amiga for design?

[Edvard]

Hello everyone, i've been using photoshop,indesign, quark etc for a few years cretaing logos, posters, magazine covers, layouts ect. Do you think that you could create some interesting material within amiga's artistic applications if you were running a cutting edge one? Or is the system simply not made for these purposes?

P.S. What graphic programs were retro games such as turrican, zool, james pond etc designed on?

Cheers, Ted

[HellCoder]

The Amiga is perfectly capable still, depending on the skills of the user. I'm using Imagine alot combined with ahem.. own written filters.

I'll simply convert a picture to RAW RGB and process it using a custom build filter.

But apart from that, you'll have to ask yourself, what is your limitation, the computer or you ?
I prefer to say the limitation is me, but that is a personal opinion.

[Roondar]

Edvard wrote:
P.S. What graphic programs were retro games such as turrican, zool, james pond etc designed on?

I'm not 100% certain, but there's a pretty good chance the graphics where designed in Deluxe Paint (any version) and then later imported into some specialty tools for putting them in the game (defining animations, making the tiles used for the level map etc).

Altough I do know that Turrican had it's own toolset. Perhaps that included the graphic editor, perhaps not.

[Ilwrath]

Do you think that you could create some interesting material within amiga's artistic applications if you were running a cutting edge one? Or is the system simply not made for these purposes?

Well, for fixed-resolution work (pixel art), it's still tough to beat DPaint or Brilliance on Amiga.  They are really nice programs with some pixel-level features you just don't see in Photoshop.  If I want a small, fixed-resolution character or design that I can fit in 256 colors, I still reach for my 1200 and Brilliance AGA.  

I rarely use an Amiga for a full project, anymore, though.  Photoshop has a lot of modern features that are nearly essential to my needs, which most/all programs on the Amiga are missing.  (Savable file format that preserves working layers, text layers saved as text for easy re-editing, advanced layer effects, full history tree with history brush, all sorts of filters, file sizes and resolutions above chipram size, and the list goes on...)

I have no doubt on a sufficiently spec'd Amiga you CAN still produce great works... Just that it in many cases, it will take a LOT of effort to work around the shortcomings.  

[xeron]

Theres some really great programs on the Amiga for graphic work, like Photogenics, ImageFX, Art Department Pro, ArtEffect, FXPaint, TVPaint, XiPaint, Perfect Paint, Personal Paint, Deluxe Paint, Brilliance.

Some of these are more out of date than others, but I personally really like and still use Personal Paint, Perfect Paint, TVPaint and Photogenics.

I am familiar with and use Photoshop 7 and Paint Shop Pro on Windows, but I still use my Amiga for gfx if I do any gfx.

None of these programs compensate for my complete inability to draw, though ;-)

[motrucker]

Don't forget Pagestream! A lot can be designed on this. Then there's Lightwave.....
Almost every thing else has been mention.

[Jose]

"...Savable file format that preserves working layers, text layers saved as text for easy re-editing, advanced layer effects, full history tree with history brush, all sorts of filters, file sizes and resolutions above chipram size, and the list goes on...)"

ImageFX...
In general there are also other Amiga programs out there that have those features but I've only tried ImageFX. For most to be usable professionaly you'll need to have a top spec Amiga though.

[Dandy]

motrucker wrote:
Don't forget Pagestream!
...
Then there's Lightwave
...

...and Reflections (MoonZoom Pro), TurboSilver, MaxxonCinema, MaxxonCAD, DynaCadd, ...



EDIT:
Ahhhhh - ohhhhh - this is my 200. posting...

[X-ray]

@ Edvard

It depends what work you are currently doing on the PC side. There are several things that I do now, that I can't do on the Amiga:

1) Large format posters. The last one I worked on had pixel dimensions of 7k x 11k and I needed to keep it in 4 layers because one of the layers was to be adjusted by the printer after conversion to CMYK.

2) Medical models (surface and skeleton). No equivalent to the program Poser exists on Amiga. Also, I wouldn't have enough RAM to work on these models on the Amiga, and even if I did, I would probably wait until I had a grey beard before my render was finished. And I have an 060-based Amiga with a PIV, and 272mb RAM, which is reasonable spec.

3) DICOM manipulation. DICOM stands for Digital Imaging and COmmunication in Medicine. The Amiga is no longer up to date in terms of handling medical images, whereas on the PC you can get freeware to do all your DICOM manipulations.

4) Input device software. By this I mean drivers for specialised digitizing hardware such as my Epson Perfection scanner with Digital ICE filters. Not a chance you can get that on Amiga. And once again even if you did, you would be dead before you got the final image. Even on my PC, which is very good spec, it takes more than 30 minutes to scan a small photograph with an ICE filter (a special surface artefact remover for hairs and scratches and other blemishes on the item being scanned). The same applies to remote camera drivers and specialised printing software for graphics proofs.

5) DTP: if you want to submit anything useable in the publishing industry today, you best use Mac or PC.

Where the Miggy is still good:

1) Low resolution painting in Brilliance or DPaint.
2) Animation.
3) Certain functions that are now 'obsolete' or not present in modern PC software. For example I had to run several X-ray images through a resizing manipulation in ImageFX because when I did it in Photoshop the results were too good and did not give me the blockiness I wanted.

In short, if you are already using good PC software to do your designs, then using the Amiga is a step backwards. I have used my Amiga only once or twice in the last 4 years for graphics work. I miss the days when I was raytracing animations and recording those to video, though. That was fun.