alien.png Extra's -- The image viewer
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Chaos Assembler 3 has a built in image viewer with which you can view all kinds of MSX images. The image viewer not only can view the images, it also can do a lot of neat other things. You can see the image viewer in figure 38.


Note: If the image editor is OPEN and ACTIVE, the main menu will have a NEW item:
Image viewer. It'll appear before the Extra item! This menu item has all the tool buttons in it.



image viewer (overview).png
Figure 38. The image viewer

As you can see it's a window which is about 90% filled with a box where you can display an MSX image (as you can see in figure 38, the teddybear is an (Graph Saurus) .SR5 file!).
In the title bar of the window you can see the filename (with complete path) of the currently loaded image. Below that you see 6 tool buttons. From left to right:



Open image
This button will warp you to an open dialog where you can select an MSX image to load. Currently supported types:
·Graph Saurus Screen 5 BLOAD files (*.SR5)  
·Graph Saurus Screen 5 COPY files (*.GL5)  
·Unknown file format screen 5 (*.CC5)  
·AGE (DD-GRAPH) files (*.GE5)  
·Graph Saurus Screen 7 BLOAD files (*.SR7)  
·Graph Saurus Screen 7 COPY files (*.GL7)  
·Unknown file format screen 7 (*.CC7)  

The image viewer will automatically try to find a palette file (except for GE5 files) and load it. As Graph Saurus and the Unknown image format both produce 8 palettes in a single file, the image viewer needed support for that. Luckily that's built in! You can view your images in CA3 as if they were being showed on MSX! More about this later in the palette part.

Export image

Sometimes it can come in handy to export an MSX image to a PC format image. The image exporter is for that. You can export your image to a .bmp (windows bitmap) file. There are enough tools available to convert that image to e.g. a .jpg image which will be perfect for web deployment.


Zoom in
Often it comes in really handy to zoom in on the current image. That's what this option is here for. Notice the little down arrow. With this you can quick zoom.

Zoom out
Zooms out on the image (see Zoom in)

Zoom default
Zooms to the default image size (i.e. x1)


Copy palette info to clipboard

This is without doubt one of the most (if not THE most) powerful options of the image viewer. Remember the times you have made an image and got a paper somewhere and you were writing down the palette information? These days are over! This button copies the palette information into a pasteable block of data for your sources. You will NOT have to write ANY palette down EVER!

You also will see a little drop down arrow to the right of the palette icon. Click this and you'll get the drop down menu shown in figure 39.

image viewer (palette).png
Figure 39. The palette drop down menu.


If you've loaded a full palette (i.e. NOT a .GE5 file or an image without a palette file) you will be able to click any of the 8 palettes to switch to that palette. If you've loaded a .GE5, these items just will not be enabled.

The import palette item just opens another open dialog where you can select another palette file. If you want to edit a palette, CA3 is the right tool for you. Click on the Custom palette (editor) to be warped to the palette editor, which will be described in the next topic!



More extras of the image viewer

Cursor position  
Also a very simple but quite powerful option of the image viewer is the so called cursor location. Look at the status bar on the bottom of the dialog window, and move your mouse over the image. The image viewer will tell you exactly at what pixel you are moving now!  
 
Block mode  
Okay, we've discussed the palette stuff. What else is a standard action you ALWAYS take when making a demo? Yes! Writing down coordinates of objects (like fonts and equalizers). And YES, also THIS will be history from now on!  
The image viewer can select blocks and tell you exactly how big it is, where it starts and where it ends... Try moving the mouse to a certain position in the image and hold the shift key. Now move your mouse again and see what happens! Also look at the status bar (right side). Now THAT is what I call fitting the programmers needs! (see figure 40).  
 
image viewer (block mode).png  
Figure 40. The block mode.  
 
Here you see the block mode of the image viewer in action. As you can see you can select a certain block in the image to view some coordinates which can be used in your source pretty easily! Notice the block has a strange color. This is done to always see the block. A selected pixel has the inverted color of the original. So by holding shift and moving the mouse you can select these kind of blocks. Notice the status bar where all information is.