[Coco] Is there a way to import JPGs or BMPs to a CoCo picturefileformat that can be used in a program, game etc?

[Roger Taylor]

At 06:17 AM 1/15/2010, you wrote:
>Well I've used CoCo Projector and it is exactly that! A projector 
>that allows you to view JPGs, BMPs and other formats in your CoCo or 
>Emulator but is just that, a viewer. It does not have the capability 
>of saving the pictures it dithers to a CoCo format.

As the author of "The Projector" and "Projector-3", I guess I should 
explain what they do:

The Projector 2.1 works on a 128k CoCo 3, only views pictures, has 
limited graphics.
Projector-3 works on a 6309 512k CoCo 3, views and resaves pictures, 
has many graphics modes.
TP is a more direct file-to-screen system, while P-3 uses lots of 
math to crunch colors

The most pleasing mode of all is the 320-16 dithered mode when viewed 
from 7+ feet or so away from the monitor.  From across the room, 
you'll think it's a VGA picture sometimes.  I must admit that back in 
the day before I was married or a dad that P-3 was tweaked using many 
certain types of pictures that I knew other users would probably be 
using the viewer for, but only until recently did things improve 
beyond that with the addition of different dithering palettes like 
Skin and LView.  What could be better than that is a palette chosen 
based on the colors in the image using a histogram or other 
formula.  This would yield the best looking pictures.

This is come up many times in the past.  TP and P-3 do not view JPEG 
images.  Nobody to date has pulled off JPEG on the CoCo, but if they 
dive into this project I'd suggest they start with JUDDPEG for the 
Commodore 64? which is available in assembly source code.



-- 
~ Roger Taylor