ScuzzBlog: Diaries February 2022
Entry 17th February 2022: Post 1: DPaint III - How to convert image files.
DPaint III - How to convert image files.
So you have a load of old Amiga disks with DPaint III images on
them but don't own an Amiga, so how do you convert them into a
format that can be read on a modern PC. Simple, ask scuzz to do
it for you. And so this is how I would do it.
First up I would power up the A1200 I use on the bench next to
me. She has plenty of spare hard drive space courtesy of an IDE
I connected via a ribbon popping out the back. To save files to
a PC HD disk I use a Power Computing XL drive which with the
required patch in C can read MS DOS HD disks. And then it's just
a case of saving the files in a PC format and banging the floppy
into the drive. You do have to have a PC with a floppy or an
external USB floppy drive.
DPaint III is a strange beast I have to say. Mainly cus I have
managed to use DPaint IV for most of my Amiga file manipulation,
and simply avoided it. First up I needed a few image examples to
work on. Surprisingly there are no medium or high definition
files on the art disk. So I had to create my own.
Next I saved the file which I called 'veiga' and then opened the
image in PPaint. Then I saved the file as a PNG file. Odd little
Amiga quirk but to see this on the PC you need to add the file
extension yourself ie veiga.png. This was then saved to the HD
floppy drive and the disk banged into the PC for easy transfer.
So I fired up ThumbsPlus on the PC and saved the image as a BMP,
JPG, PNG and GIF. So I pretty much covered all the bases. Easiest
way of making the files available is to upload to the website
and so that anyone can view and save them. Or not.
Daniel Silva and Electronic Arts were there at the birth of the
Amiga and supported the platform loyally throughout the Amiga
Commodore era. DPaint became the platform standard for entry
level graphics. DPaint III was a leap ahead of II with the
introduction of animation. In the day it would have cost you
eighty quid in British. Interestingly it was shipped free with
various packs of the Amiga 500 and Amiga 600, especially the HD
version of the computer.
Personally I would always try to use DPaint IV when it is supported
on the computer you are using.
The image is the planet Veiga and took me about a minute to create
in DPaint III. I use Photoshop on the PC and I can assure you that
the same image on the PC would have taken a heck of lot longer to
create. Saying that it's quicker to create online imagery on the PC.
Going now.
DPaint III - How to convert image files.
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