The collected works of luchford

I remember this being mentioned in some photoshop tutorial I read back in 1996-97. So, when I finally had the opportunity to pick up a piece of prepress history, I couldn't resist! (forget my complaint about the amount of software postings in the creative category, for now )



Showing an 3500 x 2500 image, running on an 195mhz Indigo w/640mb ram. On the top left you have the raster-tools, vector tools on the bottom. On the right you have the basic navigator, chainable colour correction (showing the "curves" part) and image layers. On top of the image you can also see multiple densitometers showing the before/after values of the curves-correction. A very nice feature, as actually applying the correction will be rather slow on an Indigo2 w/10MBs SCSI...

It supports both TIF and PSD files, but always converts them to the .cvw format before displaying them proper. This is also somewhat slow (again)... but it supports dual (or more ) procs, if you have them... Painting/navigating is actually pretty fast, up to about 22mpx.

Should you find this for sale you'll need a license, locked to the exact CD version and hostid of the workstation. In other words, you'll need the whole original package... Completist should also look for the brush and colour-accelerator boards.. Lesser souls might want to search the "usual suspects" for the media (let's leave it at that).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barco_creator for the detail obsessed... (like me! hehe!)

It'd be interesting to hear from someone who actually used this in the 90s... Like with the Discreet systems, it seems you had to take training classes to get to know it inside out. Tips and tricks would be appreciated!

Well it has a decent brush module, though I mostly use it for making mattes/applying corrections with a brush... not exactly painting!

(The matte was inverted in the conversion process... don't ask me why!)



Notice how you can tear off the menus, and place them on your workspace. Also notice the "snap to grid" function of the palettes.. (made for the neurotic in all of us! ).

You can use different brushes and brush textures, or simply create your own.. most settings seem customisable. You can "even" see a dual brush outline with the center/falloff (unlike Photoshop 3!). The "1" "2" "3" etc. simply represent temporary settings, same for the pan-box.

To get a cleaner workspace you'd just hit Ctrl-F9 for fullscreen and TAB to remove all the tools... also known as "guru mode" in PS .

I've been reading through the 200+ page manual for the last couple of days... practicing it will have to wait for a bad-weather day, though... I'll see if I can post some actual tips then, rather than just eye candy!

I tried the Eclipse demo, but found it very unintuitive compared to PS et al.

As for undo-levels, I haven't found them yet. Well; actually there is a feature advertised as "unlimited undo", but it's basically a glorified "save". You have to start it manually, and then it only remembers that -one- state. It's not completely useless, but for painting it probably would be. The config file speaks of cache size etc., maybe I'm missing something there.

And no, there aren't any layer blending-modes (if that's what you meant). There might be something equivalent, but I wouldn't know where to look, yet. I'm curious as to what you use blending modes for, though. I only use the "colour" mode for doing despill when the background lighting is too harsh, and that's it.

As for comparing Creator to StudioPaint, I wouldn't really know as I've never used the latter. They are obviously targeted at completely different markets; a Creator workstation would typically be connected to a printing press, while SP was used mostly in connection with PA/Maya for motion pictures or automotive design (or so it seems). If you need stuff like Pantone colours or want to optimize ink usage, I guess your only choice is Creator. If your target is JPG for the web, I'm not sure..

Maybe someone here could expand the Wiki-article on StudioPaint?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_StudioPaint

And while I'm at it; you might want to contribute to the articles on;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avid_Matador
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype-Hell_DaVinci
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalim_Tango

I recently built a 1440x900 vfo for my Dell 2407WFP (based on a dell modeline) connected to an O2. It's a bit fuzzy for a 1920x1200 panel, but looks heaps better than any 4:3 mode stretched...!

While the O2 supports 1600x1024 on the 17" SGI, I never could get this res to work on the Dell... it just adjusted to 4:3 instead...

Hope it works (and don't blame me if it doesn't ...

Maybe the program which converts from TIF to CVW is missing some path variable. After installing from the CD, you need to do the following, according to the manual:

As a normal user (the user account where you expect to run Creator), you need to run /bg/gen/local/com/install_bgpath, and /bg/gen/local/com/install_bgalias from the command line. Reboot.

Then you just type "cre7_2" or "creator" from the command line (I don't remember the exact name, but you find all the startup scripts in /bg/gen/local/com, I think).

You can add Creator and Colortone icons to your desktop by going to the /bg/gen/local/com directory in the IRIX graphical filesystem explorer (I don't have an SGI at this location, so I don't remember the name), and just drag the cre7_2 script to the desktop.

I would be happy to support development on SGI MESS through Patreon (?), Kickstarter or similar, and guess there is a bit of interest in this. Anyone up to the task of starting a project (Dexter already has started - but maybe some additional incentive to work on it would be nice)?