Phantasm is a unique colour control addition to Computer Concepts‘ ArtWorks. It enables the named colour system, present within every copy of ArtWorks, to deliver to the artist a new level of control. Such features as adjustment of lightness, contrast and saturation were previously only present on a limited number of non-Acorn professional vector packages and many painting (bitmap) programs. However it is the special features of shifting colours and converting colours to monochrome that provide a method of painlessly generating effects such as transparencies. In addition to all these features there is the ability to create new colours in a variety of different methods.

The operating principle
Phantasm can only work externally to ArtWorks due to the ability of being able to import and export colour tables from any ArtWorks picture. The reason it was created as a stand-alone application rather than following the conventional module add-on method was for the single reason of providing a large number of options and features that would otherwise not fit within the standard ArtWorks tool bars. A consequence of this approach is that Phantasm can produce a sequence of colour manipulation operations at a much greater real speed than any built-in module as ArtWorks does not have to render each stage, only the final result.

The way to export colour tables from ArtWorks is to bring up the main window menu, following File, through Export and eventually to Colour table. By dragging the table file onto the Phantasm main window, editing may commence.

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