FRACTAL DESIGN PAINTER 3.0 FOR WINDOWS - READ MEv3.0  
 
This READ ME file contains late-breaking information on Painter 3.0. 
Please read the QuickStart Guide for installation instructions. 
NEW USERS--be sure to fill out and mail your Painter registration card, 
so Fractal Design can let you know about the latest changes and 
improvements to the program. Registering entitles you to free 
technical support, product updates and special offers. 
 
This document contains the following sections: 
 
	1. Common Installation Problems 
	2. Easter Eggs 
	3. Useful Feature Notes 
	4. General Troubleshooting 
	5. Printing 
	6. How to Contact Technical Support 
 
 
1. COMMON INSTALLATION PROBLEMS 
 
* Painter serial numbers: 
If you have trouble entering your Painter serial number into the 
program, make sure: 
- If the first two letters of your serial number begin with PW, then your
serial number is not valid. Call customer service to get a new serial number.
- All letters are in UPPER CASE. 
- Enter only zeros and ones.  There are no letter "O"s or "I"s. 
- Include the two hyphens "-" that appear in the number. 
- Enter the number in the second text field.  The first field is for 
your name.
- If you have upgraded from an earlier version of Painter, your old
serial number WILL NOT work in Painter 3.0.  Use the new number 
included in the Painter 3.0 package. 
 
* Startup error: "Cannot find AVIFILE.DLL" 
This error means Video for Windows(tm) is not active in Windows.  
Painter 3.0 will not run without Video for Windows (VFW) installed.  
The Painter installer will install VFW unless you specifically 
uncheck that option.  MAKE SURE to restart Windows after the Painter 
installation is complete to allow VFW to load correctly.  If for some 
reason you need to install VFW again, run the Painter installer and 
select only the Video for Windows install option. 
 
* Startup error: "256-color display driver required" 
Painter REQUIRES that Windows use at least a 256-color video card 
display driver.  Any 16-color driver, including the standard "VGA" 
driver that ships with Windows, will not work with the program.  
Change resolutions to a driver that offers at least 256 colors and is 
compatible with your video card. 
 
* Plug-ins: 
If you are using a large number of third-party plug-ins with Painter, 
the program will take much longer to launch and may appear to "hang" 
momentarily.  This is because Painter must load each plug-in every 
time you start the program.  Also be aware that because of changes 
made by Adobe, the plug-ins included with Photoshop(tm) 2.5 and 3.0 
will not work within Painter. 
 
 
2. EASTER EGGS
 
Due to the irrepressible creative energy of the Painter engineering 
team, the following features found their way into the program AFTER 
the manuals went to print: 
 
* ColorTalk 
A very cool feature from Fractal Design ColorStudio was ColorTalk, 
an image-editing programming language. ColorTalk is being enhanced for 
a future version of Painter, but for those who like living on the 
edge, you can access the development version of ColorTalk by hitting 
the "K" key on your keyboard. ColorTalk technical documentation can be 
found in the \SUPPORT\TECHNOTE directory on the Painter EXTRAS CD-ROM 
or in our online forum libraries (see below). 
 
* Sessions 
A very useful tool for those of you who use sessions is the ability to
execute them from the keyboard. If you give your session a name 
followed by a "\" and a single letter, the session can be executed by 
typing "Ctrl-K" followed by that letter. For example, if you had named 
your session, "TimeBomb\h," you could invoke that session by typing 
"Ctrl-K" and then "h." 
 
 
3. USEFUL FEATURE NOTES 
 
* Pressure-sensitive selections: Holding down the Alt key while using 
the Outline Selection Tool will autotrace the contour of the 
selection's stroke, similar to the way the pressure-sensitive brushes 
in Illustrator(tm) and Freehand(tm) work. If you are using a pressure-
sensitive tablet, the stroke will also vary in proportion to pressure. 
 
* Controlling Image Warp. When using the Image Warp effect, click on 
the area of the image in the preview that you wish to distort and drag 
in the desired direction. The drag distance controls the movement of 
the starting point. The circle that appears as you drag indicates the 
zone of pixels that will be affected or influenced by the effect.  
 
* HOT TIP: If you have the brush tool selected, holding down the Ctrl 
and Alt keys and dragging on the canvas will allow you to adjust the 
brush size interactively. A great option for making perfect brushes! 
 
 
4. GENERAL TROUBLESHOOTING 

* Pointer locks up:
The pointer switches between an hourglass and an arrow continously then 
locks up when trying to open a file or choose an image hose nozzle.
Painter is not compatible with Norton Desktop File Assist. File Assist
can be disabled for each application. Disable File Assist for Painter 
3.1.
* Painter hangs on launch:
Upon launch Painter starts displaying palettes, then hangs. Painter is 
not compatible with Photoshop 3 plugins. Launch Painter 3.1 while
holding down the cotrol key until the message "Choose one Plug-In..."
appears. Select cancel. If there are other plugins, copy these to their
own directory and point Painter to that directory.    
* 15- or 16-bit display modes: 
With some 32768-color (15-bit) and 65536-color (16-bit) video drivers, 
Painter may display colors scrambled.  If this happens, choose 
Preferences: Windows from the Edit menu and check the box "No Device 
Dependent Bitmaps". 
 
* Memory: 
There are two memory options in the Windows Preferences section:  
"Maximum Memory for Painter" and "Half Memory for Painter." 
- For best performance with only Painter running, select Maximum 
Memory for Painter. 
- To be able to run a larger number of Windows applications at the 
same time as Painter, select Half Memory for Painter. 
 
* Windows virtual memory: 
Painter does not utilize the Windows virtual memory swap file to hold 
image data.  Instead, it will create its own temp file on the hard 
disk as necessary.  This means that an excessively large Windows swap 
file will only take hard disk space away from the program and possibly 
hurt performance.  As a general rule, we usually recommend you set 
your Windows swap file to about half the level of RAM on your system. 
For example, on a computer with 16 megabytes of RAM, use a permanent 
Windows swap file of about 8 megs.  For more information, consult the 
Tips and Hints Guide on the Painter 3 EXTRAS CD-ROM. 
 
* Windows disk cache: 
On a system with 8 megs of RAM, we usually recommend setting the 
Windows disk cache (SmartDrive; or, in the case of Windows 3.11, 
32-bit File Access) to a low setting of about 256k (the default is 
usually 2000k).  This strikes a balance between hard disk performance 
and memory available to Painter.  For computers with 16 or more megs 
of RAM, the cache can be set to larger values. 
 
* Graphics tablets: 
Painter is compatible with pressure-sensitive graphics tablets that 
support either the WINTAB or Pen Windows tablet driver standards.  
Some tablets, like those from Wacom, also include a "Windows 3.0-
compatible" mouse-type pressure driver that works within Painter.  
Unlike previous versions of Painter, Painter 3.0 ships with NO tablet 
drivers itself. 

* Tilt and Bearing:
The ability to link the tilt or bearing of your graphics tablet 
stylus to aspects of your brushstroke (like color or size) has been 
implemented in Painter 3.0.  Currently, these features are 
supported ONLY by CalComp tablets.  If you are not using a CalComp 
tablet, the Tilt and Bearing settings in the Advanced Controls: 
Expression palette will not give useful results.  If you ARE using
a CalComp tablet, CalComp requires that you have the following line
in the [Pen Driver] section of the SYSTEM.INI file:  calaft=1
 
* Opening Painter 3.1 TIFF files in Dabbler, Sketcher, or earlier 
versions of Painter: 
If TIFF files saved from Painter 3.1 come into other Fractal Design 
software scrambled, you have probably saved the TIFF with a mask 
layer.  Other Fractal Design programs do not support TIFFs saved with 
masks.  To work around this, open the image back into Painter 3.1, 
choose File: Save As, and uncheck the "Save Mask" box.   
 
* TWAIN-compatible hand scanners: 
Painter is not optimized to work with hand scanners.  If you are 
having trouble scanning directly into the program using File: TWAIN 
Acquire, and you don't have access to a flatbed scanner, scan the 
image using the stand-alone software packaged with the scanner.  From 
this software, save the image in a compatible format (like TIFF), and 
use the File: Open command within Painter to open the image. 
 
* Diamond SpeedStar 24X ISA video card: 
In our testing, this card is incompatible with Painter in 24-bit color 
resolutions using the most recent Diamond drivers (v. 2.04).  Pick a 
resolution with fewer colors in the Diamond control panel. 
 
* Crystal Fonts with ATI video cards 
Painter may fail to start up when running Crystal Fonts and 256 colors 
on an ATI video card, giving the message "Painter requires access to 
the Windows Palette to run properly on 256 color devices."  This is 
due to Crystal Fonts making it appear to Windows applications that the 
card's color palette cannot be changed. To run Painter, turn Crystal 
Fonts off in the ATI control panel. 
 
* EPS Clipping Paths: 
In the EPS Save Options dialog box, the option to save the current 
selection as a clipping path has been disabled. This option is not 
available in Painter 3.1. 
 
* Painter Technical Notes: 
Technical notes on ColorTalk, Weavings, Color Sets, Image Hose Rankings
and Sessions can be found on the Painter EXTRAS CD in the Support directory. 
 

5. PRINTING 
 
* Printing options (under Edit: Preferences: Windows): 
- The printing option "Free Memory for Printing" transfers the image 
to disk during printing so that more memory is available for the 
Print Manager and printer driver. This may result in faster printing 
or may even allow printing to work in cases where it otherwise might 
fail. 
- The option "No Print Banding" disables print banding for devices 
that support it. This may be required to make some printers work (see 
below).  The option affects only GDI printing. 
 
* Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4 Series - GDI (non-PostScript) printing: 
When using these printers, if the image only prints partially or 
aborts with a "Print Overrun" error, try toggling Painter's "No Print 
Banding" setting.  You will find this under the Edit menu in 
Preferences: Windows.  This setting is sometimes affected by whether 
the image is being printed in portrait or landscape orientation.  The 
optimum settings are as follows: 
- HP LaserJet 3 drivers: 
    "No Print Banding" should be CHECKED. 
- HP LaserJet 4 drivers: 
    When printing in Portrait, "No Print Banding" should be CHECKED. 
    When printing in Landscape, "No Print Banding" should be UNCHECKED. 
 
* Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4 Series - PostScript printing: 
In File: Print, make sure to use "B&W PostScript" instead of "Color 
PostScript."  This will speed up printing significantly on these black 
and white laser printers. 
 
* Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 1200C/PS printers - PostScript printing: 
When printing to the HP1200C/PS from Painter using PostScript, the 
printer may return error messages.  To fix this, under File: Print 
Setup, choose Options: PS Options and select the "Optimize for 
Portability" choice. 
 
* Error message: "Image does not fit within the printer page." 
If you receive this error when printing to non-PostScript printers 
like the HP DeskJet series and the Canon BJ series, your image may 
print out compressed.  This is a known limitation of the Windows GDI 
print function.  To avoid this problem, make sure your image fits on 
the page by doing one of the following: check the "Size to Fit Page" 
box under File: PostScript Setup, change the page orientation 
(landscape or portrait) under File: Print Setup, or resize the image 
using Canvas: Resize. 
 
* Printing annotations: 
Printing annotations will work only with PostScript printers.  With 
GDI (non-PostScript) printers, the image will print out without the 
annotations. 
 
 
6. HOW TO CONTACT TECHNICAL SUPPORT 
 
Technical support is free of charge to registered users.  Please have 
your registration number handy when contacting Fractal. When 
contacting us by phone, it is most helpful to be calling from the 
computer where you need support.  This way we can work with you to 
solve the problem or demonstrate a particular function of the software.  
 
Hours:  8am-5pm (PST), Monday-Friday
(408) 688-8800
 
To get support online or to just exchange tips, you can also use any of 
these online services to contact Fractal Design: 
 
Internet:   "support@fractal.com" 
 
CompuServe: Technical Support - "GO FRACTAL"   
            Painter User's Group - "GO GUGRPA"  
 
AOL:	    Painter User's Group - Keyword search "Fractal" 

