Online, free software and
tools abound (especialy for Windows PCs). One example is
online logo generators ... which leads to a discussion of
creative uses for them.
My "Art Tools"
logo above was made using 2 tools. The base image started
with a trip to the free logo text generator at Flaming Text. This produced a wood grain text
in 90 point Mael font. They have a buttload of fonts
there, but you can also try Cooltext for more possibilities, including their
trademark space age thing. My version of the logo got an
extra touch using the excellent (and free) airbrush of Ultimate Paint. I used this to darken the wood
around the edges, giving it an almost burnt appearance,
and also reducing the uniform, auto-generated look of the
auto-generated original logo. I also increased the size
of the image to get a little dark margin around it.
Obviously, I could have changed it a lot more. Ultimate
Paint doesn't create GIFs with transparency, but if I had
wanted transparency I could have run it through yet
another program, for example the free GIF animation
program by GIFworks will do that.
Ultimate Paint is an excellent bitmap art
program. It is powerful and versatile and yet easy to
use. It is deep -- if you persevere, you'll keep
discovering new things you can do with it. It is not as
powerful as professional, expensive tools like Photoshop,
but it easily outruns MS Paint and the highly regarded
Paint Shop Pro in editing power and ease of use.
UP provides a highly
flexible "brush system" -- pioneered by the old
program Deluxe Paint -- which allows grabbing, copying
and moving around parts of an image rapidly. Not only is
there the usual pen and marker points, any image
or portion can be used a brush. Want to paint with a
multicolored brush? Throw down a blob of colors on the
screen and grab it with the cut tool as a brush. Every
point, line, circle or other shape you draw will use that
as a brush. You can even spray paint with it. The brush
can be loaded from a file, or saved as a convenient way
of saving a partial image.
UP also has a convenient,
nonstandard use of the mouse. The left mouse button draws
with the foreground color (with regular brushes). The
right mouse button draws with the background
color. When using a custom brush, left button paints with
it, but the right button paints the outline of the image
with the background color. With the cut tool, the mouse
button used controls whether the cut is a copy or cut
with delete to background.
The airbrush is sweet,
providing a way of making fades and partial color shifts
that is impossible with one-color-at-a-time programs. It
can be configured for size and intensity (rate of
coverage).
UP implements simple
transparency. The background color -- one of over 16
million -- is used to determine the transparency color
when making a cut or loading a brush. This is a
convenient way to grab parts of an image without getting
the background (see tutorial) and overlay them elsewhere
without overlaying what you don't want. If you don't want
transparency, simply select a background color not in the
image.
A good selection of
effects are also provided -- blur, color shifts,
brightness/contrast, and a lot of wild ones that are
interesting but tend to be rarely used.
UP also provides better
print capablities than anything that comes standard on a
PC. It provides multiple image windows via a drop-down
menu. It provides anti-aliasing and flexible zoom, plus
many of the other standard paint program features.
There are some
disadvantages. I have experienced crashes, but mostly
under Windows NT (it really doesn't like the UNDO
command). I have almost no problems under Windows 98 or
95. The exception is with extremely large images - like
1000x3000 pixels or larger, and even then it only happens
during certain operations. I believe the program was
originally developed for Windows 3.1, which worked with
some programs that don't get along well in NT -- this
would also possibly explain why it doesn't respond to
ALT-SPACE. I expect the registered version is better in
this respect, as well as adding features.
UP allows the opening and
creation of most image file types -- BMP, JPEG, GIF and
others. There are some limitations. I've seen JPEGs that
gave an "unsupported file type" error -- I
think this is the kind that includes a low-res initial
image as it loads from the internet and then fills in.
JPEGs can also only be saved at one compression level,
fortunately this is high quality. Similarly, some
limitations apply to writing GIFs. It uses a patent-free
GIF scheme, not a bad thing, although the file is rather
large. It doesn't do color reduction either, so if your
image contains more than 256 colors it will go to 24-bit
color and make a huge file. More troublesome, it doesn't
create GIFs with transparency. But you can use any clunky
program to do file conversion, and UP does come through
the interface for creating decent images in the first
place .... By the way, the file open dialog includes a
handy preview function.
This is yet another free
and useful program from Megalux, in fact it's rather unusual in that it
provides the effects capabilties of their pay product
that Ultimate Paint is missing. It is adware, which means
that you'll have to tug the little ad window out of the
way before diving in -- BTW, mine no longer actually
displays an ad there.
The main feature of note
in UFX is the YUV Filter, which can do wonders with
digital photos. You can see this on the speaker photo on
my computer reviews page -- well actually you can't, because I
don't dare show you how awful the original was. It was
taken with the el-cheapo JamCam 2.0, a camera for kids
(and outfated by now too). Then it was processed with
Microsoft Picture-It! (included with the camera) to
reduce purple and increase contrast. Then I used the YUV
filter to bring out the color a bit. The typical settings
are something like 0,0,0,0,0,3 for the colors and 70-100
for +Y and Intensity (don't let the default settings fool
you regarding the usefulness of this thing). I think the
way it works is it essentially reduces grays,
exaggerating the difference between the color values.
UFX does improve on the
options for file saving and printing, although I've seen
problems. Default save options are generally reliable
though.
First, download Ultimate Paint -- keep scrolling down the
Downloads page until you come to the free version. You'll
need to unzip it to a temporary folder and then
run the Setup program. Don't worry, I've already done
this several times.
Once installed, it is
launched through the Start menu Programs. You can also
make a desktop shortcut by dragging up.exe from the
folder C:\Program Files\UP to the desktop. UP requires
your desktop to be set to at least 16 bit color (65534
colors). You'll also want at least 800x600 resolution so
the toolbars aren't cut off.
After launching, you
should set some preferences through
Options>Preferences. Under the General tab, I have
Clipping, Optimize Brush, Anti-Aliasing and Advanced
checked. Select the maximum of 32 palette entries.
The default workspace is
only 256x192 pixels. To create a larger workspace, select
File>New and enter in the desired size (it's easier to
type in numbers than use the arrows). The background will
follow the currently selected background color. You can
also load in an image instead and edit from there.
Default zoom is 3, which you'll also need to change that
(just above the color palette) with a larger workspace.
Feel free to explore, but
there are some things not so obvious. The toolbar has
additional options. Just click on the buttons to select
the current function. Hold the mouse button down
while pointing to open up more options, where applicable.
Another non-obvious thing is getting a single pixel brush
size. The top left button allows several different pens,
but there is no 1x1 dot. This is selected by pressing the
period key.
To select a foreground
color from the palette, left-click on the color. To
select a background color, right-click. To select a
custom color, click on the foreground or background area
of the current color display box.
When
saving, you'll want to select the file type. Otherwise,
it will use Megalux's own .frm format. This has no
particular advantage and isn't compatible with other
maker's applications.
... forthcoming ...
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