AmigaFormat027Suppliment-BestOfTheAmiga.pdf

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YOUR
FREE
COMPLETE
GUIDE
TO
AMIGA
NON-GAMES
SOFTWARE
\.
j
!
I
t;_he best
I
f
,
.
FREE WIJ.'HISSUE 27 • OCTOBER 1991
of the Amigll
1991
,1
pro!'rams every
Am1ga owner
should have!
19
19
painting,
drawing and
animation
paclcages!
three-
dimensional
modelling programs!
19
oth4:r tricky
buying
.
decisions made easy!
91
That:S a total of 148 non-games
programs and
pacl,ages that we've rated, recommended
or
rejected, all to help you mal<e the right choice
when it comes to laying out your cash!
The Best of the Amiga
What~ it all about?
1991
The original idea from which this booklet
sprang
was to give you a
'cut
out
and
keep' guide in the pages of the magazine to the whole range of Amiga non
-
games
software
that is currently
available
.
Instead
,
we
've
done the
cutting
out
by making it
a
separate booklet,
so
all
you need to do is
the
keeping!
There
's
not
every
last piece of Amiga
software
in here, but
certainly
the vast
majority. The main
exception
is
educational stuff
.
But it includes all the
most
commonly-available programs that
are
useful. productive, creative, or just plain
fun. We've
also
included
some
combination software-and-hardware packages,
most
notably
sound samplers and
video digitisers
,
mainly because they
are
for
creative use
and
so
fit in here better than they would in
a
round
-up,
say,
of disk
drives
and
printers.
How to use this guide
The idea is to help you when you
're
looking
through the adverts or
browsing
the
shop shelves and
trying to decide if
a
particular program would
suit
your
needs,
so
take it with you when you
're
shopping
for Amiga
stuff
.
As
well
as
the
recommended price or
a
guide price
for each
item, we
've
also
included
a space
for you to write in the best price you
've
seen
for
a
particular item you want, or
to make
a
note of
any
bargains you might have found,
even
if it wasn
't
some-
thing you were looking for.
We haven
't
attempted
to describe in detail what
each
package does:
that
should
be clear
enough
from the packaging or the description in
a catalogue.
Instead, we've just given
our opinion
on whether it is worth buying. And,
of
course,
some
things might be worth paying full
whack
for, while others might
only be worth having if you pick them up
cheap.
What we
've
also
done is given
each
item
a simple Star
Rating, to give you
an
at-a-glance
yes
or no if you need to make
a
decision.
Star Ratings
Outstanding:
every
Amiga
owner should
have it!
Excellent:
you
should
definitely consider it.
Good
:
but
with
reseNations. Shop for price
.
Adequate: it'll
do
the job
,
but get it cheap.
Poor
:
pick it up
only
if it's
at
PD prices!
So,
all
that remains to be
said
is
good
·luck
and
happy
shopping!
YOUR
PRICE
GRAPHICS: PAINT AND ANIMATION
Deluxe Paint 2
£49
The
second
version of
the
most popular paint
package
is still widely available:
it
'
s
good,
but if
you
pick it up
cheap find out about
upgrading to
DPaint
III
or
IV
by phonin
g
Electronic Arts on
0753 546442.
D
D
D
D
D
DPaint
3
£69
The third
version
of
DPaint
with
its
excellent
animation
facilities is
still
the
standard
paint
package
for anything except
HAM mode. Again,
you
can upgrade
to the latest version.
DPaint IV
£89
The ver y latest paint package
-
goes on sale September 1991. Adds
4096
-colour
HAM painti
ng
to the extreme
ly
popu
lar
Deluxe Paint
Ill,
but is unique among the pa
int
programs
in
that
it
can work in
any of the Am
iga's
graphics modes
:
fou
r
colours through 64 to
HAM, low
-
to high
-res,
Interla
ce
and all. Also has many excellent
painting
·tools
and comes with an animation sequencer to let you set
up complex animations from short clips. Possibly the best Amiga program to date. It is very
likely that no paint package will ever outdo it and it will become a standard.
Photon Paint
2
£79.95
One
of
the two
slightly older
HAM
-only
paint program
s,
it has many
good
features
but is now
superceded
by both
DPaint
IV
and
Spectracolor,
which
is
based on
the
same
code
.
You might
find
that it
is available cheaper
soon.
DigiPaint
3
£75
The
othe
r
of
the
slightly older
HAM-only
paint
program
s.
Essentially very
similar
to
Photon
Pain!
but has
some
quirky bits
as
well
as some exce
llent
unique
feature
s,
but
overall
is
left
beh
ind
by the
two newer HAM package
s.
***
o·
D
D
D
Spectracolor
£77
Very
excellent
HAM paint and animation program
,
but unlike
Deluxe Paint
IV
it is
HAM-only.
Its
main unique
feature (from
Photon Paint)
is the
ability to wrap
a
brush
onto
a 'so
lid'
shape
with
proper lighting. Good, but could
suffer
from
DPaint
's
dominance
.
****
Express Paint
£NIA
A very old and very
bizarre painting program that
works
in no
more
than
32 colours
.
It
was
left
miles behind by
Deluxe Paint
years
ago.
It
's
really quite tricky to use
and
unfriendly
,
but
if
you can
get
it dirt
cheap
you will
get
some
use from it.
Spritz
£45
Everything
that
goes for
Express
Paint
goes
for
this
one too, because
it is
actually
more
or
less the
same
thing. We
've
seen
this
one on sale as cheap as £3,
so
it makes
a
really
viable alternative
to
a Public Domain program.
Disney's The
Animation
Studio
£99.95
As
you would expect
from
anything with
Disney's name
,
this is
very
high-qua lity
indeed.
Designed
especially
for
coloured-in
line-drawings,
so
you
'
ll
need to
be able
to draw.
32-co
lour is
not too
lim-
iting
because each frame can
have
a
separate
palette.
D
Aegis Graphics Starte r
Kit
£N/A
i:f
A combinatio
n
package
of
Aegis
Images
(a
paint program),
Aegis
Draw
(a structured
drawing/CAD
type program)
and
Aegis Animator
(an animation creator). All are
now
extreme
ly
aged and
com-
pletely
outdated.
OK
if
very cheap
.
Fantavision
£35
Old
,
difficult to
get
your head round
at
first but
actually
quite
simple
and unique.
€
rea tes
simpl e
animation s
by moving
structured
objects
(outlin e
drawin
gs
that
you
can
reshape by draggi ng points
around ) over
bitm
ap
background
s.
Worth
a
bash.
D
Zoetrope
£89
Ano
ther very bizarre program, this is basically a paint and animation package that does all kind
s of
very
clever
and scientific
thin
gs,
but it'
s
terr ibly compl
ex
and
unfri
endly.
Get it if
you'
re
curious,
but
you '
re
out on a
limb
!
D
D
The Graphics Workshop
£N/A
i:rr:d:r{?
Only rece nt and only
available on
import
from
the
US
thou
gh
it
works on UK (PAL)
Ami.gas, this
is
a very good 64-co
lour paint and animati
on
package that could have been
a
rival
for
DPaint
lll
if
the
stakes
hadn
'
t been upped to HAM. Might be
reborn
as a 24-
bit
system.
Icon
Paint
£NIA
A very satisfactory
program to make it
easy
for
you
to design
and
use
colourful
icons
on your
Workbe
nch-booted
pro
gram s.
It is available
at
a ridiculou
sly
low price,
so
why not
give
it
a whirl?
Deluxe Print
2
£35
Now includ
ed
free
with certain of the
Amiga bundl
es you see advertised as well as
the
official
Co
mmodore
version ,
this is basically
a simple
design
system geare
d towards producing
large
print
-
outs
like posters. Not too
stunnin g.
Comic Setter
£45
Basically
a
design program that
lets
you
join toge ther
clip-art
drawn in
a comi c-book style and type
in the word
s
to produ
ce
your own
comic
books. Rath
er
fun
,
actually, though
very comput er-ish.
Movie
Setter
£49
D
D.
D
YOUR
PRICE
Rath
er
more to
it
than
its
sister
program
,
this one is
a
full-blown
animation creator :
it does n
't
paint,
but
stitches
together bits from
other
program
s.
It
's
not
state-of-the-art
,
but look
at
Eric Schwartz
'
s
PD
animati
ons
to
see
its
exce
llent results.
D
.
GRAPHICS: STRUClVRED DRAWING
£115
This is almost, but not quite, a unique program for the Amiga: and
it is certainly unrivalled in its quality. The only shame is that you
don't see more use made of it. It is a structured drawing program,
which means that every line or point is stored in memory as 20
coordinates. The big advantage of structured drawing is twofold:
one, that any line or object in the picture can be stretched, bent or
reshaped at will any time: and two, that it will always print out at the highest possible quality,
however big it is, which makes it great for DTP.
Design Works
Professional Draw 2
o·
D
YOUR
PRICE
£
1
00
tc
tc(;(ti
A
very new release, this is
only
the
seco
nd
structured
drawing program to
appear
for the Ami
ga
. It
is by no means
as
power ful
as
Professiona l Draw
but it will
work on an
unexpand
ed
A
SOO
and
could be
a good
one for the less
expe
rienced hand.
GRAPHICS: IMAGE PROCESSING
Deluxe Video Ill
£90
A very
good anim ation sequenc
ing
system, for
putting toge ther
shorter
animation
sections
and
ele-
ments into
a
full produ
ction.
The only rea
l
doubt over it
now
adays
is that
the
most in1portant part of
the progra m is
given away
free
with
Deluxe Paint
IV.

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