IFF Converter ver. 0.5 Documentation
                               By Ken Grey

                     (c) 1989 Pelican Software, Inc.

                  This program is in the public domain
                     Distribute, but do not sell it.

                        Send bugs and comments to:

                          AppleLink PE: KenG22
                             CIS: 71340,555


Requires 512k or so, and System 5.0 or higher, I decided to muck around
with some new tool calls.  (found a few bugs in the process!)



The IFF converter is a program that allows you to read in pictures saved
in the IFF format used by just about all Amiga paint and graphics programs
and a few on the IBM such as DeluxePaint II.

The first thing you will need is an IFF picture.  You can get them by
downloading them from an amiga BBS or an online service.  Most of the pictures
will be packed with an archiving program using the MS-DOS worlds ARC "standard"
If the file is listed with a .ARC suffix you can try to use one of the
Apple II versions of the ARC program to get the picture out.

The IFF Converter will be looking for filetype of BIN or TXT since there
is no filetype/aux type for IFF pictures yet and most of the DeARCing programs
create a file with either of these types.

To convert a picture simply choose Open and select a file.  The resulting
picture will be placed in a scrollable window. If you like it, select
Save As from the file menu and it will be written out in the Apple Perferred
Format.

NOTE: Amiga pictures in the 320 mode usually have 32 colors associated with
      them.  They also use a different standard ordering scheme, where color
      number 0 usually equals white and color 1 equals black.  On the GS
      color 0 usually equals black and color 15 equals white.  This will
      usually cause the menu bar and menu text to be invisible.  If you
      load a picture and can't see what you are doing, press open-apple N
      to "Normalize" the screen colors.  This will have no effect on the
      colors that actually get saved with your picture.

For the very ambitous who want to get the most out of their pictures and
the program for that matter, you can try using the "Edit Colors" option.

Edit Colors:

Once you have loaded a picture you can go to the Edit Colors dialog.
You will see two rows of eight colors at the bottom of the box,
representing the colors that will be in the resulting picture. At the top
there will be a varing amount of colors that are in the origional IFF
picture.  Clicking on one of the destination colors will hi-light all
the source colors that will be translated to that destination color.
As a default color 0 will be mapped to color 0, color 1 to color 1 and so on
up to 15. All colors above 15 in the source IFF picture will be mapped to
color 15 as you can see if you click on destination color 15.
To change what gets translated to what, simply click on a destination color to
modify and the click on a source color.  It will then added to the list
of colors that will be translated to your selected destination.

As a rule, all source colors must have a destination, but there can be
a destination color that does not have anything translated to it.

To change what color is actually used as the destination color hold the
open-apple key down while selecting a source color.  You will see the
destination color change accordingly.

When you click on the Re-Convert button the file will be loaded back in
and re-converted using your new color lookup table.

As an example, I will show you how to rearrange the color translation of a
32 color Amiga picture so that the white an black are in the correct
place for proper viewing and editing on a GS.

NOTE: I will refer to color #'s as starting from 0, and reading left to right

1. Load an IFF picture and go to the Edit colors option

2. Hold down the open apple key and click on color 1 in the source
   color box, this should be black.  You should see color 0 in the destination
   box change to black.

3. Click on color 1 in the destinaion box.

4. Hold the open-apple key down and click on color # 15 in the source color
   box, that's the rightmost on on the second row.

5. Click on color # 15 in the destination box, the rightmost one on the second
   row.

6. Hold the open-apple key down and click on color 0 in the source box.

7. Click on the Re-Convert button to redo the picture.


Between steps 6 and 7 you should probably go through color 16 to 31 on the
source box and try to match them to a destination color that looks similar
rather than having them turn to white.

You can run into the problem of having an IFF picture that does not use very
many of the lower 16 colors at all and you might get a picture that
appears blank, but really is just using all the upper colors.  The only
thing to do is experiment with the color conversion.


Some observations:

I have tried to convert one Amiga HAM picture with no luck.
I got the pixels through ok but the colors are not stored normally so it
looked rather messy.

Also, the program will always convert to the GS's 320 mode, even if the
source pictures width is 640.  This might cause some stretched out pictures.
To fix this, save the picture and then load it into SHRConvert and use the
fix aspect ratio option.


For the future:
As you might have noted, this is version 0.5,  a future version will
allow you to convert in the other direction as well and maybe have a few
other features as too.

If there is something you would like to see in it or if you find a bug,
drop me some E-mail.

Enjoy the program.