Help needed with HAM mode and Photon Paint

[trydowave]

Hi. I managed to bring in a photo to deluxe paint from my pc.

I was wondering. How would i go about converting a photo to the best possible quality on an Amiga500 1mb ks 1.3?

Can i convert the photo to ham with photon paint? or should do all converting outside of the amiga on a program such as xnview ~(if at all possible)

Thanks
tony

[Amiga1992]

In this day and age, it is best to use something in your PC to convert the picture.
My way of converting is using a software like Fireworks to reduce and edit colours (maybe some times grafx2), then save as PNG or GIF (or IFF if you have Photoshop).

If GIF or PNG, load with Cloanto Personal Paint using GIF or PNG datatype loading. Then save as IFF and continue working on with DeluxePaint or whatever. If you saved on Photoshop as IFF, you can save this step.

[trydowave]

Hi Akira. I already did it on the pc using a combination of photoshop and xnview. Photoshop to get the correct resolution for the canvas and xnview to reduce colours to 32 and and save as an Amiga IFF.

I think my main question was about HAM mode. How do i get a photo to use that? Is it possible? I only ask as I dont fully understand it. I'm not even sure it's a real screen mode. Some kind of trickery instead

Just like in EHB you can only change RGB values for 32 colours and the other 32 you cant. How on earth does that effect HAM ?

Cheers
Tony

[Leffmann]

HAM8 is a real screenmode, but it's specific to Amiga and difficult to use for anything but static images, so there's no real demand for it outside of Amiga.

Search for anything HAM8 in gfx/conv on Aminet and you'll find a few programs that can convert 24-bit color images to HAM8, GfxCon f.ex works fine.

[Amiga1992]

Yeah, you can save as 24 bit IFF on Photoshop or something, and then convert to HAM8 with a tool like Leffman says.

[matthey]

There seems to be some confusion about what chipsets had what modes. I believe it went like this:

OCS: HAM6
ECS: HAM6, EHB
AGA: HAM8, HAM6, EHB

Before AGA and HAM8, it was possible to do Dynamic HAM (DHAM) or sliced HAM (SHAM) that used the copper to get more colors on screen and it worked in HIRES. However, there was no mode for it. It did produce the best quality pictures though. There is a paint program called MacroPaint that supported it. It's rather basic but for those interested:

http://www.heywheel.com/matthey/Amiga/MacroPaint.lha

[trydowave]

I beleive some of the earlier Amiga 1000 revisions couldnt do EHB but the rest could. Pls someone correct me if im wrong.

[Leffmann]

Yep, the later A1000 and all other machines have EHB. I didn't mean to say that OCS and ECS had HAM8, and if you want HAM6 pictures for OCS and ECS, then GfxCon can convert to that as well.

[trydowave]

Originally Posted by matthey

There seems to be some confusion about what chipsets had what modes. I believe it went like this:

OCS: HAM6
ECS: HAM6, EHB
AGA: HAM8, HAM6, EHB

Before AGA and HAM8, it was possible to do Dynamic HAM (DHAM) or sliced HAM (SHAM) that used the copper to get more colors on screen and it worked in HIRES. However, there was no mode for it. It did produce the best quality pictures though. There is a paint program called MacroPaint that supported it. It's rather basic but for those interested:

http://www.heywheel.com/matthey/Amiga/MacroPaint.lha

Does deluxe paint 4 v.1 support SHAM or DHAM to your knowledge?

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by matthey

There seems to be some confusion about what chipsets had what modes. I believe it went like this:

OCS: HAM6
ECS: HAM6, EHB
AGA: HAM8, HAM6, EHB

Before AGA and HAM8, it was possible to do Dynamic HAM (DHAM) or sliced HAM (SHAM) that used the copper to get more colors on screen and it worked in HIRES. However, there was no mode for it. It did produce the best quality pictures though. There is a paint program called MacroPaint that supported it. It's rather basic but for those interested:

http://www.heywheel.com/matthey/Amiga/MacroPaint.lha

Nope, OCS and ECS support HAM (HAM6) and EHB, there is some very limited amount of pre OCS chips where EHB was not implemented (mostly U.S., mostly A1000).

One of the best Amiga "dynamic" converters is HAMLabPlus however not all type pictures are suitable for "dynamic" conversion and HAMLab+ will not change colors during line time (it is limited to HBI time thus limited amount of colors avaiable in 1 line, no interlace support also for color changes due Amiga OS limitation and PCHG specification).

Personally i think that there is no good "dynamic" converter for Amiga that will use all modern algorithms (this one is obvious) together with Amiga specific hardware like for example:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dekker/NEUQUANT.HTML
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dcoetzee/downloads/scolorq/

For typical picture, reasonable amount colors produced by "dynamic" is around 120 - 300 at once which sounds quite OK for middle 80's hardware.

http://rusfolder.com/35412456

This is very nice example suitable pictures (vertical gradient) for 24 bit over 59000 colours, reduced with HAMLab+ to over 350 in HiRes + small overscan

Originally Posted by trydowave

Does deluxe paint 4 v.1 support SHAM or DHAM to your knowledge?

nope

[trydowave]

Thanx for the advice everyone