Brilliance (graphics editor)

Brilliance is a bitmap graphics editor for the Amiga computer, published by Digital Creations in 1993.[1][2] Although marketed as a single package, Brilliance in reality consisted of two separate (but near identical-looking) applications. One was a palette-based package also named Brilliance. The other was a true-color package called TrueBrilliance.[2][3][4]

Brilliance
Other namesTrueBrilliance
Developer(s)Digital Creations
Initial release1993; 31 years ago (1993)
Final release
Brilliance 2 / 1994; 30 years ago (1994)
Operating systemAmigaOS
PlatformAmiga
Typebitmap graphics editor
LicenseProprietary

The Brilliance package was one of the major rivals to Deluxe Paint, the established "killer app" in Amiga bitmap graphics editing.

At its launch, Brilliance attracted generally favorable reviews.[5] One commonly noted point was TrueBrilliance's performance on Hold-and-Modify and true-color images, which was significantly faster than that of Deluxe Paint IV.[6] However, despite being faster and easier to use than Deluxe Paint, Brilliance never achieved the same level of popularity. It may be significant that (in contrast to Deluxe Paint) by the time of Brilliance's launch, the Amiga market was already in serious decline.[citation needed]

TrueBrilliance was notable for its ability to edit true 15 and 24-bit color images, even on older Amigas which could only display HAM-6 (pseudo-12-bit color) graphics.[3] In such cases, the image was rendered as a HAM display, but all modifications were performed on the underlying true color image buffer.[3] Even when the final image was intended for HAM display, this had the advantage that successive operations did not accumulate HAM artifacts on top of each other. Loss of quality could be restricted to a single HAM conversion at the end of the process.[citation needed]

Releases

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Brilliance/TrueBrilliance was released in 1993, and came with a dongle.[7] Brilliance/TrueBrilliance 2 (released in 1994) dropped this requirement, although some reviewers considered the changes in functionality overall to be minor, given the new major release number.[8][3] However, the significant drop in price of the new version was positively received.[3]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Brilliance 2.0". The Personal Computer Museum. Archived from the original on 2014-07-03. Retrieved 2014-06-21.
  2. ^ a b Pudsey, Jarrod (November 1993). "BRILLIANCE Watch Out, King Tut". ACAR. Vol. 10, no. 11. pp. 14–17.
  3. ^ a b c d e Kirsch, Patrick (November 1994). "Brilliance 2.0 24 bit painting for the rest of us". The Australian Commodore and Amiga Review. Vol. 11, no. 11. p. 12.
  4. ^ Mortier, R. (November 1995). "TrueBrilliance". Amazing Computing Amiga. Vol. 10, no. 11. p. 18.
  5. ^ Atkin, Denny (October 1993). "Brilliance - Brighter than the Sun" (PDF). Amiga Computing. No. 65. p. 76.
  6. ^ Mortier, R. (January 1994). "Brilliance". Amazing Computing Amiga. Vol. 9, no. 1. p. 46.
  7. ^ THE BRILLIANCE USER'S GUIDE (PDF). Digital Creations. Inc. 1993.
  8. ^ Brilliance Version 2.0 Quick Reference Card (PDF). Digital Creations, Inc. 1994.
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