Introduction

Graphics, photography and visual arts have always been my hobby. I remember when I got my first computer, an ATARI 128, instead of playing games I was always trying to squeeze something out of the built-in basic, and it always ended up displaying something...

My first PC gave me the ability to learn Borland Turbo Pascal and as far as I remember I was always doing something in graphics. My first bigger project was a simple, but powerful GUI Windows-like environment library in Turbo pascal for DOS. (A GUI is a Graphic User Interface) It had windows, mouse support and various controls I had to draw from scratch. I spent almost 2 years on it - just learning and pushing things I could do. During that period I also developed a designer for it - a GUI for creating GUI's which I could use to build programs. It was built with the library and it created a code which the library could then use, so it was kind of recursive work. After I finished the library and the designer I did only one demo program with it (OFS - Optical Fiber Simulator) And the DOS was gone forever... I think this is where my passion for the MMB (Multimedia Builder) idea started.

With Windows I started to learn C++. I never learned C before, so I was kind of a new kid in the block.

All this time I was using different 60 and 35 mm cameras for taking pictures of nature and people around me. I was also developing my own Black and White pictures.

With affordable scanners and later with digital cameras my passion for photography increased even more. I could take a picture and manipulate it like never before, adding or removing colors, effects , blur or sharpen. From the very first days, I always liked image editing programs more than all other programs.. I could spend hours of painting, image editing and combining images together.

Finally after all those years, I got the opportunity to write my own image editing software and this manual for it. This was like returning back to the dark room with my old pictures. I was thinking what I would like to have in a simple yet powerful image editing application (my new dark room). That's where most of the tools in Photo-Brush were born.

Many tools I have in my programs are similar to those tools in many different professional image editing applications - why re-invent the wheel? But I have always tried to look at problems differently and add some twist. During that time I also invented many brand new ideas or tried to enhance the functionality of the old ones. That's why the Rubber Stamp also has the wrap option, that's why you don't only have Color Pick, but you can actually pick-up an entire texture from the image with cool Texture Pick and then paint with it. That's why you have an Edge-Smart Brush Mode or an interesting new Bridge Brush for retouching.

Most of the work on the software, this complete manual and web page was done during the very short period in the Summer of 2000. This was a great opportunity to try new things and ideas.

I just hope you will find this software useful.

R. Voska (Oscar)

Ottawa, Canada

Summer 2000

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Orol & Odklizec

Zilina, Slovakia

Autumn-Winter 2006-2007