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he JPEG format is actually a combination of several elements, and it's important that you understand what it does before you use it. The JPEG algorithm reduces the amount of space a compressed image will occupy on disk by selectively removing details from the image. Pictures with fewer details compress more effectively. The amount of detail removal is defined by the JPEG/ART Quality item in Setup.

At the default value of 75, relatively little picture degradation will take place but a significant amount of compression will be obtained. At lower values you'll experience still better compression, but with a marked loss of image quality.

Once an image has been converted to JPEG, its lost details are lost for good. Note also that repeatedly reading and writing the same image in the JPG format will successively degrade it – it's a very bad idea to convert from JPG to JPG, as your pictures will get a bit uglier each time you do so.

Note: All colour JPEG files are 24-bit images, having sixteen-million colours. Because some systems can only display 256 colours directly, JPEG files can be read as 256-colour images. This actually means that they'll be dithered when they're read. To have your JPEG files read as 24-bit images, enable the Read JPEG as RGB item in Setup. Disable this item to have them read as 256-colour images. The number of colours displayed in the Get Info box will reflect the setting of this switch.

The best way to convert from JPEG to a 256-colour format, such as GIF, is to enable the Read JPEG as RGB switch and then use the Colour Reduction option of Effects.

Graphic Workshop includes support for progressive JPEG. A progressive JPEG file will initially appear blurred if it's part of a web page or other on-line service, and will resolve as more of the file is transmitted. Graphic Workshop will read and write progressive JPEG file but it will not display them progressively – that is, if you view progressive JPEG file, it will appear as a single sharp image. You can determine whether Graphic Workshop writes conventional or progressive JPEG files through the Write Progressive JPEG switch in Setup. Note that most applications with JPEG support will not read progressive JPEG files.

MOV files (Apple QuickTime) – Maximum bits: 24

MOV is Apple's digital video format, analogous to the AVI format commonly used under Windows. In addition to its use on Apple Macintosh computers, MOV is useful on Windows systems, as Apple has released a QuickTime driver set for Windows. Many OEM Windows systems come with QuickTime pre-installed. You'll find a lot of commercial downloadable film trailers and video clips available in the MOV format.

Well you might ask why so many people are happy to spend twenty minutes downloading half a minute of video of The Simpsons when they wouldn't actually watch the show itself at gunpoint.

Note: you must have QuickTime 3.0 or better installed in your system to use the MOV functionality in Graphic Workshop. You can ascertain whether QuickTime is available by opening the Settings submenu of the Windows Start menu and selecting Control Panel.

Graphic Workshop may behave erratically or crash if you attempt to read, write or get information about MOV files with a version of QuickTime earlier than 3.0 installed on your system.

You can download QuickTime from Apple's web page -- as of this writing, it's available at no cost. See http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/index.html. It's a very good idea to uninstall previous versions of QuickTime before you install the current version. Note that QuickTime is also available in a "Pro" version. While this is no doubt much more capable than the basic QuickTime 3.0 package, none of the additional functionality of QuickTime Pro is required for Graphic Workshop.

Here's something else to be aware of. For reasons which are too complex to discuss in polite company, waking up anything that uses QuickTime involves Windows loading a lot of QuickTime's components from your hard drive. As such, you'll experience a wait of a few seconds wherever you ask to view or convert an MOV file with Graphic Workshop. This is normal.

QuickTime MOV files typically contain digitized video, or movie clips, with one track of video and one corresponding track of audio. It's worth keeping in mind that the QuickTime specification actually allows for QuickTime movies to have multiple video and audio tracks, although this feature is rarely used. Graphic Workshop will only access the first video and audio track an MOV file.

If you double-click on an MOV file in a Graphic Workshop browser, a window will open and it will begin playing.

The Graphic Workshop Get Info function includes a Details section for MOV files. This displays the atom structure of a QuickTime movie. You will probably need recourse to Apple's QuickTime documentation to correctly interpret this.

You can convert between QuickTime MOV and Video for Windows AVI files with Graphic Workshop. There are a few catches to this process -- it's a good idea to acquaint yourself with them before you start converting files.

• QuickTime stores the individual images of a movie a bit strangely. Unlike most other animation and digitized video formats, the images in an MOV file need not all be displayed for the same time interval. Each frame knows how long it should display for. This could be helpful, for example, if a movie were to start with several pages of credit, each page to appear for several seconds. Rather than storing lots of identical images of the same page, an MOV file could store one image of each page and increase the display duration for each one.

While agreeably sophisticated, this is somewhat troublesome in converting between QuickTime and other movie formats, as other movie formats don't support variable image delays. They run at a constant rate, just like conventional movie film. Graphic Workshop cheats around this situation, when it arises, by averaging the frame rate of a QuickTime movie and selecting the appropriate frames to write to an AVI file. This works, by and large, but it can introduce slight timing errors into AVI movies converted from QuickTime originals. If you attempt to convert the SAMPLE.MOV file installed with QuickTime, for example, you'll find that its sound track ends about a second earlier than its video. This is due to minor timing errors generated when Graphic Workshop evens out its frame rate.

• Because an AVI file might have to include many more frames than a QuickTime MOV movie, converting from MOV to AVI can create large AVI files.
• Both QuickTime and Video for Windows compress movies using lossy compression, similar to that used to store still pictures in JPEG files. If you convert a movie which has been stored in a compressed MOV file to a compressed AVI file, the resulting movie will have been compressed twice, with two iterations of image loss. Lossy compression is generally a lot more noticeable for moving images. One way around this problem is to disable the Write Compressed Movies item in the Graphic Workshop Setup dialog. This will cause converted movies to be written without compression, and as such, with no additional image quality degradation. Plan on a significant degradation in file size if you do this, however.

If you convert AVI to MOV with Write Compressed Movies enabled, the degree of image degradation is set by the Movie Quality Factor control in the Setup dialog. This behaves a bit oddly for QuickTime. QuickTime movies support a small number of fixed levels of compression quality.

• Setting this control anywhere from zero through 2000 is equivalent to minimum quality.
• Setting this control anywhere from 2001 through 4000 is equivalent to low quality.
• Setting this control anywhere from 4001 through 6000 is equivalent to normal quality.
• Setting this control anywhere from 6001 through 8000 is equivalent to high quality.
• Setting this control anywhere from 8001 through 9999 is equivalent to maximum quality.
• Setting this control 10000 is equivalent to lossless quality.

Note that for genuinely lossless compression, you should disable the Write Compressed Movies option.

• With between fifteen and thirty frames per second, movies involve a lot of images. Uncompressing, swabbing and recompressing them is time consuming, and as such converting between movie formats can be quite slow. Depending on the parameters involved, plan on anything from three to thirty times the running time of the movie to convert it.
• At present, QuickTime tells Graphic Workshop that all MOV files are stored as true-colour images, even if they're not. As such, converting an eight-bit MOV file to AVI will result in a 24-bit AVI movie, and a significant file size increase. As eight-bit MOV files are relatively uncommon, this usually won't be a problem.
• All proprietary information, including copyright text, will be lost in converting between movie formats. The same is true for additional sound and video tracks.

Important: QuickTime MOV files can feature a bewildering variety of compression types, track structures and other permutations. Fortunately, few real-world MOV movies use any of this functionality. In most cases, converting between MOV and other formats is relatively seamless.

In rare cases, you might encounter MOV files which refuse to convert, or which convert with video aberrations, distorted sound or no sound at all. These problems are usually caused by one of two issues inherent in QuickTime.

• The video and audio tracks of a QuickTime movie are compressed or encoded using one of several available methods. The compression and subsequent decompression of this data is handled by "codecs," libraries which are installed in Windows by the QuickTime package. When Graphic Workshop tells QuickTime to unpack a video image or a sound track, QuickTime ascertains which codec is required and calls it to do the work.

All this is for naught if the required coded was not installed. This can happen if the software which authored the MOV file in question had access to codecs not included with the basic QuickTime package. The most common manifestation of missing codecs is MOV files in which the video converts and the audio does not.

This rarely happens with commercial MOV files, such as movie trailers -- these movies, by their nature, are designed to be playable on the largest possible number of systems, and as such use common compression codecs.

• Some MOV files use somewhat peculiar track structures, such as a single video track with multiple sound tracks. Because Graphic Workshop only looks for the first video and audio tracks respectively, it might wind up converting sound other than what the author of the movie intended. Such movies usually play correctly.

Neither of these situations can be corrected in software per se -- you would have to contact the author of the MOV files that are misbehaving and have them rebuilt using more conventional structures.

By default, movies written to the QuickTime format with Write Compressed Movies option enabled will be written using the Cinepak codec. If you don't know what a codec is, consider yourself fortunate and just ignore this observation. If you have cause to change this, you can do so by editing GWSPRO.INI. See the Configuration document for more about this.

Note that the process of converting between video formats is, by its nature, a bit imprecise. The available video formats have differing capabilities, and as such reproducing a movie from one format in a different format often entails that Graphic Workshop fudge a few details behind your back.

BGA Files – Maximum bits: 24

The BGA format is used by some OS/2 Warp applications. It can contain multiple images and is actually a variation on the OS/2 BMP format. If you attempt to read a BGA file which contains multiple images, a dialog will appear to allow you to select the image you're interested in.

Converting an image to the BGA format will result in a single-image BGA file.

BMP/DIB files – Maximum bits: 24

BMP files are used as wallpaper under Windows. They can be created using the Paintbrush application supplied with Windows, among other things. The BMP and DIB formats are identical – DIB files are used in some programming and multimedia applications.

Note that the OS/2 also supports graphic files with the extension BMP. These are distinct from Windows BMP files. Graphic Workshop will read both types. You can configure it to write either type by setting the Write OS/2 Bitmaps switch in Setup

CAM files (Casio Digital Camera) – Maximum bits: 24

These files are created by Casio's digital cameras. Graphic Workshop will read them and convert them to other formats, but it will not write to the CAM format.

Configuration and Setup

The Graphic Workshop Setup dialog can be accessed by clicking on the Setup button in the tool bar or by selecting Setup from the File menu. Because there are a lot of format variations and other things you're likely to want to change periodically, you should become familiar with Setup.

Setup is organized into a number of panels to make it easier to locate the Setup item you need to change.

The Browser Panel

Centre Thumbnails: Disable this item to have thumbnail images appear in the upper left corner of each thumbnail, or enable it to have them appear in the center of each thumbnail.

Close Progress When Complete: Disable this item to always leave the progress window open when a batch of files have been processed, or enable it to close the progress window unless there have been errors.

Create Thumbnail Options: This is the dithering mode for thumbnails. Remap will create contrasty, undithered thumbnails, Bayer will create fairly chunky dithered thumbnails and Error-Diffused will create attractive dithered thumbnails. Unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise, use the latter option.

Default Directory Window Size: This is the default width in pixels of the directory tree when Graphic Workshop creates a new browser window.

Default New Browser Mode: This is the view mode that Graphic Workshop will apply to the new browser windows it creates.

Drop Options: This is what Graphic Workshop will do by default when you drop files into one of its browser windows. See the Reference document for information about overriding the default Drop Options setting.

Include Remote Drives in Browser: Enable this item to include remote network drives in the directory tree displays of new browser windows, or disable it to suppress them. Note that changes to this item will only apply to windows created or refreshed after it's changed. Because it takes significantly longer for Graphic Workshop to survey network drives than local drives when it creates a browser window, you might want to disable this option and use the Folder button to access network drives when you need them.

Maximize New Browsers: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop create new browser windows maximized, or disable it to have Graphic Workshop create new browser windows at normal size.

Search for Paintbrush: Disable this item to prevent Graphic Workshop from searching for paint software on systems wherein none is installed.

Remember Open Windows: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop remember all its open browser windows between sessions.

Untag After Processing: Enable this item to unselect files after processing.

Untag After Viewing: Enable this item to unselect files after viewing.

The Display Panel

Centre Viewed Images: Disable this item to have viewed images appear in the upper left corner of View windows, or enable it to have them appear in the center of View windows.

Directory Tree Dialogs: Enable this item to have the Change Directory and Move and Copy dialogs use Windows tree controls, similar to the ones which appear in Graphic Workshop's browser windows. Disable this item to use list box controls to select directories.

Default View Zoom: This is the default zoom mode for View windows. If it's set to 100 percent, you graphics will be displayed normally. If it's set to Zoom to Fit, a zoom mode will be chosen to best fill the View window.

File Menu List Size: This is the maximum number of items that will appear in the recently visited directory list in the Graphic Workshop File menu. Set it to zero to suppress the list entirely.

Maximize View Windows: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop create View windows maximized, or disable it to have it set them to the dimensions of the graphics to be displayed.

Prompt before Viewing Animation: Disable this item to show animations without displaying the Select Image dialog, or enable it to display the dialog.

Show Right Click Menu in View: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop display a menu when you right-click in View or Crop mode, or disable it to have it exit View and Crop mode when you right-click.

Show Startup Window: Enable this item tohave the startup logo window displayed when Graphic Workshop boots up.

Show View Title Path: Enable this item to include the complete paths of the file names displays in the caption bars for View and Crop mode, or disable it to just show the file names.

View Mode Background: This is the background colour for View mode. Click on this colour button to change it.

The Files Panel

Auto Create Thumbnails: Disable this item to suppress the automatic creation of thumbnails for new files, or enable it to create thumbnails whenever new files are written by Graphic Workshop.

Default File Extension: This is the default file extension.

File Name Underbars: Enable this item to prepend processed file names with underbars, or disable it to use the source name when creating a new name for a processed file. This does not apply to files created by the Convert function, which always uses source file names. See the Reference document for a discussion of file naming for processed files.

Prompt before Moving Files: Enable this item to be prompted before Graphic Workshop moves files, or disable it to move files without prompting.

Prompt before Overwriting Files: Enable this item to be prompted before Graphic Workshop overwrites files, or disable it overwrite files without prompting.

Prompt for Destination Path: Enable this item to be prompted for a new destination directory whenever Graphic Workshop is about to create one or more files, or disable it to have Graphic Workshop write new files to the source directory.

Prompt for Destination Names: Enable this item to be prompted for a new file name whenever Graphic Workshop is about to create a file.

Prompt for File Comments: Enable this item to be prompted for file comments whenever Graphic Workshop is about to create a file. The Write File Comments item must also be enabled for this item to be recognized.

Use Text File Comments: Enable this item to use text comment files. The Write File Comments option must be enabled for this item to be recognized. When Graphic Workshop writes file comments and this item is enabled, it will look for a file with the same name as the file being written and the file extension specified in the TextCommentExtension field in GWSPRO.INI. If a file by this name is found, it will use its contents for the file comments about to be written. Text comment files must be pure ASCII, not formatted word processor documents.

View Corrupted Files: Enable this item to be prompted to view partial images if a corrupt file is read by the View function.

View File Comments: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop display file comments after you exit View mode if any are present.

Write File Comments: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop write file comments to those formats which support them.

The Formats Panel

Compress IFF/LBM/PSD Files: Enable this item to compress IFF, LBM and PSD files, or disable it to create them uncompressed.

Create 16-bit Targa: Enable this item to create sixteen-bit Targa files when writing true-colour images to the TGA format, or disable it to create 24-bit Targa files.

Create Compressed EXE Pictures: Disable this item to create uncompressed DOS EXE pictures, or Enable it to create compressed DOS EXE pictures.

Create Windows EXE Pictures: Enable this item to create Windows EXE pictures, or disable it to create DOS EXE pictures.

Fast FIF Read: Enable this item to buffer FIF files in memory, or disable it to read them a block at a time from disk.

JPEG/ART Quality Factor: This control determines the amount of image degradation for images written to JPEG and ART files. It should range from 10 for unspeakably ugly to 100 for almost perfect reproduction.

Movie Quality Factor: The quality factor for writing movie files should range from 100 for unspeakably ugly to 10000 for almost perfect reproduction.

Password Protect PNG Files: Enable this item to create password-protected PNG files, or disable it to create normal PNG files.

Persistent Passwords: Enable this item to preserve your PNG password for the duration of your current Graphic Workshop session, or disable it to be prompted for your password each time it's required.

Photo-CD Options: This combo box defines which resolution will be requested when Graphic Workshop reads a Photo-CD image. The RGB items will cause Graphic Workshop to fetch a 24-bit true-colour graphic. The 256-colour items will cause Graphic Workshop to fetch an eight-bit dithered graphic. The 256 greys items will cause Graphic Workshop to fetch an eight-bit grey-scale graphic. Note that not all Photo-CD images have complete resolution sets – if you specify a resolution option which is unavailable in the Photo-CD image you ask Graphic Workshop to read, it will fetch the closest resolution that does exist.

Photo-CD Write: This combo box defines the maximum resolution for images written to the PCD format. See the Reference document for more about creating PCD files. The Automatic selection will choose the best resolution based on the size of each image written to PCD.

PNG Compression: The PNG compression factor should range from one for fast writes and poor compression to nine for slow writes and more aggressive compression.

Rasterize Metafiles to Clipboard: Enable this item to rasterize metafiles to bitmaps before they're pasted to the clipboard, or disable it paste them as metafiles.

Read CDR Bitmaps: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop search CDR files for bitmaps, or disable it to always display CDR thumbnails.

Read JPEG/FIF as RGB: Enable this item to have JPEG and FIF files read as 24-bit objects, or disable it to have them read as eight-bit objects.

Relaxed UUE: Enable this item for relaxed multiple-block UUE decoding, or disable it for strict single-block UUE decoding.

TIFF Write Options: This combo box defines how TIFF files should be written. Each item has three sections – one for monochrome images, one for images having between four and 256 colours and one for true-colour images. As such, setting it to Grp3 – LZW –LZW will cause monochrome images written to TIFF to be stored using Group 3 compression and all other files to be stored using LZW compression. See the Formats document for a complete discussion of the available TIFF compression types. Note that JPEG and PNG compression are legal TIFF options, but few applications which read TIFF know how to interpret them.

Vector Options: This combo box defines the size and colour depth of the bitmap used to rasterize vector files – specifically WMF files.

 Write Compressed Movies: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop write movies, such as AVI files, with compression. Disable it to write uncompressed movies. Note that movie formats which support compression do so through lossy compression. Compressed movies will typically look less attractive than uncompressed ones.

Write GIF Interlaced: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop write interlaced GIF files.

Write MacPaint with headers: Enable this item to add Macbinary headers to MacPaint files being create by Graphic Workshop, or disable it to suppress the creation of headers.

Write OS/2 Bitmaps: Enable this item to write OS/2 BMP files, or disable it to write Windows BMP files.

Write PBM Headers to IFF/LBM Files: Enable this item to write 256-colour LBM files with PBM line structures, or disable it to create them with ILBM line structures.

Write Progressive JPEG: Enable this item to have Graphic Workshop write progressive JPEG files, or disable it to have it write conventional JPEG files. Be warned – most applications which read JPEG files don't read progressive ones.

The Register Panel

Registration Code: Your registration code is provided when you register Graphic Workshop. If you received Graphic Workshop on an Alchemy Mindworks CD-ROM, it's on your invoice in the line item for Graphic Workshop Professional. It will look like this:

Graphic Workshop Pro REG # 12345-12-67890-88 $40.00

If you have received a confirmation e-mail message after registering Graphic Workshop, it will appear in this message, like this:

• Graphic Workshop Pro REG CODE 12345-12-67890-88

Graphic Workshop Professional registration codes are all 17 characters long, in the form of one five-digit group of numbers, a dash, one two-digit group of numbers, a dash, a second five-digit group on numbers, a dash and a final two-digit group of numbers. You must enter your code exactly in the Registration Code field to successfully register Graphic Workshop. The dashes separating the digit groups are not entered.

Note: Once it has been entered, your registration code will not be displayed by Graphic Workshop. If you have cause to re-install Graphic Workshop in the future, you will require your registration name and code. Write them down now and store them in a safe place.

Registration Name: Your registration code is a complex checksum based on the characters of your name. If your name is not entered correctly in the Registration Name field, your registration code will not be accepted. Your registration name is printed on your invoice and is included in the confirmation e-mail message you received when you registered Graphic Workshop. It must be entered exactly – all the characters, spaces and punctuation in your registration name as it is provided to you must match what you enter in the Registration Name field.

Caption

The Graphic Workshop Caption function will allow you to add text to existing graphic files. Caption text always appears below the graphics it's added to, as it would in newspaper captions. The vertical dimension of a captioned graphic will be expanded sufficiently to allow for its caption text.

By default, if you have Graphic Workshop caption a file it will create a new file for you of the type you select and with "C_" prepended to its name. Thus PICTURE.GIF could be written to C_PICTURE.GIF, for example. This option can be disabled in Setup.

To add captions, select one or more files and select Caption from the Image menu. The Caption dialog will appear. The following items will affect what your captions look like:

Single Line: Enable this option to allow a single line caption – your caption text will be truncated when it fills the first line or at the first carraige return. Disable this option to allow multiple-line captions – your captions will include as many lines as they require to display all the caption text.

Background: Click on this colour button to select the colour your caption background will be set in. See the discussion of colour in captions, below.

Foreground: Click on this colour button to select the colour your caption text will be set in. See the discussion of colour in captions, below.

Frame: Click on this colour button to select the colour your caption frame will be set in. See the discussion of colour in captions, below. The frame will only be displayed if the Frame Size item is set to a value greater than zero.

Title Font: You can select any alphabetic single-byte TrueType font installed in your system as the caption text font.

Title Font Size: This is the point size of the caption text. Bigger point sizes will create bigger captions – if you enable the Single Line option, bigger point sizes will also allow fewer words in your caption.

Frame Size: Graphic Workshop's Caption function can display a coloured frame around your captions. The frame colour is set by the Frame colour button. Set this value to zero to disable the creation of a frame.

Justification: Select left, centre or right justifcation for your caption text.

Caption Text: The caption text field will allow you to enter up to 260 characters of caption text. You can use carriage returns to format your text if you wish. You can also instruct the Caption function to fetch text from a text file. To do this, enter an @ character followed by the path to your text file in the Caption Text field. This text file must be pure ASCII – not a formatted word processor document file. It can be of any length, but keep in mind that really huge files can create really huge graphics.

Once a caption has been applied to a graphic, the text in the caption is just pixels – it can't be subsequently edited with the Caption function. If you're careful, however, you can run the same graphic through Caption multiple times to add multiple captions in different colours or different fonts if you like.

Note that the Caption function draws its colours from a standard 256-colour palette. If you caption a 24-bit true-colour image, the colours you select will be displayed exactly as they appeared in the Caption dialog colour buttons. If you caption a graphic with 256 or fewer colours, the Foreground, Background and Frame colours you select will be matched to the nearest available colours in your graphic. This can result in visible colour shifts. If you caption two-colour graphics, make sure you choose colours which will remap to black and white correctly.

The Caption function will allow you to add visible captions to your images without mangling the pictures in question. Keep in mind that anyone determined to do so can subsequently remove them – the Graphic Workshop Crop function, for example, will excise captions. There is no practical way to embed text – such as a copyright notice – in your graphics in a form which guarantees that someone will not subsequently delete it.

The Caption button will not be visible if your system is configured with a 640 by 480-pixel screen driver. You can still access the Caption function through the Image menu.

Catalog

The Graphic Workshop Catalog function will create pictures of your pictures. Tag a number of images and select the Cataloging function. One or more files will be generated containing thumbnails of your selected images. These can be helpful in keeping track of a large collection of picture files.

Files created by the catalog function will be named Catalog00001, Catalog00002, Catalog00003 and so on. The catalog function will not overwrite existing files – if the file Catalog00001 exists, for example, it will begin with Catalog00002.

When you create a catalog you can select one of a number of sizes for the final catalog files, in eight or twenty-four bit colour, with the individual thumbnails set in either portrait or landscape frames. Choosing twenty-four bit colour will create more attractive catalog images.

If you create eight-bit catalogs you can choose to either remap or dither the thumbnail images. As a rule, remapped images won't represent the colours of your source graphics all that well and dithered images will lose a bit of resolution. Bayer dithering is faster than Floyd-Steinberg dithering, but the latter looks better.

Catalog files can be created with a three-dimensional appearance or with a flat white or black background. You can select the font to be used for file names – as this text is pretty small, it's unwise to use a particularly ornate font.

If you catalog animation files, such as AVI or FLI/FLC, the image cataloged will be the first frame in the file.

Convert

Graphic Workshop will allow you to convert file of any format into files of any other format – with a few restrictions. The new file will have the same name as the original but a new extension. Converting PICTURE.GIF into a PCX file, for example, will create PICTURE.PCX. PICTURE.GIF will not be affected.

You can batch-convert any mixture of file types using Graphic Workshop. Any files which are inappropriate for the conversion you've requested will be ignored. The ongoing status will appear in the progress window.

You cannot convert pictures having more bits of colour than the destination format can handle. For example, you cannot convert a 24-bit JPEG file directly to an 8-bit GIF file. You should have to use the Effects colour-reduction facility to do this. Likewise, use the Dither function to convert a colour file to a format which only accepts monochrome images.

You can convert between selected animated formats. You can also convert from an animated format to a still format – a dialog will appear allowing you to select the frame to convert. You can't convert from a still format to an animated format.

Note that Graphic Workshop will not convert between AVI and animated GIF files. See our GIF Construction Set software for this functionality. It's available at our web page, http://www.mindworkshop.com.

Not all the formats supported by Graphic Workshop are writeable. For example, you can convert from Photo-CD to JPEG, but not from JPEG to Photo-CD because Kodak wants serious bucks for its Photo-CD mastering software. Formats which cannot be written to do not appear in the Destination dialog.

If the format you want to convert a file to is disabled in the Destination dialog, one of two things has happened:

 - You are attempting to save an image to a format that doesn't support enough colours to store it.

- The format in question has been switched off in the Formats dialog. Select Formats from the File menu of Graphic Workshop to re-enable it.

 If you convert a file and select Clpbrd as its destination format, it will be pasted to the Windows clipboard and no actual destination file will be created. This is equivalent to selecting a file and selecting Copy from the Edit menu. If you convert a file to WllPpr, it will be converted to a BMP file, written to your \WINDOWS directory and configured as your current wallpaper image.

Configure EXE Pictures

Graphic Workshop for Windows can convert images in other graphic file formats, such as PCX and GIF, into executable pictures. When you run the executable files so created as applications, they'll display the your original images. Graphic Workshop can create both DOS or Windows applications, as defined by the Windows EXE Pictures switch in Setup. If you want to create EXE pictures which can be configured, as discussed in this section, the Windows EXE Pictures option must be enabled.

See the EXE section in the Formats document for more about Graphic Workshop's DOS-mode EXE pictures.

The Configure EXE Pictures item of the File menu will allow you to configure Windows EXE pictures created by Graphic Workshop.

Self-displaying pictures are limited to 256 or fewer colours. If you want to convert an image from a true-colour file to an EXE picture – such as a JPEG graphic – you must use the Colour Reduction option of the Effects dialog to reduce it to a 256-colour graphic, and select EXE as the destination format. Windows EXE pictures created by Graphic Workshop are useable as soon as they have been created. They default to fairly simple display parameters – you can modify these through the Configure EXE Pictures function.

Note: The Configure EXE Pictures function will not open anything other than a Windows EXE picture create by Graphic Workshop. If you attempt to open another sort of EXE file, such as an application, it will complain.

When an EXE picture has been opened in Configure EXE Pictures, its name will appear in the title bar of the Picture Configuration dialog and its dimensions, colour depth and the version of Graphic Workshop for Windows that created it will appear in the upper left corner of the Picture Configuration application window.

Keep in mind that configuring a Windows EXE picture will change the contents of the EXE file for the picture. If you have a virus detector that looks for modified EXE files, this will set it off. Doing so is harmless – no viruses have been introduced into your pictures.

Here's what the configuration options in Picture Configuration do:

Next Picture

Windows EXE pictures can chain to subsequent pictures – or, in fact to any other application's EXE file – when they terminate. You can use this feature to create a Windows slide show. Click on Browse to select the picture to chain to. Delete the contents of this field to prevent a picture from chaining.

Note: If you want to abort a sequence of chained Windows EXE pictures when they're running, click and hold in the current picture with your right mouse button and click on the left button. A dialog will appear to ask if you want to abort the sequence.

Effect

Windows EXE pictures have built in multimedia facilities. A Windows EXE picture can play wave files, MIDI music files and Video for Windows AVI files. These have the file extensions WAV, MID and AVI respectively. You can configure a Windows EXE picture to play a multimedia file when it first starts up, or from a menu selection or a button in its About box.

Note that colour AVI files will seize the system palette for as long as they play on display devices having 256 or fewer colours. This may distort the colours of your Windows EXE picture until the movie stops.

You can select an effect file by clicking on Browse. Once an effect has been selected, click on Test to see what it sounds or looks like. While an effect is playing as a result of clicking on Test, the Test button will become a Stop button. Clicking on it will terminate the effect.

When a Windows EXE picture loads, it also looks to its command line for the path to a wave, MIDI or AVI file. If it finds one, it will use this as an effect if the Effect field has been left blank.

Title

This field allows you to define the text for the title bar of a Windows EXE picture. If you leave this field blank, the title will be "Picture."

Message

This field allows you to define the text for the About box of a Windows EXE picture. It can contain up to 300 characters.

Background and Set Background

If Set Background is enabled, the background of your picture will be the colour selected in the matrix of background colour tiles. If it's not enabled, the background will be the default background colour for the system that runs your EXE pictures. The background colour affects the matt around a picture when you maximize it. Click in a coloured tile to choose a new background colour. The current colour is indicated by a tile with a square within it.

Time Delay

If you enable Time Delay and enter a time delay value, your Windows EXE picture will display for a preset time and then automatically terminate or chain to another picture.

End On Mouse

If the End On Mouse option is enabled, clicking in a Windows EXE picture with your mouse will cause it to terminate or chain to another picture. This does not affect using the right mouse button to terminate a sequence of chained pictures.

Start With Effect

If the Start With Effect option is enabled, your Windows EXE picture will play an effect defined as soon as it runs if one was defined.

No Title Bar

The No Title Bar option will disable the title bar, system menu and the minimize and maximize buttons of a Windows EXE picture. It will only be enabled if End On Mouse or Time Delay are selected, such that there is some way to terminate your picture.

Centre Picture

The Centre Picture option will place your picture in the centre of its window when the window is maximized. If this option is not enabled the picture will appear in the upper left corner.

Maximize

The Maximize option will cause a Windows EXE picture to maximize automatically when it runs.

An unmaximized Windows EXE picture will generate a window just large enough to contain it. If you attempt to display a picture larger than your screen, Windows may be unable to create a window for it, and the image will not display. It's a good idea to keep the sizes of your Windows EXE pictures to modest dimensions.

 EXE pictures created with an unregistered copy of Graphic Workshop Professional will say so when they're run. This message will not appear in EXE pictures created with a registered copy. This message cannot be removed once an EXE picture has been created – you must re-convert your graphic to EXE with a registered copy of Graphic Workshop Professional to banish it.

Distribution of EXE pictures created by Graphic Workshop: If you have registered Graphic Workshop Professional, you are welcome to create and distribute all the EXE pictures you like except in a commercial context wherein you are actually selling the service of creating EXE pictures. This assumes that you own the copyright to the images they contain, of course. EXE pictures created by an unregistered evaluation copy of Graphic Workshop may not be distributed.

Identify Mystery Graphic Files

In order to deal with directories of graphic files reasonably quickly, Graphic Workshop makes the initial assumption that all the files it's asked to handle will have correct file extensions. For example, it assumes that JPEG files will have the extension JPG. A JPEG file with the extension GIF would not be readable.

In some cases – especially if you like to download graphics from the internet – you might encounter files which have obviously incorrect extensions, mysterious extensions or no extensions at all. You might also encounter files which Graphic Workshop can't read even though you're fairly sure that they're valid graphics – this is a good indication that the files in question have incorrect extensions.

Note that web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Netscape, display the graphic files they support irregardless of their extensions. They can do this because they typically support fewer than half a dozen graphic formats. This can be a source of considerable confusion if your browser displays a file which purports to be a JPG graphic, for example, and Graphic Workshop will not. It's probably a file of another type which has been renamed with the JPG extension.

The Identify Mystery Files function in the File menu of Graphic Workshop will attempt to figure out the true nature of mysterious files. Specifically, it will compare the internal structure of a file of unknown type to the internal structures it knows how to deal with. If it finds a match, it will advise you of this and offer you the option of having the file in question renamed with its correct extension. It will thereafter be viewable by Graphic Workshop.

This process is mildly fraught with perils. It's possible to create files which will look like valid image structures, but which actually contain nothing but monkey dandruff. If you attempt to identify such a file, Graphic Workshop may erroneously tell you that it's something it isn't. Once Graphic Workshop tells you what a mystery file is, it's a very good idea to view it and make sure it's not pulling your leg.

Secondly, Graphic Workshop can only identify a subset of the file types it actually knows how to interpret. It won't do anything with mystery files in formats it doesn't recognize. It will also prove to be unable to recognize files in some of its supported formats if the formats in question don't actually have identifiable internal structures. For example, there's no reliable way to determine whether a mystery file is actually a MacPaint image because MacPaint files don't include identifiable structures. Graphic Workshop will not check mystery files to see if they're MacPaint files.

For the most part, the formats that Graphic Workshop will read but doesn't check are fairly obscure ones.