TICO Version 1.21 by Mike Williams, May 1994.


TICO is a collection of DOS graphics utilities, combined 
under a single shell. Features include ...

   -  View images in any supported format up to 24 bit colour. 
      Take advantage  of 15, 16 or 24 bit display modes up to 
      1280 x 1024 on Ahead systems/ ATI/ Cirrus Logic/ Compaq QVision/ 
      IBM XGA/ Oak Technologies/ Paradise/ S3/ Trident/ Tseng Labs/ 
      Video 7/ Weitek/ Western Digital based SVGA systems. 
      Alternatively, images will be displayed in a standard VGA mode, 
      dithered if necessary.

   -  Many image transformation facilities, including scale, crop,
      symmetry, flip vertical and horizontal.

   -  Image processing options including sharpen, blur, edge detection/
      enhancement, remove noise, median filter, user-defined filters,
      combine images.

   -  Special effects including frost, wind, mosaic, emboss.

   -  Colour options including adjust brightness, contrast, negative,
      adjust colour balance ( RGB or CMY colour models ), solarize,
      posterisation/ line art, load/ save palette, alter colour depth
      1/4/8/24 bits, dither images, split 24 bit images into R/ G/ B
      channels, merge them back again later.

   -  Import images in ART, BMP ( Windows/ OS/2 ), CLP ( if it contains a 
      DIB ), DCX, DIB, EPS ( TIFF preview only ! ), HRZ, GIF, ICO, IMG, 
      LBM ( PBM subtype only ), MAC, MSP, PBM, PCC, PCL, PCX, PIC, QDV, RAS, 
      SCx, SGI ( utility on separate disk ), ST, TGA, TIF, WMF ( if it 
      contains a DIB ) and WPG ( bitmap only ) formats.

   -  "Intelligent guessing" feature permits POSSIBLE import of ANY 
      1/ 8/ 15/ 16/ 24/ 32 bit image as long as it is stored uncompressed.
      The user does not have to know image sizes, bits per pixel etc.
      Tested with some success on Alpha Microsystems BMP, Autologic GM,
      Erdas LAN, Jovian Logic VI, Time Arts Lumena CEL, MTV Raytracer,
      and workstation PBM/ PNM.

   -  Export in ART, BMP, IMG, PCX, PCL, QDV, RAS, SGI ( utility on 
      separate disk ), TGA, TIF, and XBM formats.

   -  Other PCX file conversion programs may be utilised to extend
      image format support. Special support has been provided for
      Handmade Softwares' shareware convertor Image Alchemy; this
      program can add GIF write, JPG, EPS, IFF, LBM, HAM etc. support 
      to the standard TICO "Open" and "Save As" dialogs.

   -  Save standard VGA mode images in self-displaying EXE format.
      Use the slideshow program TICOSHOW.EXE to string them together.

   -  Cut and paste images to the Windows clipboard of up to 200K in size,
      depending on available base RAM.

   -  Virtual memory management uses base RAM, XMS ( version 2 or higher ), 
      EMS ( LIM EMS 4 or higher ) or disk space ( requires DOS 3.0 + ) 
      to work with really big images.

   -  Includes TICOGrab, A screen saver which works under most standard 
      screen modes ( i.e. not SVGA ) and can swap to EMS or disk 
      to take up as little as 4K ram !

To run TICO you need 520K free base RAM, DOS 3.0 or higher, and at 
least 1MB of free disk space. If you want to view images you will need 
a VGA display. If you are going to use the image processing facilities,
TICO works best if you have extended or expanded memory. You need at 
least twice the amount of memory free than the largest image you will
work on. If you are doing image processing, then you may be working 
on 24-bit files, and they really chew up memory. A 1024 by 768 24-bit
file takes up more than 2 megabytes ! 

TICO will work under Windows, and co-operates with it by transferring
pictures to and from the clipboard. However, if you are working
with SVGA images then TICO will have less virtual memory available,
making it more likely to have to resort to swapping to and from disk;
this works, but is incredibly slow by comparison. Try running TICO
from plain DOS; it'll probably be much quicker.

To install TICO, follow these steps ....

1. Make a directory on your hard disk called TICO, like this ...

   MD C:\TICO

2. Log into that directory, like this ...

   C:
   CD \TICO

3. Run the self extracting archive on this disk ...

   A:\TICO121


Run TICO.EXE to start.

