''Brilliance'' is a

bitmap graphics editor A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats (also known as bitmap images) such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF ...

for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

computer, published by Digital Creations in 1993. Although marketed as a single package, ''Brilliance'' in reality consisted of two separate (but near identical-looking) applications. One was a

palette Palette may refer to: * Cosmetic palette, an archaeological form * Palette, another name for a color scheme * Palette (painting), a wooden board used for mixing colors for a painting ** Palette knife, an implement for painting * Palette (company) ...

-based package also named ''Brilliance''. The other was a true-color package called ''TrueBrilliance''. The ''Brilliance'' package was one of the major rivals to ''

Deluxe Paint Deluxe Paint, often referred to as ''DPaint'', is a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 in November 1985. A series of updated versions followed, some of which were ported ...

'', the established "

killer app In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program or software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, a video game ...

" in Amiga bitmap graphics editing. At its launch, Brilliance attracted generally favorable reviews. One commonly noted point was ''TrueBrilliance'''s performance on

Hold-and-Modify Hold-And-Modify, usually abbreviated as HAM, is a display mode of the Commodore Amiga computer. It uses a highly unusual technique to express the color of pixels, allowing many more colors to appear on screen than would otherwise be possible ...

and true-color images, which was significantly faster than that of Deluxe Paint IV. 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. ''TrueBrilliance'' was notable for its ability to edit true 15 and

24-bit Notable 24-bit machines include the CDC 924 – a 24-bit version of the CDC 1604, CDC lower 3000 series, SDS 930 and SDS 940, the ICT 1900 series, the Elliott 4100 series, and the Datacraft minicomputers/Harris H series. The term SWORD i ...

color images, even on older Amigas which could only display HAM-6 (pseudo-12-bit color) graphics. In such cases, the image was rendered as a HAM display, but all modifications were performed on the underlying true color image buffer. 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.

Releases

There were two major releases of ''Brilliance''. *Brilliance package released in 1993 that came with a

dongle A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality. In computing, the term was initially synonym ...

. *Brilliance 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. However, the significant drop in price of the new version was positively received.

References

External links

Archived Usenet review of a.o., Brilliance
Raster graphics editors Amiga software 1993 software Proprietary software {{graphics-software-stub

Releases

See also

References

External links