TITLE

     DTKoala - Convert a (datatype) picture to Koala painter format


VERSION

     1.2


AUTHOR

     Written by Lars Malmborg (glue@df.lth.se).

     The rendition is based on code by Pasi 'Albert' Ojala.
       (Aminet:gfx/conv/C64Gfx12.lha)


DESCRIPTION

     DTKoala is simply a converter for any 320x200 picture loadable by
     a datatype of the AmigaOS 3.x. The color remapping isn't perfect,
     but who cares? You can however help it by using only the following
     colors in the picture you want to convert:

     Black (0,0,0)
     White (240,240,240)
     Red (192,0,64)
     Cyan (0,208,192)
     Purple (192,0,192)
     Green (0,176,0)
     Blue (0,0,208)
     Yellow (224,240,96)
     Orange (208,96,0)
     Brown (112,48,0)
     LightRed (240,112,144)
     DarkGray (80,80,80)
     Gray (128,128,128)
     LightGreen (144,240,160)
     LightBlue (112,144,240)
     LightGray (192,192,208)

     This palette can be extracted from any picture shown by the Koala
     painter datatype or you can use the supplied palette for PPaint.

     As the actual resolution of a Koala painter picture is 160x200 with
     a ratio of 2:1, the remapper uses the medium of even and odd pixels
     in the original 320x200 picture. Pixel 0 on a row in the Koala
     painter matches pixel 0 and 1 in the original picture, pixel 1
     matches pixel 2 and 3, ...
     If you want sharp edges in the resulting picture you must make sure
     that the color of the original pixels are the same to disable the
     effect of the medium calculation. This is easilly done in a paint
     program by scaling the picture to 160x200 and back to 320x200. Keep
     in mind that if you resize a brush twice, most programs use the
     initial brush even for the secont resize.

     To convert a picture simply state:

       DTKoala <infile> <outfile>

     where <infile> is any 320x200 picture loadable with with datatypes
     and <outfile> is the resulting Koala painter file. The default
     background color is black, but you can decide which color to use
     as background and if this color is to be transparent.
     F.ex. to convert the file "foo.iff" to a Koala painter file
     "bar.pic" where the background is to be set to light blue, state:

       DTKoala foo.iff bar.pic LightBlue

     If you use a picture f.ex. on your home page and you have a grayish
     background pattern, you can make the gray part transparent:

       DTKoala food.iff bart.pic Gray Transparent

     You can of course also use the british spelling of the colours:

       DTKoala food.iff bart.pic Grey Transparent

     This is kind of the counter part of my Koala painter datatype
     (Aminet:util/dtype/KoalaDT.lha), which you'll probably want if are
     going to watch the pictures you've converted.


INSTALLATION

     Put "DTKoala" anywhere in your path.


SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

     Amiga running AmigaOS 3.x


HISTORY

     1.0
          * Initial Aminet release.

     1.1
          * Corrected weights for color approximation.

     1.2
          * Stack problems fixed.
          * No longer depends on V43 picture.datatype.

KNOWN BUGS

     Only pictures with a color LUT works, i.e. no true color pictures
     such as jpeg or IFF24.


PRICE

     Freeware as always!

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                 9983   15656  63.8% -lh5- f9da Feb  5  1997 DTKoala/DTKoala
[generic]                 1555    3438  45.2% -lh5- 8d1d Feb  5  1997 DTKoala/DTKoala.readme
[generic]                   83      96  86.5% -lh5- b477 Dec 15  1996 DTKoala/PPaint/Colors/Koala.col
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         3 files   11621   19190  60.6%            Feb  5  1997