There has been a surge in the number of high quality utilities recently. However there have been surprisingly few CAD programs, and what there has been has often disappeared into obscurity. David Makin's Picture Maker, marketed by John Penn Discount Software, is one such program.

(Hold, stop, cease and desist. You make it sound as though Picture Maker is destined for obscurity - which we hope it isn't, complaints about the instructions notwithstanding. I'm supposed to edit these things, not rewrite them. A CAD program is one which is dedicated to a technical design function, usually electronics or engineering. What we have here is a non-dedicated design, or graphics, package. This mistake is becoming increasingly commonplace - Ed)

Previous Next

Picture Maker allows you to design and manipulate PMODE3 graphics in a variety of ways, using either the cursor keys or a joystick.

Lines are drawn by a cursor which appears either as a dot or a cross, which moves both horizontally and vertically. As the program loads you will begin to see an example of the graphics Picture Maker can produce. The screen dump which should appear alongside this review is not high quality, but shows you what effects can be produced. Once the program loads you can either run it, print the instructions to a printer or read them on screen to a musical accompaniment from the author's Music Maker 2. The program offers green, yellow, blue, red, buff, cyan, orange and magenta as well as black and white in SCREEN1,1. The background and foreground are easily changeable. Pressing @ moves you into SCREEN1,1 graphics.

Picture Maker has a variety of brushes, some not very clear in the instruction sheet, but including Putset, Putnot, Rubber, Line and others. The choice seems limited to me, and perhaps David Makin could have been more adventurous here.

The program can also draw circles, boxes and lines independently, and can FILL areas in any of the foreground colours.

There is always the risk of losing your creation with a graphics program. As well as being able to load and save onto tape, you can store pictures in one of eight available locations. The GET and PUT commands are particularly useful here and allow graphics to be stored and recalled anywhere on the screen, either in their original form or inverted. Stored areas can also be stretched up to three times their original size.

One of the most important features is the MAGNIFY command. This magnifies the area of the screen where the cursor is situated many times over, allowing you to produce very detailed graphics more easily.

Should you find that you have started your drawing too high or low on the screen, you can scroll the screen contents left, right, up or down. A fascinating feature is the ability to MIRROR graphics using R, and also to turn the view screen upside-down.

Overall, the only drawback to Picture Maker is that the instructions are far too complex. Those who know how to use this kind of program may not think so, but the average user is bound to feel insecure. Given a simpler or clearer instruction sheet, the program would be perfect for its task.

One thing which I did miss was the ability to print text on the screen without first having to draw it. It would be better if the user could enter text from the keyboard - Instead, you must draw it by hand with the MAGNIFY command to help you.

Accompanying Picture Maker is a screen dump program which can be altered to suit almost every printer. First you must enter the appropriate codes for your printer, similarly to Electronic Author's CONFIG program.

Picture Maker's sheer power is surprising. I cannot explain everything it is capable of. It is the most sophisticated graphics program I have seen, if you can master the rather complex instructions, you should have no trouble creating your own graphics.