22 March 2004

Introduction

JImagePaint is a simple paint program written in Java. It has been designed to create small *.png files with transparent backgrounds however there is support for reading and writing of whatever Image formats are supported by Java's ImageIO.  A Sun Java Virtual Machine 1.4 or better is required. Java 1.4 give you the ability to read *.jpg, *.jpeg, *.gif, and *.png images and write *.jpg and *.png images. Java 1.5 will allow you to read and write *.bmp and *.wbmp images. Note that of the images that can be written only *.png images support transparency.

The library is open source and is designed so that other developers can use the components of the program to embed image editing capability within their programs. The licence is relatively unrestrictive and is similar to other free software licences.

Use

To run you need to have a Java Virtual Machine properly installed. You should be able to double click on jimgpnt.jar binary if you have everything set up. If that does not work try using;

java -jar jimgpnt.jar    or    java -cp.;jimgpnt.jar jimgpnt.JImagePaint

at the command line when you are in a directory that contains the jimgpnt.jar binary.

JImagePaint supports a number of image editing modes. Depending on what mode you are in you will be either creating JImagePaint objects above the image, or directly editing the underlying image. You can move, resize, delete, or changed the properties of any objects that you create. When ready you can incorporate the objects down on to the image. If you zoom right in you will see a grid representing pixels. The objects are in front of the grid, the image is behind it.

When saving an image the background color will only be saved if you are using an image format other than *.png, otherwise it is considered transparent.

Controls

You will need a wheel mouse to get the most from JImagePaint. Most controls should be familiar to most users. A few tricky ones are as follows:

• Use the CTRL key to select or deselect objects in conjunction with a click.
• Right click and drag to move the image in the scroll bars.
• Use the mouse wheel to zoom.
• Use CTRL and the mouse wheel to change the size of the eraser and the pixel editor.

Licence

See licence.txt for licence information.

Contact

Visit alistairdickie.com for contact details and to support future development.