#29405 - Fatnickc - Fri Nov 19, 2004 6:47 pm
Seeing as I've been using Photoshop, which has very easy access to indexing colour, for all work so far, I am finding it very difficult to work with Paint Shop Pro (what I have on my computer).
Everything is fine, except indexed colour. If anyone, and I mean anyone, could tell me how to get indexed colour working with Paint Shop Pro, I would be most grateful.
Thanks,
Nick.
#29407 - tepples - Fri Nov 19, 2004 7:11 pm
I can't help you with PSP, but have you tried GIMP? It has decent functions for working with indexed color.
_________________
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-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#29409 - isildur - Fri Nov 19, 2004 7:57 pm
PM me, Paint Shop pro 5 is my gfx editor of choice most of the time. I can maybe help.
#29465 - Abscissa - Sat Nov 20, 2004 7:16 pm
| Fatnickc wrote: |
| Seeing as I've been using Photoshop, which has very easy access to indexing colour |
Really? I have Photoshop Elements 2, and it's damn near impossible with that. I guess maybe I should try the real thing ;). I can't say I've ever had problems doing it in Paint Shop Pro. Although I haven't used that in a while.
#29473 - Fatnickc - Sat Nov 20, 2004 9:51 pm
Abscissa, it is very easy with Photoshop Elements - that is what i am used to.
Here is a brief tutorial just for you ;) :
1. Open Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0(or higher).
2. Click New file, choose whatvere dimensions you wish for. Make sure that the current mode is RGB color.
3. Draw pretty image.
4. Click Image -> Mode -> Indexed Color - if it asks you if you will let it flatten stuff or something, just say yes.
5. In the Indexed Color dialogue box, select Uniform in the Palette menu.
6. Click OK.
7. Proceed to save, as anything.pcx
8. Da-Daa - You have a brilliant picture ready to work wonders (providing you have pcx2gba, of course ;).
#29504 - Abscissa - Sun Nov 21, 2004 6:30 am
| Fatnickc wrote: |
Abscissa, it is very easy with Photoshop Elements - that is what i am used to.
Here is a brief tutorial just for you ;) :
1. Open Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0(or higher).
2. Click New file, choose whatvere dimensions you wish for. Make sure that the current mode is RGB color.
3. Draw pretty image.
4. Click Image -> Mode -> Indexed Color - if it asks you if you will let it flatten stuff or something, just say yes.
5. In the Indexed Color dialogue box, select Uniform in the Palette menu.
6. Click OK.
7. Proceed to save, as anything.pcx
8. Da-Daa - You have a brilliant picture ready to work wonders (providing you have pcx2gba, of course ;). |
Oh, cool. heheh :)
Actually, now that I've gone and tried that, I've just remembered that I did figure that much out before (but forgot I had ;) ). Looking some more, I just remembered the real thing I was having trouble with: on the Color Table under Image->Mode, I can edit the palette, but I can't figure out how to select colors on there. There's an eyedropper icon there but it just seems to set the transperent color. And even on a palettized image the normal color picker is the same as for RGB images, and doesn't let me choose a color by index. Hmm, I thought I had had more problems than that, but I guess not ;)
I'm not really thrilled with the way a lot of the stuff in this program's organized, but man there's some really useful features in here! Heheh, I think Windows Paint has just been removed from my content pipeline ;)
#29511 - Abscissa - Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:17 am
I just installed PSP 5 again, turns out it's one of the versions of PSP I used to use the most. The term PSP uses for Indexed mode is 8-bit color or 8bpp(bits per pixel), aka 256 color. Likewise, RGB-mode is 24-bit/16 Million colors. It uses these terms because on almost any platform (with only rare exceptions), 8-bit modes are Indexed (aka Palettized (sp?) ) and the RGB modes are 16, 24, and 32 bit. So...
To create a new Indexed image:
"File"->"New", under "Image Characteristics" change "Image Type" to "256 Colors (8 Bit)"
To select a color from the indexed palette (as opposed to the normal color selection):
Just click on the foreground or background color display just below the normal color selection panel. (I think this works on non-indexed modes too, and just brings up a 'color-wheel-ish' selection dialog instead.)
To Edit/Save/Load an indexed color palette:
On Menu bar: "Colors"->"Edit/Save/Load Palette..."
To convert an RGB/24-Bit image to Indexed mode:
"Colors"->"Decrease Color Depth"->"256 Colors (8 Bit)"
-or- "Colors"->"Decrease Color Depth"->"X Colors (4/8 Bit)"
To convert an Indexed mode image to RGB/24-Bit:
"Colors"->"Increase Color Depth"->"16 Million Colors (24 Bit)"
BTW, I just noticed there's a PSP 9 out now. I'm playing with the trial version at the moment. It seems pretty nice as well. Still a fairly "PSP-Style" interface (which I'm more used to), but cleaned up and has some new, very "Photoshoppy" features.
#29512 - Fatnickc - Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:18 am
Heh, yea, it works - just it's hard to get it working sometimes. I had to use pixel art (a fine art, yes, but damn slow and difficult) because GFX2GBA never worked for me, and MS Paint doesn't really do indexing (at least i can't get it to) and then save as a .pcx. But, PCX2GBA and PCX2SPRITE are by far (in my opinion) the easiest tools for imaging.
I guess if you wanted to get the colours in paint, or somesuch then slowly copy the images over. Naah - that's stupid ;).
I don't really see what you mean though, do you want to choose colours by their numbers?
I think that is what you mean, but I don't really know why.
I am pretty good with Photoshop, so I probably would know what you were talking about, if you explained it. Do you want to select extra colours that won't have been automatically added from the image to act as a master palette? If that's what you mean, in the indexed color dialogue box, instead of picking Uniform, pick Custom, then upon clicking on a box in there, you gte a colour select type thing, to add to the palette. I'm sure (though haven't tried) that GFX2GBA will be happy with it that way still, I mean it has 256 colours still.
If that's not what you meant just say, and I'm sure I can help.
Thanks for all the replies,
Nick.
#29598 - blinky465 - Mon Nov 22, 2004 12:20 pm
In PSP, I find Ctrl+shift+3 (reduce to 256 colours) and Ctrl+shift+2 (reduce to 16 colours) a godsend!
I'm sure you already do this, but you can create all your 256 colour sprites as one big image, then reduce (all sprites) to the same 256-palette.
Taking this a step further, I built a palette of colours based on their luminescence (is this a word?) on the hardware. Some colours show up really well on hardware, some not so well, and they do differ slightly from how they appear on your PC (esp if you've messed about with your monitor settings).
So quite often, before drawing a single dot, I drop the image to 256 colours in PSP and load in my saved palette, then start drawing.
It means that all my games (to date) have the same palette, but at least I know that the colours I'm using are the most vibrant ones I can use!
(and if ever I write a dark gothic game with lots of greys and blues, I can always create a new, optimised palette)
#29605 - identitycrisisuk - Mon Nov 22, 2004 2:42 pm
Hmm, I'm doing a semi-gothic looking kinda game but now I've started looking at it on hardware it's far too dark. I'm not using many colours yet though, so it should be fairly easy to go in and edit individual palette entries. With all the filters you can put on VBA, there really should be one that will darken the colours so they look a bit more like on hardware, that would be very useful.
#29651 - Fatnickc - Tue Nov 23, 2004 7:42 am
Well, I'm never going to know what looks like what on hardware really, seeing as my parents think 'it's illegal' to get a flash cartridge.. I guess, maybe, when I'm way older, they might cost practically nothing as they'll be so outdated. Or, maybe they'll succome to my ways by Christmas.
#29653 - blinky465 - Tue Nov 23, 2004 9:11 am
| identitycrisisuk wrote: |
| ...really should be one that will darken the colours so they look a bit more like on hardware, that would be very useful. |
I don't know about VBA, but with Paint Shop Pro you can select - Image - Brightness - twiddle with the slider then preview without applying the changes. I set my to about brightness -20, contrast -5 but obviously this will change depending on how you have your own monitor set up.
(conversely, you could create everything so it looks great on screen then as a last step, increase the brightness before converting into arrays for your game, and then dump to hardware - it should look ok then on hardware but a bit light and washed out on the screen.)
#29678 - Abscissa - Tue Nov 23, 2004 9:11 pm
| Fatnickc wrote: |
| Well, I'm never going to know what looks like what on hardware really, seeing as my parents think 'it's illegal' to get a flash cartridge.. I guess, maybe, when I'm way older, they might cost practically nothing as they'll be so outdated. Or, maybe they'll succome to my ways by Christmas. |
Ick. Parents are such idiots. I remember one time when I told my mom I wanted to get into game devlopment, she said "But what will you do when video games go out of style?". This was about ten years *after* the crash of '83. I'm glad I finally don't have to deal with that stuff anymore. Hang in there ;)
#29722 - Fatnickc - Wed Nov 24, 2004 8:11 am
I tried again last night to see if they would.. Well, I tried. I think I'm getting a bit further into them, because my Mum said that if I had the money in hand, my Dad might order it for me ;).
Well, that's totally off-topic, so there is some point to the post which is (just) to do with graphics :
When you started programming the GBA, and when addressing the location of the sprites (not the copy memory bit, but the bit like 512 etc.) did you guess how far above 512 the second sprite was? Or did you find a good source of information on where, say, 0x06014000 led to 512, but a harder one (like 0x06014200)I guess for until I strike lusky. You?
#29731 - blinky465 - Wed Nov 24, 2004 2:19 pm
| Fatnickc wrote: |
| When you started programming the GBA, and when addressing the location of the sprites (not the copy memory bit, but the bit like 512 etc.) did you guess how far above 512 the second sprite was? Or did you find a good source of information on where, say, 0x06014000 led to 512, but a harder one (like 0x06014200)I guess for until I strike lusky. You? |
Do you mean that you've a big bitmap with all your sprites in and you're looking for the offset to the next one?
It depends on the size of your sprites (and the width of your bitmap I guess). If you make a bitmap 16 pixels wide, and stack all your sprites on top of one another, finding the offset it quite easy.
If your sprite is 16x16, then the offset to the next one would be 512 (16x16=512). If your sprites are 16x32 though, you'll need to offset by (32x16) 1024.
So if you have four frames of animation in the bitmap, and each frame is 16x16, and want to pull out the third frame for your sprite, the offset would be (16*16*2)=1024.
(indexing starts at zero, not one, so third sprite=index 2)
You can of course have different sized sprites in the one big bitmap and adjust your offsets accordingly, but for ease of use, its best to keep your bitmap as wide as your sprite needs to be, and stack them on top of each other.
#29743 - tepples - Wed Nov 24, 2004 6:04 pm
| Fatnickc wrote: |
| when addressing the location of the sprites (not the copy memory bit, but the bit like 512 etc.) did you guess how far above 512 the second sprite was? Or did you find a good source of information on where, say, 0x06014000 led to 512, but a harder one (like 0x06014200)I guess for until I strike lusky. You? |
Macros. Lots of macros.
| Code: |
| #define SPR_VRAM(x) ((u32 *)(0x06010000 | ((x) << 5))) |
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#29744 - Fatnickc - Wed Nov 24, 2004 6:06 pm
No, what i meant was, if including all of the sprites separately, did you just guess until you knew where the 2nd (3rd in our world) would be (i.e. 512+)
*EDIT**that one wasn't in reply to tepples, but the one before.*
In reply to tepples (kind of) what i did was, as an example :
| Code: |
u16 x = 0;
while(x<100) {
......
sprites[1].attribute2 = 512 + x;
}
etc. then put it on screen |
#29930 - identitycrisisuk - Fri Nov 26, 2004 9:37 pm
Coming back to this as it's in a similar area, has anyone found the import palette option to not be very useful sometimes? I was updating my character's colours and because he's split into two parts I thought I'd be able to save the palette for one half once I'd made the changes and then just import that into the other half of the body. However when I did that it seemed to choose the nearest colours to the old ones rather than just doing a straight import (I checked, indexes for individual pixels were changed when the palette was loaded). Just wondering if it's a bug or I've got a setting wrong somewhere. This is PSP6 BTW.
_________________
| Code: |
| CanIKickIt(YES_YOU_CAN); |