ChromaStudio 24 - A Warning. Warning! This review contains little or no negative criticism. This is not becau se it has been written by a flag-waving pro-Atari sycophant. It is simply a refl ection on the sheer quality of the product under scrutiny. Now read on ... Before you fall off your seat with excitement, I should point out that the follo wing review covers the 'Beta Test' version of ChromaStudio 24. The full version has still not been released, due to some undisclosed legal difficulties. However , the Beta Test version has many of the features of the final product, and serve s as a good demo. So sit back, and prepare to have your appetite whetted! Intro ChromaStudio 24, from the semi-legendary Black Scorpion development team, is a F alcon-specific (hooray) digital animation package, similar to products such as A utodesk Animator Pro (written for MS-DOS PC systems) and Cyber Paint (written fo r the Atari ST). Basically, Chroma is a very full featured paint package which a dds the dimension of time to static pictures, allowing a series of frames to be created and played in sequence to produce an animated effect. In operation, it's a bit like a video recorder, allowing you to move quickly between a sequence of 'stills' which comprise the overall 'film'. Booting Up Chroma is a very well behaved program, booting up properly from any desktop reso lution, although this version didn't like the screen expander BlowUp030. The fir st thing you notice about the software is its very professional interface. If an yone has used Autodesk Animator or Animator Pro on a PC-contemptible, the menus and dialogs will look very familiar. Indeed, the whole design of the interface a ppears to have been based on AA, though such a comparison is a little unfair to Chroma, which has improved the design to such a point that it is far superior to its rival. Good use is made of both mouse buttons, allowing activation and conf iguration of icons with a single click, and the 'feel' of the whole system is ve ry consistent and responsive. Frightening Features The range of tools available for image manipulation is quite daunting. Chroma is subdivided into a number of different 'studios', each of which contains a numbe r of iconised 'tools'. Each of these tools controls a specific graphical or anim ation effect, and most of them have adjustable parameters. Even on the Beta vers ion (which has a lot of empty space on the toolbars), there are around 40 contro ls available. But the simplicity of the interface means that a lot can be learne d after just a few minutes experimentation. Here's a brief summary of each studi o and what's in it. Edit Studio This studio contains most of the traditional image editing tools you would expec t to find. Pen - freehand drawing tool with Brush facility and differen t pen types Line - draws straight lines Curve - offers Bezier curves, B-Curve, B-Spline and BetaGon (B -Spline Polygon) Box - draws squares & rectangles with optional flood and gra dient fill options Circle - draws outline, solid and gradient-fill circles Polygon - draws multi-sided shapes with outline and filled varia tions Fill - flood-fills shapes with solid, gradient or textures (p ictures) Airbrush - A variable-speed, user-definable airbrush tool Gridlock - sets the mouse pointer grid size Manual Block Cut - cuts a screen area and creates a 'brush' block Intelligent Block Cut - cuts an area selectively Position Block - real time positioning of a block Paste Block Above - pastes in solid or transparent modes Paste Block Below - pastes beneath other screen objects Flip Block Along X/Y - flips block horizontally or vertically Stretch / Squash Block - stretches block independently in X/Y directions 2D Block Rotate - real-time rotation of a selected block 3D Block Distort - distorts in a weird 3D mode Remap Block Cols - remaps block/screen colours Replace Old Colour - swaps an existing colour value for a new one Specialised Tools Studio This studio is empty on the Beta Test version, but presumably contains .. err .. specialised tools. Morphing Studio This studio allows 'field warping' effects such as distortion and morphing of on e image into another. The tools available are as follows: Add Control Line - Adds a line which controls the warp effect at a speci fic point on the image Drag Control Line - Fine tunes the lines which control the warp directions Kill Control Line - A selective delete facility for control lines Kill All Lines - Removes all control lines from the work area Redefine Render Area - Respecify the area used for rendering Morphing Options - Specifies distort or morph operation with optional pre view Render Frames - Begins the rendering process This is one of the most powerful of the Chroma studios and makes extensive use o f the DSP for fast rendering times. Image Processing Studio Although currently empty, this studio will probably contain a range of filters w hich can be applied to an image to produce different photographic effects. RGB Colour Control Studio This studio contains a number of tools which I will name, but since none of them do anything on this version, your guess as to their purpose is as good as mine. Cut Colours Paste Colours Exchange Colours Spread Colours Flip Range Luminosity Sort Chrominosity Sort Make Greys Adjust Colours Although the Beta Test version has many features disabled, even those which are present have so many adjustable settings that there isn't space here to describe them all. This suggests that the finished item will have features to suit users at all levels of expertise, from novice to professional. Frame Controller Sitting below the studio toolbars is the frame controller, which provides contro ls for moving between frames (screens). This is a very slick item which offers t he kind of control you get on modern digital video recorders, including jog and shuttle functions! This panel is available regardless of which studio you are in . Also available in all modes is the incredible zoom facility, which zips in and out of an image at lightning speed. Even more impressive is the fact that all o f Chroma's image editing commands are available during zoom operations, somethin g that few other packages can boast. Of course, Chroma's speed is partially due to its extensive use of the DSP chip for compression/decompression, morphing and goodness knows what else. But it is also because, unlike most other animation packages, all frames of an animation a re held, Delta-compressed, in memory. This means that movement between frames is fast, and playing entire sequences is smooth and seamless. The only limit on th e number of frames is therefore the amount of available memory on your system. Other useful controls include a complete macro recording system, a screen & canv as setup option and there is even a control for accessing MultiTOS. Display Modes & File Formats Although Chroma only supports screen sizes of 320 x 200 and 640 x 400 in both Tr ueColour and 256 colour modes, this can be a window onto a larger virtual screen . This means that it is possible to create frames of up to 1024 x 786 pixels in size, assuming that you have the memory to display them. The virtual screen faci lity must be used in some cases to preserve the aspect ratio of the original pic ture, as Chroma will shrink pictures to fit the canvas if they are too large. Pictures (still frames) and animation sequences can be loaded and saved in a var iety of popular formats. The following list describes all of the available file types for loading/saving, though most of these were disabled in the Beta Test ve rsion. Pictures Animations Internal Formats Neochrome .NEO Amiga .IFF Block .BLK Degas .PI? Cyber Paint .SEQ plane .PLN Degas Elite .PC? Cyber Studio .DLT umm .DAC Tiny .TN? Animator .FL? Amiga .IFF CompuServe .GIF MTV Raytrace .MTV Targa .TGA Spectrum .SP? search me .PCS The Bottom Line Although the projected release date, supplier and price of ChromaStudio 24 have yet to be announced, it is clear that this is a package worth saving up for. If you have any interest at all in still or animated computer graphics, and you hav e a Falcon, it is almost certain that you will like it. From the moment Chroma s tarts up, it screams power and professionalism from every pore. If the finished version fills in the gaps in the test release, Chroma will undoubtedly become on e of the 'killer applications' the Falcon so desperately needs, and will do for artists & designers what Cubase Audio is doing for musicians. Watch this space . .. ChromaStudio 24, Black Scorpion Software, £189.99 (provisional price), Supplier unknown. Xenon. END OF REVIEW (1436 words)