Mac Daniel's Advice

MacPaint Corner

Children of MacPaint

Low End Mac Reader Specials

Memory To Go Special: MacPro 8 Core Memory 4GB kit $154 / 2GB kit $94, New 2008 iMac 2GB $46. MacBook Pro / MacMini / iMac Intel Core2 DUO 2GB $44 / 1GB $23--Free shipping available.

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, Apple Batteries and Apple A/C Adapters. Also Great prices on Used Apple Computers. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.

Other World Computing has the Upgrades, Enhancements, and Accessories for getting the most from your Mac. Quality Products, Competitive Prices, Expert Support Staff - www.macsales.com

Mac users can finally play Party Poker for Mac. Not only that, they can also learn how to play PokerStars for Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, laptops, and LCD TVs side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for a new cell phone GPS products or MP3 players. The Ciao network makes searching products easy for you.

MacBook/MacBook Pro / MacMini / iMac Intel Core2 DUO DDR2 667Mhz 4GB Kit $84, 3GB Kit $60, 2GB Kit $40 1GB $20. Click to Maximize your Macs...

Manuel Mejia Jr - 2001.03.07

The development of Mac Paint 2.0 changed the way the average computer user used his/her machine for all time. Instead of just having a typewriter or number crunching machine, the Macintosh could do work in the visual area as well. In spite of the ground broken by Mac Paint, there were some significant problems with the program. Those problems were:

  1. No alignment rulers
  2. No advance drawing tools like Bezier Curves
  3. No multiple layering effects (a prerequisite for many pamphlets)
  4. No large format printouts beyond the 8.5" by 11" size
  5. Most important: no color. If the MacPaint user wants a color image, the user would have to resort to colored pencils or markers.

To the lay person using a Mac, the lack of color was the most obvious problem. The crude 6502-based computers like the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe had basic color capability. To the more sophisticated graphics designer or layout artist, the lack of rulers and Bezier Curves made the Mac a mere toy.

To solve these problems, Apple introduced the first full color screen capable computer in 1987, the Mac II. Mac users could now view their screens in 4-bit (16 color) or even 8-bit (256 colors). Macs with the ability to display even more colors came shortly afterward.

To support these color Macs, a myriad of new graphical programs were created. Among them were Silicon Beach's Superpaint, Deneba's Canvas, and Deneba's masterpiece, Ultrapaint.

Superpaint

For those professional artists and graphics designers, the Superpaint series of application software allowed for the effective retirement of the drafting board and "H" series of pencils. The software had items like rulers, grid alignments, and Bezier Curves. Superpaint also had many more patterns to work with. See the graphic below for a better idea of Superpaint's features.

Note that the the graphic shows Superpaint in "paint" mode. One has the option to use the program in "draw" mode. This mode uses fewer tools than paint mode but allows the graphic artist to better manipulate portions of the drawing. See the graphic below for a view of Superpaint in draw mode.

For those artists with an interest in the abstract, Superpaint includes features that gave them the option to create some nice abstracts with just a move of the mouse and a button click. The graphic to the right is one example.

The alignment tools and rulers allowed those without expensive "plotter" printers to print out large panels of a blueprint one section at a time without distortion or other sizing errors.

The Early Days of Printing in Color

In the early 1990s, color printing was largely the domain in of the high end business user. An "inexpensive" HP water based color inkjet printer was priced at about $6,000. A wax based, poster/tabloid sized laser printer from Tektronix was priced at about $25,000! Good color was expensive. Many computer users resorted to outside printing houses or outfits like Kinko's to get their works off the computer screen and onto paper.

A low cost solution to this problem was to use an Apple ImageWriter II dot matrix printer with its four-color ribbon. The ribbon allowed for printing in the three primary printing colors (cyan, magenta, yellow) and also create secondary colors (red, green, blue) along with black. The eighth color, white, is created by leaving areas of a printout without any ink and thus preserving the color of the paper. The colors were not varied and the images were only at 72 dpi resolution, but at least you had an inexpensive color printout.

Canvas

Canvas was very effective in using the layering tool. With layering, one can work on a project like a four-color pamphlet one layer at a time. Each layer represents a color. As you can see from the graphic to the left, the tools palette for Canvas is very similar to its Superpaint and MacPaint predecessors.

The Thor artwork to the right is a Canvas 3 layer graphic example.

Manuel Mejia Jr is familiar with Mac IIs, LCs, and older PowerBooks. He uses his Mac LC, PowerBook 145B, and PB 100 with System 7.1 on a regular basis and recently added a Mac Plus running System 6 to his collection. He's quite familiar with both System 6 and System 7. He also owns the Pina books on repairing compact Macs from 128k through the SE.

You can read more about Manuel's computers in Manuel Mejia Jr's Four Old Macs.

Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check the Mac Daniel index to see if we've already addressed your problem.

Recent Mac Daniel columns

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, PowerBook, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Best Used Macs
Video Cards
Email Lists
InfoMac's Low
End Mac Forum

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
MacResQ
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.