Printing out my artwork

[AmigaBruno]

Recently, I've been creating various pieces of artwork, using Deluxe Paint III and now Deluxe Paint IV V4.5 AGA on my Amiga A500 Plus and A1200.

So far, I haven't managed to transfer any of the artwork onto any other devices, apart from taking photos of it using my HP camera and Android phone. Any pics taken using the dedicated HP camera often show a black bar on the screen, while the pics taken with my Android phone never show this. I don't know why.

The closest I've come to getting any of my artwork as a file of the actual ILBM IFF screens onto any other device was when I managed to display it on my laptop running WinUAE and booting from the CF card I've been using as a 4Gb hard drive with my A1200.

I'd like to find any way of printing out my artwork and/or transferring it onto another device for printing out, so that's two questions.

1. How can I transfer this artwork from my CF card onto any other device?

2. Can someone give me a longer list of colour printers which are compatible with the Amiga A1200 than the list of drivers which appeared in the Amiga Workbench disks?

Here's an example of my latest artwork, which is called "Crowd", about a club I used to go to years ago, and is 640x256 with a palette of 256 colours.



Here's the link to the full size version

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=3786

[AmigaBruno]

I'd say you were already most of the way there by using the CF card in the pc. You just need some way to convert the files to some pc format. You could do that on the Amiga or the PC Something like Adpro on Amiga or Photoshop on the PC. Once on the laptop, just copy it to a usb flashdrive and print it out at whatever store is handy. Here in the states, just about every drug store chain has a 1-hr photo printer. Even the public library has color printers.

I don't need to convert the files to a PC format, or a Windoze format, or even a Linux format, because I've installed some software called GrafX2, which is compatible with DeluxePaint up to a point. It will read these files if I can transfer them onto my laptop or desktop PC, then if necessary, it could save them as a different format. I don't even need to save them in a different format. Unfortunately, I found that the GrafX2 menus aren't much like the DeluxePaint menus, so it's not much good for creating graphics in the first place.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrafX2

[AmigaBruno]

Easiest route is probably to use GrafX2 to convert them to PNG or another common modern format and then print them however you like.

Another option would be to use PPaint or ADPro on the Amiga to convert them. You could also paste them into PageStream and save the page as a PDF.

You could also use the Amiga's PostScript printer driver (OS2.1+? Maybe only 3.1+), print to file, then copy the raw PS file to another machine and work with it in Ghostscript or Acrobat where you could print it using any printer.

Circuitous, yes, but doesn't require tracking down an ancient printer and compatible ink.

TurboPrint is still available, which has support for slightly more recent printers. A list is here. Also look for a copy of Studio II Professional, or CanonDisk on Aminet.

It's a pity there haven't been any more posts to this thread.

An idea of mine is to print some artwork out in a way which is suitable to be transferred onto T shirts. This would be a good way to get people to pay something to show their appreciation of my artwork, instead of getting something for nothing. I'm even open to trades not involving money, though. I was recently watching a Canon BJ10 which hadn't been unwrapped. I thought this may be suitable.

Don't forget, if it wasn't for people like me, then Neanderthals would still rule the world! Why is this, you may ask yourselves? In the BBC documentary series "The Incredible Human Journey", Dr Alice Roberts discovered and explained how Neanderthals lived in small groups which didn't help other groups, unlike the Homo Sapiens. Our ancestors got their sense of community from artwork, icluding statues and symbols which were admired by large groups of people. These included religious statues, and flags. You can buy the series on DVD and there's also a book.

[AmigaBruno]

I don't think there's much more we can tell you. You can either convert the files and print them from a PC or Mac, use TurboPrint or Studio II directly on the Amiga, or look for drivers on Aminet. Remember that printing on the Amiga was never particular easy.

One last thing I just thought of: use the PostScript driver directly. Just find any color PostScript printer. You'll need to look carefully at specifications, and hopefully you have USB capability so that you don't need to find an old parallel port model. A network model could be another option.

I've been looking at old parallel port printers on eBay. I haven't got a USB adaptor fitted and haven't been able to find these listed anywhere recently. I'm on a tight budget and I don't think I could afford anything that costs as much as £90 (currently €103.89 or US$138.13), so whatever I buy must cost less than that. After I find a way of doing this, then I could start selling artwork as prints, postcards, and/or T shirts, then I could afford more expensive items.

[AmigaBruno]

If this were my Minimig or 1200 I'd have several options.

Saving the images to PNG on the Amiga is easy unless they are HAM. I'd probably use Personal Pant's screen grabber function and just save it as .PNG.  

To physically transfer the file:

If it were a huge amount of files (or somethig really large) I'd mount the CF(or HD or SD card) with a USB adapter on my PC and boot WinUAE with a drive mapped to my PC and just copy the files over. That is a lot of work to go through (even on minimig) just to get a few (relatively) low-resolution images transferred when, in my case, sometimes, I just want to periodically send over some c code snippets or screenshots like you are doing.

For that I may use serial port. You just need a null serial cable connected between your PC and Amiga. I use a Bluetooth serial adapter as none of my PCs have serial port.  From there you have some pretty good options like Amiga Explorer (which I cant seem to get to work over BT) or just transfer the files with ncomm.

Because you have an A1200 a really good option would be PCMCIA network card. You could FTP the files. My A1200 is pretty strong with the 060 so I can even mount windows shares with samba. I don't recommend that option unless you have 040 or better.

Finally, the holy grail would be the SUBWAY USB adapter, then you could write them to directly to USB flash drive.

Anyway, good luck I like your artwork

It seems that I should use WinUAE with my USB CF card reader and mount a directory on my laptop as a drive in WinUAE. I've already done this in the past. I could then copy the graphics files from the Amiga FFS formatted CF card over to the directory on my laptop.

As for the Subway USB adapter, that sounds like a good idea various uses, but I've just searched and can't find it on Amigakit OR Vesalia! Where can I get one and how much are they?

[AmigaBruno]

I've just found the Subway via Google on Amigakit, although I couldn't find it when I searched on their site. Unfortunately, it's £100, so that's out of my price range.