Painter's Colour Assistant Tool Kit Files

DESCRIPTION:

This software is intended for use by painters who wish to experiment
with mixing paint (virtually) and to plan palettes.  See section USAGE
below for more details.

STATUS:

This software is still under development and is only Alpha standard at
this time.

REQUIREMENTS:

This software requires:
 - Python 2.7 or later
 - PyGTK2 2.24 or later
 - PyCairo 1.8.10 or later
 
INSTALLATION:

It is NOT necessary to install this software in order to use it.  All
that is necessary for the applications to be usable is for the base
directory to be in the usere PATH environment variable.

USAGE:

This software has a number of components:

1. The Palette Planner (pcatk_palette.py) is a GUI that (once the user
has slected some tube colours for use) enables the painter to mix new
colours by specifying the number of "parts" of tube (or earlier mixed)
colours to be used in a mixed colour.  This mixed colour can then be
saved to a list of mixed colours (along with notes about its intended
use) and used in the mixing of further colours.  When the painter has
finished planning their palette they may print out a report to be used
as a reference while completing the painting for which the palette was
planned. An analysed image viewer is included as part of the palette
planner and displays a number of transformations of a (user selected)
digital image from which the user can copy samples for pasting into
the mixed colour area for matching.

2. The Tube Series Editor (pcatk_editor.py) is a GUI that enables the
painter create sets of tube colours for use in the palette planner.
The recommended method is to produce a "sampler" of the actual paints
to be used on a suitable medium, take a digital photograph and then
cut and paste from that photograph into the tube series editor where
its buttons can be used to match the colour.  A Colour Sample Viewer
is included as part of the editor. An example colour sampler
file has been added and should be loaded by the viewer the first time
it is launched (and after that it should remember the last file used).

TUBE SERIES:

At this time, the only tube series data included in the distribution is for an
imaginary set of paints known as the "Ideal Paint Colours Series" which
features six colours equally spaced around the colour circle (at maximim chroma)
together with black and white. This series can be found in the file "ideal.tsd"
in the "data" subdirectory of the source distribution and in the directory
"$ROOT/share/PaintersColourAssistant/data" in installed distributions. On Linux
$ROOT should be "/usr" and to facilitate finding the file on Windows the file
selector should open in that directory when the "Tube Colour Series/Open" menu
option in the Palette Planner is invoked.

INTERNATIONALIZATION:

The code is extensively hooked for i18n but (at the moment) there is no
localization available for languages other than English.

BUGS:

It would be greatly appreciated if any bugs encountered by users are
reported by creating an issue at:

<http://sourceforge.net/p/pcatk/tickets/>

or emailing:

<pcatk-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net>

FEATURE REQUESTS:

Feature requests can be made by creating an issue at:

<http://sourceforge.net/p/pcatk/tickets/>

or emailing:

<pcatk-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net>

<https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=386122&atid=1604800>

or emailing:

<darning-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net>

FEATURE REQUESTS:

Feature requests can be made by creating an issue at:

<https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=386122&atid=1604803>

or emailing:

<darning-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net>