SuperPaint

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For the Apple Macintosh graphics program published by Aldus, see SuperPaint (Macintosh).

SuperPaint was a pioneering graphics program and framebuffer computer system developed by Richard Shoup at Xerox PARC. The system was first conceptualized in late 1972 and produced its first stable image in April 1973. SuperPaint was among the earliest uses of computer technology for creative works, video editing, and computer animation, all which would become major sections within the entertainment industry and major components of industrial design.

SuperPaint had the ability to capture images from standard video input or combine them with preexisting digital data. SuperPaint was also the first program to use now-ubiquitous features in common computer graphics programs such as changing hue, saturation and value of graphical data, choosing from a preset color palette, custom polygons and lines, virtual paintbrushes and pencils, and auto-filling of images. SuperPaint was also the first graphics program to use a graphical user interface and was one of the earliest to feature anti-aliasing.

SuperPaint was used early on to make custom television graphics for KCED-TV in San Francisco and later was used to make promotional graphics and animations for the Pioneer Venus project mission in late 1978. Due to differences with management at PARC's Computer Systems Lab, Shoup and colleague Alvy Ray Smith left the Xerox facility to work at the New York Institute of Technology. In 1980, Shoup and Smith joined Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas' movie special effects firm and in 1983, Shoup won an Emmy award for his work using SuperPaint to make on-screen television graphics.

[edit] Hardware

The SuperPaint system was a custom computer system built around a Data General Nova 800 minicomputer CPU and a hand-wired shift register framebuffer containing 16 memory cards, allowing for a resolution up to 640 x 486 x 8 bits. Also included in the SuperPaint configuration was an 8-bit video digitizer, various digital-to-analog conversion hardware, and a CPU interface.