Alchemy Mindworks

Earlier releases of Windows – most notably the much-beloved Windows XP, now something of a fond memory – included the elegantly simple and occasionally berated Windows Paint application. For the most part, it was about as useful as a left-leaning politician in a riding with absolutely no bribable voters – but there were situations in which its childlike simplicity and twentieth-century dearth of features made it the ideal software for manipulating a few pixels.

By comparison, Windows Paint under Windows 7 and Windows 8 resembles the drooling idiot offspring of a cheap date in which neither participant was demonstrably human. It’s just sophisticated enough to allow its imperfect antialiasing, questionable drawing tools and counter-intuitive user interface to get in the way.

Long-time users of Paint from a bygone era can often be heard mourning its loss.

Continue reading ‘Classic Windows Paint for Windows 7 and Windows 8’ »

While its sounds like a fragment of dialog from a 1980s science fiction flick shot on a budget in an unnamed eastern European country, alpha channels are actually a profoundly useful feature of graphics… as long as you know what they’re really up to.

Continue reading ‘An Introduction to Alpha-Channel Animations’ »

Many of the Alchemy Mindworks applications – including GIF Construction Set Professional, Graphic Workshop Professional, Animation Workshop, PNG/MNG Construction Set and Presentation Wizard – have internal Paint functions that call Windows Paint. At least, they do if it’s been installed.

Should you click on Paint in one of our applications and discover that nothing much happens – or if the application hangs – you’re probably looking at a total absence of the Windows Paint application.

Continue reading ‘Quest for the Missing Paint’ »

When Electronic Greeting Card Construction Set was first developed, back in the late middle ages, the world was a friendlier and more innocent place – there were a lot fewer cybercretins writing phishing programs, viruses, trojans and other species of malware. Users of Electronic Greeting Card Construction Set could safely e-mail cards to their recipients.

Continue reading ‘Distributing Electronic Greeting Cards’ »