Kolorowanka 2.00
-----------------
Copyright (c) 2001-2003 Piotr Chodzinski


Description
============
Kolorowanka (name meaning 'Coloring Book' in Polish) is a very easy to use and well featured program which can be used for coloring images, just like in the coloring books. Of course it's not only designed for the usage of small children, because, as you probably know, coloring images is a very relaxing activity. Maybe next time, after a long day of fighting with nasty operating system, instead of throwing your computer out of a window or chasing your pets with dangerous tools, just sit and relax with Kolorowanka program :). Of course if you're a computer user which has kids, go ahead and show them this program - coloring images is a very pleasant, non-violent entertaiment for kids in various age. 
Please, read the entire help file carefully. This will allow you to discover all of the possibilities and features of my program. This knowledge can be very useful when you'll be later playing with Kolorowanka program.

Features
=========
This program has few neat and interesting features. You may want to know about them before you'll start using it or you'll give it to your brother or maybe one of your annoying cousins :). So here they are:
* Kolorowanka has a rich Color Palette which consist of 420 different colors. Main Palette was divided into 7 smaller palettes, where colors are sorted by brightness and saturation level. 
* This application allows you to choose two separate colors - just like many professional graphic applications. It makes coloring a lot easier 'job' and it allows you to use few interesting ideas featured in the Additonal informations section of this help file.
* Both of the colors (which will be used to flood-fill areas of image which you're colorizeing) can be also affected by one of 7 different fill-styles (e.g. veritical lines, crossed lines, diagonal lines, solid color etc.). 
* The program is very enhanced (because of the fill-styles, possibility of using two different colors, and many other options and tools) and easy to use at the same time. So it can be used by children in different age. For example - you don't need to show every option to younger child, but just a little bit older one or an adult can use most of the options with no problem. More details about this idea you can find in the Additional Informations section.
* Kolorowanka is secured in few ways, so it can't be so easy 'broken' by inattentive user or small child. First of all, it is not possible to choose an ideal black color from the Color Palette - this ensures you that this color won't destroy the outline of the image which you're colorizeing. Also you can't fill any ideal black area - this is another securement so the outline will not be breaked in any way.
* Application supports two most important (in this case) graphic formats (full support for read and write): bitmaps (*.bmp) and Portable Network Graphics files (*.png). Why these formats are so important ? You can find out this later, from the Additional informations section.
* Kolorowanka uses only about 1 + (2 * size of loaded image) MB of RAM. It also uses less then 1% of System Resources !
* This software has a very useful Undo option. Now, you don't need to start coloring from the start if you made a small mistake.
* Loaded image can have any size - program will automatically resize upper window to fit to image which you're going to colorize.

License
========
Kolorowanka is distributed under license called Postcardware. This means that you can use it for free for private and commercial puporses (e.g. in office). But if you have tried it for some time (up to one week) and you like it - you must register it by sending me a postcard of your hometown. If your hometown doesn't have a postcard you can send me a postcard of any nearby city. Of course you can write something nice on it :).  Don't know what's a postcard ? It's a small piece of paper with a nice image on it which can be send by snail-mail :). The adress where you should send your postcards is in the Contact section. If you want to, you can also put a small amount of money or anything else (e.g. coin from your country) that will fit into the envelope. In that case you must remember that you are doing it only from your own will, because the registration consist only in sending me a postcard.
If you've registered any other Postcardware licensed program made by me, you're also a registered user of this program. But if you want, you can send me another postcard too.
You musn't decompile, dissasembly or take any actions aiming at program modification. 
This program was tested very carefuly, but I don't take any responsibility for any possible damages in your computer, system, data or reputation. 
If you're going to publish this software on any CD or website you must contact me first to get my permission !!!
Kolorownka copyright (c) 2001-2003 Piotr Chodzinski. All rights reserved.

Installation and uninstallation
================================
Installation is very easy. Just extract all the files from kolorow.zip archive to a newly-created folder of your choice.
Now try out the program. If you like it, move the temporary folder somewhere (e.g. to the Program Files folder) and if you want - make a shortcut in the Start Menu or on the Desktop pointing to Kolorowanka.exe file.
If you don't like my program or if you want to remove it from any other reason, just delete the folder created earlier. That's it - the program won't leave any trash in the Registry or anywhere else, because it keeps all the configuration in the INI file located in its directory. This type of configuration has also one additional advantage. If you'll move this folder to any other computer, the configuration will stay the same as on your computer.

Basic operations
=================
Kolorowanka is a very easy to use program. Whole usage can be shorten to this few steps:
* Select an image by using the Open button. Now, the program will load file selected by you and automatically resize upper window to fit image, and also will center both windows. And it's all for your pleasure :).
* Select one of the Color Palettes by using one of the 7 buttons in the lower part of the tool window.
* By clicking left mouse button on one of the colors on the selected palette you're setting the First Color, by clicking right mouse button - Second Color. Chosen colors are visible on the Preview (in the left part of the tool window). 
* If you want you can left-click First Color Preview or Second Color Preview. This will bring a popup menu which will allow you to choose a fill-style (e.g. solid color, veritical lines, croosed lines) for that color.
* By clicking left mouse button on image which you're going to colorize you'll fill an area with First Color, by clicking right mouse button - with Second Color.
* Repeat filling areas with different colors and styles until you'll be satisfied with the effect. Just do it until it'll look nice for you :).
* If you want to, you can add some text, which can be a comment, your signature or any other text. You can do this by using Insert Text dialog described below.
* Now, use Save button to save your masterpiece :).
Of course they're only basics. Continue reading this help file to discover more features.

Main program window (tool window)
==================================
Main program window (also called by me a tool window because of the tools you can find on it), is a lower and (just after launching the program) the bigger one of two windows. It contains Color Palette and First and Second Color Preview (I've talked about it earlier). It also contains the following buttons:
* Change colors and styles - this button is located near both Previews and it switches those two colors and their styles.
* Open - it brings up typical open dialog which allows you to select a file which will be loaded into the program. You'll be able to color this image next. Supported formats are: BMPs and PNGs.
* Save - it allows you to save your colorized image. After clicking this button, the typical save dialog will be shown, so you'll be able to specify file name and format. Avaible formats are BMP and PNG.
* Undo - this button cancel effect of last action (filling an area with color, inserting text). It's very useful, especially when you fill some area with wrong color or style by mistake.
* Insert text - it opens Insert Text dialog which allows you to add some text to the image which you're coloring. More informations about this dialog are in the section below.
* Tools - it will bring up a small popup menu. It contains two options:
     * Copy -  this option copies image to the system Clipboard. This allows you to paste it 
               into any graphical program so you can do some graphical operations on it or save
               it in other format not supported by Kolorowanka.
     * Paste - this works just like Open, but you can't specify input filename, the image is
               just pasted directly from the system Clipboard. Note that content of the 
               Clipboard must be a bitmap. Otherwise this command is ignored by the 
               program. 
* Informations - shows the Informations dialog which contains version number, copyrights and informations about contacting me.
* Help - opens the help file. Say, you're reading it at the moment :).
* Close - shuts down this software. Note that you'll be not prompt about saving unsaved image !
 
Insert Text dialog
===================
This dialog allows you to insert some text into the image. This text can be your signature, comment or any other thing. This window contains few buttons:
* Font - allows you to easily and fast select any font and set it size, style etc. using typical font selection dialog.
* Font Color - it allows you to choose font color. The color is not limited to basic 16 Windows colors (like in the font selection dialog).
* Background - with help of this button you can select background color for the inserted text.
* OK - confirms selected parameters and inserts text into image.
* Cancel - aborts text inserting process.
Above this buttons you can find small Preview window. And on the right of the Preview there is a set of 6 buttons placed. Using them you can select final text position on the image.
This dialog remembers all the settings. So after re-launching Kolorowanka, it is very easy to insert the same or very similar text again.

Additional informations
========================
Here's few additional informations that didn't fit into any other section of this help file:
* Because - as I wrote earlier - this program is very enehanced and also easy to use at the same time it can be used by people in very different age. I suggest that you may omit explaining usage of Second Color, fill-styles, saving and loading images and inserting text to very small children. A little older child should be able to use all of the program's option without any problem but probably there will be still help needed with e.g. saving and loading files. All of the options should be easy to use for an adult, or at least any person with basic computer knowledge.
* Probably you're curious why there is no support for JPG and GIF files within Kolorowanka. Well, some time ago a company that invented GIF format has decided to copyright their work. Because there is no clear law answering to question: 'is it legal to use gif format in free software without paying to its authors', so most of the free software developers are trying not to use GIF format if it's not necessary. So do I. A good replacement for GIF files are PNG files which were designed especially for that. They are much smaller then GIFs and they have very simmiliar possibilities. But why there is no support for JPG files in my program ? JPG files are great for storing photos and similiar image data, but when you try to save a file with high-contrast colors, one near other, a small errors in compresion algorithm will appear. It will result in a very bad quality. To get the same quality as PNG file you should use a very low compression factor, but this would make such JPG file even 20 times bigger than PNG file with the same quality.
* Don't be affraid to experiment with different color and style combinations. Combining styles and colors can give very interesting results. Here's an example. First select two colors. Now fill some area with First Color with fill-style set to cross lines, next fill every second of created squares with the first color (but now, with solid style). Use the Second Color to fill all the gaps. Voila, nice chessboard fill is ready in just few clicks ! Also you can try to combine different styles, e.g. try to fill spaces between diagonal lines by veritical lines. It's a very interesting effect too.
* If after loading, image doesn't feet into the screen, don't resize it with external tool ! When you'll resize it with normal methods the outline will be broken, and if you use some graphic filter to do the resampling process - between black lines and white background there will be some gray pixels added (this is called antialiasing). The colorized image will look very untidy this way. So if the image is too big, just set screen resolution to a bit higher. Now the image will fit nice into the screen. 
* Now a small curio. Ommiting those few people who did help me very much in creating this program (in many ways), Kolorowanka is entirely written by me from the scratch. Whole code consists of 1574 lines !!!

Thanks
=======
Without help of those few people Kolorowanka would never had its todays look and feel. 
So, for all your help I would like you to thank you very, very much. Thanks again to all of you !
* Justyna Chodzinska [arashi@poczta.onet.pl] - special thanks for correcting both help files and also for many good words and a lot of ideas of how to make this program better.
* Wojciech 'Voythieus' Czusz [voythieus@wp.pl] - for nice icons located on the program's buttons and also for long, long chats about this program.
* Grahame Marsh [grahame.s.marsh@corp.courtaulds.co.uk ] - for fast (written in Assembler and Pascal) procedures used to convert colors between RGB and HSL systems.
* Thomas Moore [dagger@provalue.net] - for procedures used to hide captions of windows.

Version history
================
* Version 2.00 (30th June 2003) - this version was written completely from the scratch. They are too many improvements to list them all. But the main ones are: fill-styles, two colors support, PNG opening and saving, no image size limit, and many, many more ...
* Version 1.01 (16th June 2001) - first public relase.

Contact with author
====================
If you have any questions, you have found a bug, or just want to write me, you can send mails to the below adress. I'll answer to every e-mail !  Remember to write me only in English or Polish !!!

aionel@poczta.onet.pl

If you know Polish you can visit my homepage wit other great programs (sorry, only in Polish !):

http://www.republika.pl/programyaionela

Send postcards (see License for more details) to the below adress:

Piotr Chodzinski
ul. Jasna 4/3
44-100 Gliwice
POLAND

Program and help file completed on 30 June 2003 at 10:27:39