The Icon Bar: DPlingScan revisited

The Icon Bar: News and features: DPlingScan revisited

DPlingScan revisited

Posted by Mark Stephens on 07:32, 23/8/2021
Reviews

It is always exciting to discover a (new to you) piece of software. I had never really looked at David Pilling's DPlngScan before as I use my Mac for all scanning. But it turns out that the software is actually very much more than just a scanner Utility.

The software is still being maintained and updated by Chris Johnson (note to self to update to latest December 2020 release!) and you can download for free.

It indeed has scanning options.

But the software actually also offers a huge number of image processing and conversion options. For example, I use it for converting sprite files into png images for the Icon Bar articles.

There is a full set of image processing filters and a toolbar to crop images.

and a large selection of colour processing options.

So if you are looking for a RISC OS image processing tool, remember the DPlScan is a lot more than just a scanning program.

Is there any RISC OS software you have recently discovered?

Download link

	DPlingScan revisited
	arawnsley (17:43 23/8/2021) SparkY (19:00 30/8/2021) arawnsley (22:51 30/8/2021) SparkY (23:03 3/9/2021)

Andrew Rawnsley	Message #125192, posted by arawnsley at 17:43, 23/8/2021
R-Comp chap Posts: 600	Well worth reminding people about this one, for sure! Also, go into its Choices and configure for larger memory, and tweak the JPEG (etc) loading options to suit whether you want it intercepting things or not. That'll help improve your perception of the program, and make it slot neatly into your armoury. I use a mixture of this and ChangeFSI when working on images. One nice feature of this is the dpi handling, allowing the creation and editing of high-dpi sprites. For example, I can convert a larger (2x) image using !ChangeFSI and then set it to be 180 dpi in !DPscan to work on !Sprites11 files. Also, it is more respectful of masks and palettes when scaling (etc) than !ChangeFSI which is also extremely useful.
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Gavin Smith	Message #125195, posted by SparkY at 19:00, 30/8/2021, in reply to message #125192
Danger! Danger! High Voltage! Posts: 697	DPIngScan is useful but it doesn't preserve the alpha channel in images. Even this year's CompressPNG doesn't. So Spr2Png remains on my icon bar.
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Andrew Rawnsley	Message #125196, posted by arawnsley at 22:51, 30/8/2021, in reply to message #125195
R-Comp chap Posts: 600	Have you reported that to ROOL? That's a fairly fundamental limitation in 2021. I tend to do PNG stuff under Adjust (VRPC) since the built-in stuff is so good, but I was hoping we were past the point where PNG alpha was being lost in translation.
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Gavin Smith	Message #125197, posted by SparkY at 23:03, 3/9/2021, in reply to message #125196
Danger! Danger! High Voltage! Posts: 697	Hang on, my mistake. CompressPNG definitely does export transparency. It's ChangeFSI that doesn't. So even though ChangeFSI can now export PNGs, it will still throw the transparency away, as it previously did with Sprites. To export a PNG with transparency, then, we need to export via Paint/CompressPNG, not ChangeFSI/CompressPNG. I hope I've got that right this time.
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The Icon Bar: News and features: DPlingScan revisited

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DPlingScan revisited