Quantel Paintbox

The name Paintbox represents a family of proprietary computer graphics of the English company Quantel. She was popular from entering the market mid-1980s until well into the 1990s, when it came to professional image editing and composing images. In particular, the combination of special hardware ( multi-button mouse rat, graphics tablet, high-end monitor), specialized software ( optimized for speed by not using a multitasking environment, a revolutionary ease of use - similar to today's Dock in Mac OS X) and a generous RAM equipment enabled the implementation of completely new visual ideas and concepts.

Outstanding options offered by the morphing, warping of images and texturing of surfaces. Also, the layer by layer overlaying of images and the sophisticated color adjustments allowed for the emergence of an independent Paintbox looks, the generated attention as a novelty. This had the immediate consequence that in particular the advertising industry quickly took up the possibilities of Paintbox to convey with their motives more exclusivity (which is also not a problem posed at the then prices for Paintbox Operating).

During the 1990s, the program Adobe Photoshop was gradually able to successfully mimic many features of the Paintbox (and sometimes surpass ), with the concomitant advantage of freely selectable hardware and the open area of desktop operating systems. Therefore, the Paintbox ekes out a niche existence today. Quantel is now a manufacturer of hardware and software solutions for film and TV.