[comp.sys.mac] Sun pictures to the Mac II

wheeler@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU (11/13/87)

A friend of mine across the hall just got a new color Sun.  It came
with several nice digitized pictures.  So the obvious question is:
Has anybody written a utility to turn these pictures into Mac II
pictures?  I believe the pictures are postscript files.  I figure
that there surely is someone out there in Unix land that has
done this already.  So what does it entail to port Sun pictures to
a Mac II?

Why are color pitures for the Mac II so scarce?  The only thing
that I have found on a local BBS is a GrayView picture of 
Cheryl Tiegs.  This is quite a let down from all the nice 
ray tracing pictures you see demo'd on the Mac II when it
is in the store.  But when you get it home all you get is
that inane Tour (in B&W even!). 
We don't get mac.binaries...yet.

By the way, DeskPict doesn't seem to work on 4.2/6.0,
is there a fix?  Similarly, PopKeys/KeyPad don't work
in Multifinder, is there a newer version that does.

Ferrell Wheeler     wheeler@symcom.math.uiuc.edu

fry@huma1.HARVARD.EDU (David Fry) (11/13/87)

In article <17300002@symcom> wheeler@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU writes:
>Why are color pitures for the Mac II so scarce?  The only thing
>that I have found on a local BBS is a GrayView picture of 
>Cheryl Tiegs.  This is quite a let down from all the nice 
>ray tracing pictures you see demo'd on the Mac II when it
>is in the store.  But when you get it home all you get is
>that inane Tour (in B&W even!). 

Through the right (possibly illegal) connections you can get
copies of those ray traced and digitized images you see on Mac
II's in the stores.  But as the author of GrayView, I think
the B/W pictures are often superior. GrayView allows anyone
with a ThunderScan digitizer to have true 32 gray shade
photos.  And it's free..

Color digitizers are still insanely expensive, thus you find
few color photos on the II.  There is a program called Giffer
by Steve Blackstock that converts images from CompuServe's GIF
format for display in 256 colors.  Then you have access to
CompuServe's library of over 2000 color pictures.  They aren't
all super, but some are quite stunning.

David Fry				fry@huma1.harvard.EDU
Department of Mathematics		fry@harvma1.bitnet
Harvard University			...!harvard!huma1!fry
Cambridge, MA  02138 9g

fnf@mcdsun.UUCP (Fred Fish) (11/14/87)

In article <17300002@symcom> wheeler@symcom.math.uiuc.EDU writes:
>Why are color pitures for the Mac II so scarce?  The only thing
>that I have found on a local BBS is a GrayView picture of 

In article <3192@husc6.UUCP> fry@huma1.UUCP (David Fry) writes:
>Color digitizers are still insanely expensive, thus you find
>few color photos on the II.  There is a program called Giffer
>by Steve Blackstock that converts images from CompuServe's GIF
>format for display in 256 colors.  Then you have access to
>CompuServe's library of over 2000 color pictures.  They aren't
>all super, but some are quite stunning.

I have been working with Steve on the Giffer "project", feeding him
files digitized on an Amiga using Digiview, which is capable of
digitizing in 21-bit color (7-bits each RGB).  This costs about
$150 if you have a suitable B&W camera, or about $400 if you need
the entire package.  Not exactly "insanely expensive".

I believe that Steve has posted a few of the resulting 256 color
images to Compuserve, and I recently sent 8 Mac disks full of pics
to someone who wants to upload some to Bix.  I think that the
digitized images are quite nice, but there is obvious room for
improvement, probably via manual intervention during the color
mapping from 21-bit color to 8-bit color.  

If anyone building 24-bit color boards for the Mac would care
to send me one, I'd be glad to report on the quality of the pics
when no conversion is necessary.  :-) :-) :-)

-Fred
-- 
# Fred Fish    hao!noao!mcdsun!fnf    (602) 438-3614
# Motorola Computer Division, 2900 S. Diablo Way, Tempe, Az 85282  USA