Studio One on the Mac SE.

March 4, 2008 4:35 PM

OldMacFilter: I have fond memories of using a program called Studio/One on my Mac SE to generate monochrome bitmap art and animation. It was a straightforward, user-friendly program with a very solid System 6 vibe. I also seem to recall other programs from the same company - I seem to recall Studio Eight and Studio 32 as being the other products. My question is, where could I find more information about this wonderful program, to fill my nostalgia for old-school Mac-ness? What company made it, and how could I most easily create animations similar to what it produced? And what were Studio Eight and Studio 32 like? Does anyone else remember this stuff?
posted by Sticherbeast to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

My college art department was a bit late to the game in introducing computer based art courses, but when they finally added a computer lab - all macs - they all had Studio 32. Only two machines had Photoshop (2.0, I believe) but at the time I definitely preferred Studio 32. I've done a few searches over the years, but there's not much info out there about it, unfortunately. Hopefully someone else here has more insight!
posted by blaneyphoto at 4:44 PM on March 4, 2008

I remember Studio 8! I made cassette covers for my band's demo tape with it.

I was in engineering school and had access to several image manipulation programs in the Mac lab. I recall evaluating Photoshop and Studio 8 and very much favoring the latter. When I found out one of my professor's sons wrote Photoshop, I recall biting my tongue regarding my preference.

No idea where you'd find copies now. The umich mac archive?

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/mac/graphics/graphicsutil/

Guess not, but there may be other goodies there for you.
posted by nonmyopicdave at 7:16 PM on March 4, 2008

Yeah, it was by Electronic Arts (brief reference in its Wikipedia entry). The versions (always in numerals) signified the bit depth supported by the application; Studio/1 = black and white, Studio/8 = 256 colors, Studio/32 = "millions of colors" with alpha transparency. If you can track down a copy of one of them and a Mac ROM of the right vintage, it might run in a 680x0 emulator like Basilisk II on top of a modern operating system. Some reimaginings of the pixel-art/animation feature set:

Pixen (free/open source)
Pixel Ninja (shareware, free demo during development)
posted by disarray at 7:25 PM on March 4, 2008

If you ever come across the software, use mini vMac + a handy guide.
posted by Monochrome at 8:15 PM on March 4, 2008

Studio 8 was the main reason I shelled out $6000+ for my first Mac [IIcx] back in 1989. Better pixel-pusher than PS CS.
posted by panamax at 10:41 PM on March 4, 2008

It's not in the Info-Mac HyperArchive either, but that's another great place to dig around for classic apps.
posted by mumkin at 1:03 AM on March 5, 2008