Dr. Halo CUT
Dr. Halo (including Dr. Halo Plus and Dr. Genius) is a line of raster image editing software for DOS, developed by Media Cybernetics. It has several graphics formats associated with it.
Its main native file format is .PIC. However, PIC is not as well known as its .CUT clipping format. CUT is somewhat more portable and device-independent, and more flexible as to the pixel dimensions.
Both PIC and CUT may have a companion .PAL file, containing a color palette. According to the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats: "There are actually two types of .PAL files: generic and video hardware-specific."
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Disambiguation
This CUT format is unrelated to the Amstrad .cut file format.
Discussion
To load a CUT file in Dr. Halo III (and presumably other versions):
- Right-click the scissors icon. A dialog box will open.
- Type the filename, or left-click the "?" icon to select it from a list.
- Left-click the diskette icon with the arrow pointing up.
- The dialog box will close. Move the mouse to choose where to paste the image. Left-click when ready.
Format details
All CUT images have exactly 8 bits per pixel, but all 8 bits might not be used. It is common for the only color codes used by an image to be 0 and 1.
It is not clear what to do if no palette file is present. Interpreting the image as grayscale, with black=0, seems to be standard practice. But different viewers use different logic for guessing the code that should be interpreted as white.
CUT uses RLE compression.
We have not located any details about PIC format.
Identification
There's no easy way to identify a CUT file, from its contents. The bytes at offset 4 and 5 should be 0x00, but that's not very helpful.
PIC and PAL files start with ASCII "AH". More research is needed, but the byte at offset 6 should be 0x0a for PAL, and appears to be 0x02 for PIC.
Specifications
- Dr. Halo File Format Summary, from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats (CUT and PAL)
- Picture format docs (of a number of formats including this one) (CUT and PAL)
Software
- ImageMagick (format named "CUT")
- Konvertor
- XnView
- Farbfeld Utilities (read/write)
- Tom's Editor
- Tom's Viewer
- Dr. Halo
- Dr Halo II (at WinWorld) - Includes v2.03, and a manual
- Dr. Halo III (v3.00/1988-02-02)
- Dr. Halo III (at WinWorld) - Includes Dr. Halo III (v3.00/1989-02-06) & Dr. Genius (v3.00)
- Dr. Halo Plus (v3.00-German)
- Dr. Genius (v3.00)
- Various versions at old-dos.ru - Includes Dr. Halo III (v3.01) and Dr. Halo Plus (v3.00).
- Possibly relevant: drhalo.unp
Sample files
- http://cd.textfiles.com/fantaziasampler/CLIPART/CUT/
- Game Empire Shareware Demo Disc → SOFT/NEW/PRO7/*.CUT
- http://cd.textfiles.com/librisbritannia/GRAPHICS/CLIPDRHA/ ...
- 1169.ZIP (PIC format)
- http://cd.textfiles.com/bthevhell/200/150/ → screen*.pic (PIC format. Might be NSFW.)
- https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/image/drHalo/
