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Documentation - Interface/Commands
Note: all screenshots are of the Palm-size PC version
of Pocket Artist and most are dithered to 8-bit (256 color)
GIF images for space reasons. Image quality in Pocket Artist
is always retained at the 24-bit level, separate as to whatever
color range your device's display can function at. In other words,
image quality is a bit spared in this documentation so that
it loads faster.
When you start Pocket Artist you will see the screen to the
right as Pocket Artist initializes.
After initializing, you will see this screen. Pocket Artist was designed
to scale down to Palm-size PCs. Its design guidelines intended to
provide a rich feature set and not
clutter up the interface as to make a negative impact on
drawing. Therefore, in the current version there are no
persistent floating toolbars. All tool selection is done
via pop-ups and menu commands (however, the HPC has some
shortcuts to these, and will be explained later).
The main
whitespace is your image document. This is the canvas in
which you draw, and upon loading, a blank image is created
for you that is the exact height and width as big as to
not create scrollbars onscreen. On the first toolbar is
the menu and the tools bar. From left to right, the tools
represent: Scroll Tools Left, Current Colors, Current Brush,
Drawing Tools, Selection Tools, Text/Shape Tools, Edit Tools,
Document Tools. Each pops up with multiple tools under
each category.
The tool button with the darkened background
is the current tool. Tapping on the current tool button
will pop up the menu of tools, and tapping on a different
tool button will select the last selected tool on the
tool button tapped. By tapping and holding on another tool
button, Pocket Artist will pop-up the tool seleciton menu for that
tool button.
Most tools are persistent -- when you
select them, the tool buttons will remain on that tool and
that tool will be active whenever you tap and/or drag on the
document window. Some are not, however, like the Cut/Copy/Paste
tools, or the De-select tool. By selecting one of these non-persistent
tools after the tool has completed its function, the last
selected tool will become active again.
Pocket Artist's menus are as follows:
File Menu:
- New: starts a new document. Will prompt if you
want to save the current document.
- Open: opens a document. Also will prompt.
- Save: saves the document. If you have saved
the image previously, or if you loaded the current image
and have edited it, this command will save it without a
prompt.
- Save As: saves the document. This will prompt for
a file name and saving type.
- Close: closes the document. Will prompt if you want
to save your changes.
- Revert: loads back in the last saved iteration
of this document.
- Recent Files: this menu item holds a list of your
recently opened, edited, or saved files.
- Use as Desktop: this is a feature unique to Pocket
Artist. By selecting this you can save your work straight
to your Windows CE desktop, where it will appear there, optionally
tiled.
- Exit: exists Pocket Artist.
Edit Menu:
- Undo: undoes the last command, whether it be a paint
stroke or a document command (such as resizing the image).
- Clear: fills the document (or the current selection)
with the background color.
- Cut: takes the current selection, moves it to the
Pocket Artist clipboard (not system-wide as of version 1.1),
and fills the current selected area of the document with
the current background color.
- Copy: takes the current selection and copies it to the
Pocket Artist clipboard, retaining the selection and the
document.
- Paste: pastes in whatever is on the Pocket Artist
clipboard into the document, retaining it as a floating selection
so one can move it around, change the opacity or blending
mode.
- Zoom In/Out/100%: visually zooms in and out (or back to
normal) of the document.
- Deselect: deselects whatever is the selection.
- Selection: this is a popup menu that contains the items
on the left.
- Defloat: if a selection is "floating", that
is, if it contains color data (usually from moving, copying, or
pasting a piece of an image), this command merges it down
with the document using the current opacity and blending mode.
- Feather: this blurs the current selection -- but it does
not blur the color data of the selection but rather the
selection itself.
- Select All: selects the whole document.
- Select Inverse: selects whatever is not selected, and
deselects whatever was selected.
- Toggle Outlines: the "marching ants" that appear as the
boundary to your current selection will be hidden or shown
by selecting this menu option.
Tools Menu:
- Capture Screen: this prompts for a delay and then
takes a snapshot of the screen and puts it on the clipboard.
Paste it into the document to see what was captures.
- Crop Image: this shrinks the current image, cropping
it to the bounds of whatever selection you currently have.
- Bright/Contrast: this adjusts the brightness and contrast
of the image. A preview feature is enabled, so whatever changes
you make in the window will be shown in the document window.
The net effect will take place on the whole document, or if
there is a selection, only on the selection.
- Color Curves: this adjusts the color inputs and outputs
of the red, green, or blue (or all three) values. It is adjusted
in the form of a graph with the 0-255 values of the image in the
X-axis, and the "output" 0-255 values of the image in the Y-axis.
The curve starts out with a line of X = Y (no change). By adjusting
this by simply drawing a new curve on the graph. For example,
by drawing the curve shown to the left, the dark colors will
be brighened a bit, the midrange colors darkened a bit, and so
on. The curves also have a preview (you may need to move the
window out of the way to see the effects) and will take effect
on the whole document, or if there is a selection, on the selection.
- Invert Colors: this changes black to white, blue to yellow, etc,
inverting the color values. It takes effect on the whole document,
or on the selection if there is one.
- Image Size: this scales the image up or down
to new dimensions. You may specify whether to "constrain proportions",
that is, to keep the image aspect ratio the same after the
scaling. Also available as an option is which interpolation mode
to choose. Nearest neighbor is the fastest, but can be blocky
when sizing images. Bilinear interpolation is better, but can
lead to an unusual appearance if scaled too much. Bicubic is
the best and slowest option, and results in better output.
- Canvas Size: this function does not scale the image but
instead cuts or adds to the canvas, giving it a new set of
dimensions. The Anchor area specifies how you would like the
pre-affected image to be placed in the new image -- in this case
it would be aligned to middle left, with the right side of the
image being cut off just a bit.
- Filters: this popup contains the filters which you
can apply to the document (or to the selection if there is one).
Blur, Desaturate, Emboss, Find Edges, Motion Blur, Sharpen, or
Sharpen More.
>> Opening/Saving Files
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