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Mac-a-Mug Pro, from Shaherazam (1986-87)

Mu0n

Well-known member
Anyone familiar with Mac-a-Mug Pro? This was a commercially available MS Basic 2.0 program (!!!) made by James E. Haynor (Shaherazam) which let you do mugshots out of a selection of options for face parts and a few accessories (glasses, hats, etc). Some were very limited, some were more abundant. Expect a lot of 80's style hair!

The graphics used fonts which you had to Font/DA Move into your System file. I guess it makes sense from a programming point of view, since displaying fonts and tweaking their position involved already made up routines in Basic. You can tweak the positions of the facial features, including only the left eye or only the right eye, for example. You can darken some parts or the whole, if you want to go outside caucasian features. Sadly, there are some options for feminine faces, but they are very limited relatively.

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You can find it in those big lists of purchasable softwares, for example in MacUser Oct 1986
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There's a brief review of it in a few of the 1986 editions of Mac User. You can also find a short 3-page article in the July 1986 edition of Mac User.

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I tried to recreate my own face, but it's very hard due to the limitations. It gives a good basis though, which you can then use in MacPaint to do some touchups. Here's my imperfect attempt at recreating my imperfect face!

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Byrd

Well-known member
Great find Mu0n; and it’s certainly captured your best criminal look! :) Was this program in any way meant for use in law enforcement, or just for fun?
 

Mu0n

Well-known member
Great find Mu0n; and it’s certainly captured your best criminal look! :) Was this program in any way meant for use in law enforcement, or just for fun?

You only get the smallest hints of smiles with this piece of software. Mugshots aren't happy shots. I highly doubt this was used outside of dinking around and entertaining kids and kids at heart.
 

Crutch

Well-known member
Wow. I had completely forgotten about this but, now that I see it here, vividly remember seeing a screenshot of it somewhere as a kid (very possibly in an EduComp/EduCorp catalog!) and really wanting a copy.

Weird about the fonts. I mean, that’s weird even for an MS-BASIC program. MS BASIC 2.0 included the ability to read bitmaps from a binary file and blit them on-screen with the PUT statement.
 

dcr

Well-known member
Have you tried taking the generated face and running it through one of those AI programs that turns cartoons/drawings into realistic human faces?
 

Mu0n

Well-known member
Have you tried taking the generated face and running it through one of those AI programs that turns cartoons/drawings into realistic human faces?
No and I'm scared to
........ I'll check it out.
 

Mu0n

Well-known member
Here's a second mugshot attempt to recreate the face of Jarrod Ford (aka gruz), of the youtube channel 'Classic Mac Gaming' https://www.youtube.com/c/insanelygruz , also the creator of Flappy Mac. I was granted permission to post his likeness and hopefully I'll be able to share others!

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mg.man

Well-known member
So... is this s/w d/l-able anywhere?? If not - will you be offering a create-a-mug service? MMaaS? A fiver each? 🤣
 

slomacuser

Well-known member
 

Mu0n

Well-known member
So... is this s/w d/l-able anywhere?? If not - will you be offering a create-a-mug service? MMaaS? A fiver each? 🤣
In order to promote my channel (I have no serious intentions for it, I just mostly want to capture direct video footage out of a Plus with a RGB2HDMI), I'll launch a contest of the type: post a comment in the video, subscribe and I'll do YER FACE, lucky winner :D

Most portraits have taken between 30 mins to an hour, depending on how neurotic I want to be about some details that irritate me.
 

dcr

Well-known member
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Reminds me of the sliders you use to modify faces and bodies in DAZ Studio.
 

ktkm

Well-known member
Anyone familiar with Mac-a-Mug Pro?
Well, now I am! Thank you for making me aware of it! I Installed it in my Mac Plus last night and played around for a couple of hours -- clean fun!
I’m Type Designer by day, and this use of font software is truly inspiring!
 

Daxeria

Active member
Was this program in any way meant for use in law enforcement, or just for fun?

This Pro edition was in fact used professionally, as reported in an August 1987 Macworld News item:

Police departments and research psychologists are finding Mac-a-Mug Pro from Shaherazam a useful alternative to the police artist and photo overlay methods of producing composite pictures of suspects. Several law enforcement agencies are using the program, including the campus police at Boston University, the sheriff's departments in Milwaukee and Chattanooga, and police departments in Midland, Texas, and East Aurora, New York. The program has over 100 eye combinations and 200 hair parts, and theoretically can produce 10^8 combinations of features.

In addition, research psychologists are using the program to conduct experiments in perception and memory. Dr. Leslie McArthur, chair of the psychology department at Brandeis University, uses the program in an experimental psychology course. Students design faces in Mac-a-Mug with slight variations in physiognomy. Then the faces are presented to subjects, whose impressions are recorded, based on a series of questions (for example, Does this face look trustworthy?) and a rating scale. A custom program, MacPsych, was developed at Brandeis to display the faces and record the data. Students then do statistical analyses of the data and compare the results to their hypotheses. And at the Boston Museum of Science, Mac-a-Mug is used as part of a display that encourages visitors to interact with the program.

However, a 1997 study cast doubt on the software's practicality for catching criminals: "Sixty-two witnesses observed a target person and two days later either verbally described or constructed a facial composite of the target using the Mac-A-Mug Pro facial composite system. The composite production was preceded by either a guided memory or a standard police interview. The resulting composites were of low quality (not at all similar to a photograph of the target) and were of no value in selecting the target from a group of similar-looking people. It was suggested that the Mac-A-Mug Pro system is not useful for realistic witness settings, in which witnesses must construct the composites from memory."

Mac-a-Mug Pro was an expanded (and 8 or 9 times more expensive) version of the original Mac-a-Mug, which was marketed as an entertainment product that was "easy and fun for the whole family to use".
 
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