| • | Use software for transparent BLTs |
Usually not needed. When selected, this option will not use the Windows API TransparentBLT() function for drawing transparent bitmaps. This will decrease drawing speed. In some cases, however, this may result in better bitmap displays, usually due to bugs in your graphics card device driver. If you experience display problems, turning this on may result in slower but correct displays.
This option only affects Windows 2000, XP and Windows ME. Windows 95 and 98 do not have TransparentBlt() capability in hardware, and all transparent bitmaps are drawn in software.
| • | Use higher quality BLT Drawing Mode |
When selected, FS Panel Studio will use a different mode to draw bitmaps, which results in slightly higher quality display at the expense of some speed. The higher the zoom factor, the greater the effect and the slower the drawing time.
For the more technically minded -- when zoomed into an image, FS Panel Studio needs to map a single source bitmap pixel to blocks of screen pixels. In the higher quality mode, FS Panel Studio maps pixels from the source rectangle into blocks of pixels in the destination rectangle by averaging the color over the destination block. In the default mode, the source pixel color simply replaces the destination pixels - no averaging occurs.
| • | Disable short filename translation |
FS Panel Studio interacts with various external utilities, like bitmap editors and Notepad. When invoking these, they are supplied with the filenames which they should open. Some older utilities can only open older 8.3 format file names, and in some older systems, paths which don't use the old 8.3 file naming format may cause problems. This options controls whether FS Panel Studio will internally convert long file names to 8.3 format before starting external utilities. Normally not needed.
| • | Use Alternate Bitmap Editor launch |
Most bitmap editors can be launched with the default configuration of FS Panel Studio. However, some, most notably Adobe Photoshop, don't behave normally when launched from an application. Turning this option on will use an alternate, somewhat less automatic method for starting bitmap editors, which should work in most cases.
Note that Photoshop Elements and some other bitmap editors start a shell or executive program which allows you to select the type of editing you wish to perform, and then starts the real bitmap editor. FS Panel Studio tracks the execution of the selected bitmap editor and cannot know when the actual bitmap editor has completed. In these cases, enter the actual editor name in the preferences box. For example, for Photoshop Elements 3.0, the shell program is typically "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 3.0\Photoshop Elements 3.0.exe" which the actual bitmap editor is "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 3.0\PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe". The latter is what needs to be entered in FS Panel Studio.