background picture for workbench3.1

[amiga4001]

I am setting up an amige1200.
It has internalcdrom,harddisk,delfinaflipper and a 030 Tcard.
I installed workbench3.1 as I think it's less demanding on the cpu.
Installed Newicons V3 and gotta sort that out as some drawers are not being changed into new.
But I also want a nice background picture on the workbench.
A .iff file I think with not too much colours like a 2 stupid dogs background great pictures with not too much colours.
What program is best for my setup to display the pictures?

[motorollin]

Not sure I understand the question. If you want a backdrop in Workbench then you don't use a programme to display the picture, you use the backdrop prefs to choose the image you want to use as the backdrop.

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moto

[Hodgkinson]

I've made my own background for my OS3.0 A1200 and i've found a few useful bits of information out in the process.

Whilst my backdrop is designed to use as little resource as possible, you might want to look at my photos (I have written up the information I found as images).

Hodgkinson.

[amiga4001]

I forgot it has this standard in the workbench.
Don't need any external proggie for this.
But how about a iconbar?
Is toolmanager the easiest way to go?
I just want something like amidock.
Or is this free and working with os 3.1?

[marcfrick2112]

Hi, A quick check found two programs called AmiDock, one available from Aminet, and the version that ships with OS3.9. It doesn't seem like the newer version from OS3.9 is available separatly, you may want to stick with ToolManager, or check Aminet for alternatives.

[Eclipse]

motorollin wrote:
Not sure I understand the question. If you want a backdrop in Workbench then you don't use a programme to display the picture, you use the backdrop prefs to choose the image you want to use as the backdrop.

--
moto

Done that bit
What I'm saying is does it have to be IFF? I'd prefer a newer file format.
IFF's can get quite big, with an average quality.

[Chain]

Eclipse wrote:

Done that bit
What I'm saying is does it have to be IFF? I'd prefer a newer file format.
IFF's can get quite big, with an average quality.

they are actually small (compressed) and fast
faster than remappig huge truecolor pic to your 32 color workbench

[Hodgkinson]

When you make a IFF image, check the colour depth of the image. Less colours = Faster loading and smaller file size... And these colours can be made to match those supported by a low colour WB by using some special modes in Paint Shop Pro 6.

Also, dont make the image any larger than what you can see on the screen. It'll just mean your system has to load more image for no reason.
I did some tests on this and found that, say you've set 640x480, then the title bar shifts the image by 11 pixels downwards, cutting off the bottom 11 pixels of the image, so the image should be 640x469 for optimium performance.

Hope this is of some use... (I figured you might be doing some image editing at some stage...)

Hodgkinson.

[Eclipse]

I thought the image had to be exactly the same size as the desktop?

[Hodgkinson]

I thought the image had to be exactly the same size as the desktop?

Not that im aware of. I've had a 640x480 background image for a long time on my WB3.0 system before realising, with a new 640x480 background image, that the bottom 11 pixels of the image aren’t visible.

Apart from that i've noticed no difference what so ever.

Its quite likely that the "Number of displaced pixels" will vary from system to system depending upon the default system font, as used in the title bar.
I’m not saying that im an expert with background images, im just stating what I found out whilst trying to design my own background image, in the hope someone else might find it useful.

Hodgkinson.