NEOchrome is an early color

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 Atari ST. It was written by Dave Staugas, a programmer at

Atari Corporation Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communica ...

and co-author of the ST's operating system. ''NEOchrome'' supports hardware-supported

color cycling Color cycling, also known as palette shifting, is a technique used in computer graphics in which colors are changed in order to give the impression of animation. This technique was mainly used in early computer games, as storing one image and cha ...

to give the impression of animation. A color cycling waterfall, created with ''NEOchrome'', was one of the iconic images of the early Atari ST. Following in the footsteps of

MacPaint MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was nota ...

and the Apple II version which was renamed Mouse Paint, both released in 1984, ''NEOchrome'' uses the then-novel representation of painting tools by icons (in addition to other GUI elements). A pre-release version (v0.5) was included with the system disks of the first STs. Version 1.0 arrived later, and was bundled with several versions of the ST. Although not officially

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

, this version was often treated as such, and was never actually sold. NEOchrome enjoyed a relatively high level of popularity within the ST community, even in the face of more advanced packages such as

DEGAS Edgar Degas (, ; born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, ; 19 July 183427 September 1917) was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings. Degas also produced bronze sculptures, prints and drawings. Degas is espec ...

and

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 ...

NEOchrome Master

Although there were no further official versions, an unofficial revision called NEOchrome Master was released by the Atari demo scene group Delta Force's Till BubeckTill Bubeck(Germany)...a.k.a. "Chaos Inc.", coder in Delta Force (DF)...Famous for: NeoChrome Master
Atari Scene and STNICCC News (programmer of The Return of Medusa) in the early 1990s.What's new...
NEOchrome Master Manual, Alive 9

References

{{reflist

External links

NEOchrome (.neo) file format
archiveteam.org
NEOchrome Animation (.ani) file format
archiveteam.org 1985 software Atari ST software Raster graphics editors