PNG and TIFF

IconPainter reads and writes PNG and TIFF images by using the free Java Advanced Imaging library which can be downloaded from Sun at

http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jai/index.html

IconPainter detects if these libraries are available to it and it's displays are altered accordingly. For instance PNG or TIFF files won't appear listed when choosing a file to open if the libraries aren't present.

When IconPainter creates a PNG file it can create an image with a solid background or an image with a transparent background. In other words the pixels can either be on or off. A transparent background means that the current background color becomes the transparent color (this is much the same way as Gif's are treated in IconPainter). Similarly if IconPainter reads a PNG file it works out if transparency is on or off and writes back the image with transparency set the same way.

When creating TIFF files images are always written in an uncompressed format.

PICT

IconPainter can read Apple PICT files using the Apple "QuickTime for Java" libraries which are free and can be downloaded from Apple at:

http://www.apple.com/java

Ironically Java 2 is not yet available for the Macintosh so it is not possible to create images directly on a Mac.