AD Pro. They all measured 752 x 480. A few people on this borad also have told me that there is a difference in pixel shape between the Amiga and the PC. I forget which is which, but going from the PC to the Amiga I have to set the horizontal scale to 115% and going the other way I set the scale to 85%. My notes on this are at the office and I may have reversed them so, let me double check. Thirdly, the people at HiJack told me that they have a problem with there program and IFF files. They suggested that I use some other kind of file like PCX and then at the Amiga side convert it to IFF. So, I convert a file on the PC to PCX, the bring it into AD Pro. In AD Pro, I convert it to either a Framestore or IFF file. TPaint will read the IFF file, whereas, the Toaster Switcher requrires the Framestore version. Since I have been setting the correct pixel size (752 x 480) all files have come into the Amiga without any distortion. I only recently had a problem with a file that would not show up on TPaint, but did on the Toaster Switcher. You can read my question that I posted earlier this evening. Fred

Wes, You may have 2 problems: color density and size. The ToasterPaint doesn't like anything less than 24 bit color. (Try loading a gray scale image to see what I mean). Also, if you are not 752 x 480 it can be a problem, especially if it is larger in the x dimension. But of these two, the color depth is the most important, I think. In HiJaak, check if it has an IFF24 available that will allow you to save it out as a 24 bit IFF. If you have the older HiJaak it may only allow 4 or 8 bit color. The easiest would be to take the file off the PC as TIFF, then laod into ADPro, scale so that x:y pixel aspect is 1:1.17 then save as IFF 24 bit. ToasterPaint will load it no problem then. wmc – via Autopilot!

The image needs to be 24-bit RGB. ToasterPaint doesn't yet support 8 bit images directly. If you have trouble converting to 24-bit you can load the 256 color image into LightWave, use it as a BG Image, and render a medium res frame (antialias if necessary). With the image now displayed on DV1, go into ToasterPaint and select "Grab from DV1", in a few seconds, the image will be loaded into Tpaint and you can go from there. Of course, the simplest route requires you to have Art Department Pro, ImageFX, or ImageMaster on your Amiga system. Trent/ReAnimators

I frequently do what tried. I do try to use 256 colors but I don't know if that's where your problems lie. I've found that using TIFF files produces much better results than GIFs-don't know why. Be aware that you also have to resize the image so that it has the correct aspect ratio for TV. I use Paint Shop Pro (Windows) or Image Alchemy (DOS) to handle my image manipulation on the PC side. Both are shareware available on CIS. ADPro handles those chores on the Amiga side. I've also found that if you're doing this a lot, it makes sense to set up a null modem connection between the two machines. That way you're not limited on file size, and depending on the protocol you use, you can send batches of files at the same time. I use ProComm on the PC, and BackTalk (a freeware program available on CIS) for this task. I know I'm a little off the point, but I hope this helps -dk

As others have said, Toasterpaint doesn't handle 256-color IFFs. (The files are probably valid, it's just a limitation of ToasterPaint and LW. LW loads 256-color IFF but assumes they are all grayscale.) You probably want to use the ReadPICT program, see the Pict.Readme text file in your Toaster directory. It explains how to use it.