Choose the Open... command from the File menu. GIFConverter will list all the documents that it can open. Use the Open box the same as you would in any Macintosh program.
Note: GIFConverter can’t read Encapsulated PostScript (EPSF) files. To do so accurately requires a PostScript interpreter. There are some commercial products, such as TScript or Freedom of Press, that can read PostScript data and produce TIFF files.
Normally, Macintosh programs rely on information stored with the file to find out what kind of file it is. GIFConverter will tell you what type of file it is when you click on it.
Sometimes a downloaded file will not have the right type. GIFConverter can identify most files by their extensions (such as “.gif”).
If a file doesn’t show in the open box at all, try dropping the file on the GIFConverter icon. GIFConverter will examine the file, and if it is of a type that GIFConverter recognizes, it will open it.
Choose the New command from the File menu to create a new document. When you save the document, GIFConverter will prompt you for the file’s name and type.
New documents are handy when you want to make a file using the Clipboard. You can cut a picture from another program and paste it into the new window.
To save your document., choose the Save command from the File menu. GIFConverter will save the document as the type shown in the status bar and the name shown in the window title. If you have never saved the document before, the Save command will behave as the Save As... command.
To save the document with a new name or type, choose the Save As ... command. GIFConverter will give you the usual Save box with a suggested name based on the file type and display options. The shadowed box is a pop-up menu: Click on it to choose the type you wish to save the file as.
The Save a Copy... command works the same as the Save As... command, except that it does not change the window title or GIFConverter’s idea of the file type.
To close a document, click on the close box in the upper left corner of the window or choose the Close command from the File menu.
If you haven’t saved the document since you last changed it, GIFConverter will ask you if you want to save the changes.
Choosing the Revert command from the File menu will cause GIFConverter to reread the document from the last file you saved it to. This may reduce the quality of what you see on the screen if you last saved the file in a format such as MacPaint, which doesn’t store color.
Note: You may not revert a document saved as EPSF.
You can control all the display modes through the Display menu.
Choosing the One Bit command causes GIFConverter to use the old QuickDraw format for drawing to the screen and printing. This format allows up to eight colors. This is the only format allowed if your Macintosh doesn’t have Color QuickDraw.
The One Bit command is also useful for making halftones for black-and-white printing.
The Eight Bit command, available if your Macintosh has Color QuickDraw, causes the display to use up to 256 colors or gray levels. The number of colors you can see on the screen depends on the Monitors settings in the Control Panel. For best results, use a color card capable of 256 colors or more, and set the Monitors Control Panel for 256 or more colors. Using less than 256 colors can result in a poor display with incorrect colors.
Choosing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, or Black displays one of the components of a four-color separation. A four-color separation is used in printing to create full color graphics. It uses four inks. Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are used because they are what we call the subtractive primaries, colors that can be used to create any color on paper. The process also uses Black because it is hard to create accurate grays by mixing colored inks.
Choosing Grayscale displays the a gray version of the image, like watching a color television program on a black-and-white TV.
Choosing Color displays a color image. In One-Bit mode, GIFConverter creates a special format needed for color printing in this mode. On a Color QuickDraw Macintosh, the colors will display as they print on an ImageWriter II. On other Macintoshes, the display may be almost black, but GIFConverter will still print in color on the ImageWriter II.
The default modes are Eight Bit and Color if you can display more than two colors on your screen, otherwise One Bit and Grayscale.
Dithering is a method used to represent grayscale or color images on a black and white screen. GIFConverter dithers when displaying these images in the One Bit display mode. Choosing Automatic Dither in the Special menu will redither the display automatically when necessary after image processing or sizing changes. Otherwise, choose the Recalculate command from the Image menu to force redithering of the images.
Turning off automatic dithering can save some time when performing multiple changes, such as some image enhancement, display mode changes, and rotating an image.
The available dithering options appear on the Dither submenu under Special. These options are:
See the accompanying figures for examples of the dither methods.
 |
 |
|
Ordered
|
Floyd-Steinburg
|
 |
 |
|
Halftone
0°
|
Halftone
53°
|
 |
|
|
Abijah
|
|
Choosing the Show Page Break s option turns on the display of page breaks in the document. Page breaks show as striped lines, and are not printed.
Choose Show Page Breaks again to turn off the page break markers.
GIFConverter always prints the image the way it shows on the screen. It also uses the screen display to determine how to save a PICT file. For instance, saving a PICT file with the display set to One Bit creates a PICT version 1 file, but settings of Eight Bit will create a PICT 2 file that can contain the color information.
For many other file formats, you have a choice of how many colors you want to save. See the individual file format descriptions for more information about what information GIFConverter saves with each format.
The largest section of the window is taken up by the display area, which shows the images in the document. This area may be scrolled with the scroll bars or the hand tool.
The status bar runs along the top of the window. This area displays the type and size (in pixels) of the current image.
When clicking on an image, the status bar shows the dimensions and number of colors in that image.
When stretching an image, it shows the size of the image and the percentage change.
The tool bin contains an icon for each of the three tools. Click on the desired tool to select it. You may also select tools by using the Tools menu, or the command-key equivalents.
The Full Screen command makes the frontmost window cover the whole screen. Choosing the Full Screen command again will return the window to its original size.
The Hide Menu Bar command will remove the menu bar from the screen, offering more viewing area. When the menu bar is gone, press -B to restore the menu bar.
You can use this tool for selecting, resizing and moving images. See the section on selecting images below for more information.
This tool marks an area in the document for use with the Copy or Crop commands.
Use the hand tool to move the document around. Clicking inside the scrollable area with the hand tool scrolls the document without using the scroll bars. This is also handy when using the Full Screen mode.
Holding down the option key always causes the hand tool to appear regardless of what tool you have selected.
Use the color tool to browse the colors in the file. Simply click and drag the color tool over the images in a window to see what color is at a particular point.
When the color tool is active, the color window appears:
To select an image, first choose the Pointer tool.
To select a single image, click inside the image. Selected images have thick diagonally-striped borders.
To add or remove images from the selection, hold down the Shift key and click on an image.
If you click outside of any image and then drag, you sweep out a rectangle with a dotted border. This rectangle selects any images it touches.
To select portions of images, choose the Marquee tool. Click and drag the mouse, and a dotted rectangle will appear. This rectangle outlines the selected area. The size of the selection appears in the status bar.
After selecting portions of an image, you can use the Copy or Crop commands.
The Cut command removes the selected images and places them on the clipboard. Areas selected with the marquee may not be Cut.
The Copy command places a copy of the selected images on the clipboard.
If you select an area with the marquee, then chose Copy, GIFConverter places the areas of images that fall within the marquee onto the clipboard.
The Paste command replaces the currently selected images with the images in the clipboard. If you haven’t selected any images, GIFConverter places the images in the clipboard into the document with their top left at the last point where you last clicked the mouse.
To move images, first select the images you want to move as described above. Then, using the pointer tool, click inside one of the images, and drag the images to the new location. A dotted outline of the images will follow the cursor showing their new location. When you release the mouse button, the images will redisplay at their new location.
Alternatively, choose the Location... command on the Image menu, then set the location with the following dialog box.
To stretch images, click in the striped border of one if the images.
If you click near the center of an edge of the image, you will move that one edge in all the images.
If you click near the corner of an image, you move the corresponding corner of all images.
Holding down the shift key constrains the stretching to keep the proportions of the original images.
While stretching, the status bar shows the new size of the images in pixels and as a percentage.
Scaling an image changes its size. This is like stretching, but you can enter the scaling percentage directly.
First select the images to scale by clicking on them with the pointer tool.
Then select the Scale command from the Image menu. You will see a dialog box that looks like this:
Type in the scaling factors as a percentage from 25% to 6400% in either direction, then click on the OK button. It is not necessary to scale by the same amount in each direction.
You can change the size of images exactly by choosing the Size... command from the Image menu. Just type in the size you wish.
To rotate images, first select the images to rotate as described above.
Then, select the Rotate command from the Image menu. A submenu will appear; choose the rotation, which will be a multiple of 90°.
The selected images will rotate around their common center. After rotation in one-bit mode, GIFConverter will redither the images regardless of the automatic setting.
To crop an image, use the marquee to enclose an area of the image, then choose the Crop command from the Image menu. Any image or portion of an image not enclosed by the marquee selection is removed.
GIFConverter automatically crops images when they are moved to the Clipboard if the Copy command is chosen after a marquee selection.
You can also change the resolution of the document to match that of high-resolution printers. This results in smoother-looking output. Changing the resolution affects the whole document, including all the images contained in it.
You can optionally rescale the images to account for the new resolution. This makes the images keep their size after the resolution change. Otherwise, increasing the resolution would cause the images to print smaller.
Documents with increased resolution still display on the screen at 72 dots per inch (dpi). GIFConverter places the resolution information into PICT files and the clipboard, so you can paste high-resolution halftone images into other programs. Also, GIFConverter will print directly at the higher resolution.
Increased resolution works better with the Halftone dithering methods and 300 dpi (or greater) laser or ink-jet printers. It is not necessary to have a PostScript printer to take advantage of halftones with this method. If you do have a PostScript printer, it is better to leave the document at 72 dots per inch since the printer does its own halftoning.
To change the resolution of the document, choose the Set Resolution command from the Image menu. You will see a dialog box that looks like this:
Choose the resolution you wish to use. Note that you use 288 dpi with 300 dpi printers; when printing on these printers, choosing the “Precision Bitmaps” option alters the scaling to account for this difference. Without “Precision Bitmaps,” the images will print with horizontal bands running through them.
Make sure to check the “Also rescale images to new resolution” box if you want the images to stay the same size when printed. Otherwise, increasing the resolution causes the images to become proportionally smaller.
GIFConverter can change the color palette for an image or group of images. You may find changing the palette useful for making Startup Screens that display with the right colors, or custom icons for System 7, or for making GIF files with less colors that take up less space on the disk.
First, select the image or images you wish to change the palette for. Then, choose the Change Color Palette... command from the Image menu. You will see a dialog box that looks like this:
The shadowed rectangle is a pop-up menu. Click on it and choose a color palette. When you click on OK, GIFConverter will change the selected image or images to use the colors you chose. This may take a few minutes, and a progress box will appear to show how far the conversion has gone.
These are the color palettes available to you:
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Palette
|
Contains
|
|
Apple
Icon Colors
|
The
39 colors that Apple recommends for color icons in System 7.
|
|
Black
and White
|
Just
Black and White.
|
|
Imagewriter
II Colors
|
The
eight colors available from an ImageWriter II with a color ribbon.
|
|
RGB
8 Colors
|
The
eight colors in the corners of the RGB color cube: Black, White, Red, Green,
Blue, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. This is the smallest set of colors that will
work with every picture without strange color effects.
|
|
Netscape
Colors
|
The
216 colors that are common to Netscape and other browsers on all platforms.
|
|
Standard
16 Colors
|
The
colors on the screen when you set the Monitors control panel to 16 colors.
|
|
Standard
16 Grays
|
The
colors on the screen when you set the Monitors control panel to 16 grays.
|
|
Standard
256 Colors
|
The
colors on the screen when you set the Monitors control panel to 256 colors.
|
|
Standard
256 Grays
|
The
colors on the screen when you set the Monitors control panel to 256 grays.
|
|
Standard
4 Grays
|
The
colors on the screen when you set the Monitors control panel to 4 grays.
|
When making a Startup Screen, use the Standard Colors or Grays that correspond to the Monitors control panel setting.
You can also reduce the number of colors in an image or set of images. When you reduce the number of colors, GIFConverter calculates which set of colors would work best with the images you’ve selected, and uses those colors to redither the images like the Change Color Palette... command.
First, select the image or images you wish to change the palette for. Then, choose the Reduce Number of Colors... command from the Image menu. You will see a dialog box that looks like this:
Type in the number of colors you wish to use, and choose between colors or grays. You can’t reduce an image to less than 8 colors or 2 grays. When you click on OK, GIFConverter will change the selected image or images to use the colors it has chosen for the images. This may take a few minutes, and a progress box will appear to show how far the conversion has gone.
GIFConverter can store comments in GIF version 89a files. If you open a file that contains comments, they will appear in a window entitled “Comments for filename.” You can see the comments window for a document or create new comments by choosing the Show Comments command from the Windows menu.
You can edit the comments using the Cut, Copy and Paste commands. You can also print them to any connected printer.
Many operations are undoable. If the last command you chose is not undoable, GIFConverter will make the Undo command gray on the Edit menu.
Choosing the Show Memory command from the Windows menu will produce a small window showing the amount of memory used.
The dark part of the RAM bar graph shows the proportion of available RAM GIFConverter is using to store the documents you’re working on. The number to the right of the bar is the total amount of memory available in K (kilobytes). This figure does not include memory GIFConverter uses permanently, so it will always be less than the Multifinder memory setting.
When GIFConverter doesn’t have enough memory to proceed, it will try to find enough memory to use by placing some of the images to the temporary file on the disk. Generally, GIFConverter needs to keep only images it is currently working on in memory. Effectively, the number of documents you can open is limited only by the amount of disk space you have available.
“Swapping” Cursors
GIFConverter indicates when it is placing data on the disk by changing the cursor to a special “swapping” cursor. This cursor indicates the flow of data into or out of the disk.
The dark part of the Disk bar graph shows the proportion of the available disk space GIFConverter is using. The number to the right of the bar is the total amount of disk space that GIFConverter will use in K (kilobytes). Remember, GIFConverter doesn’t use more than half of the available disk space, nor the last 100K.
Copyright ©1998 by Kevin A. Mitchell. All rights reserved.
