Re: Cross-developing artwork

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Saturday, November 24, 2012 12:37:26 PM UTC-6, Bill Buckels wrote:
> "Steve Nickolas" <usotsuki@buric.co> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > Well, kindasorta.  Win64.  (I do have dosbox though)
> 
> 
> 
> BMA2FC works in DosBox on my Windows 7 system as well as in a native command 
> 
> window or DosBox on XP. It probably works in the VirtualBox VM with FreeDOS 
> 
> as well under Windows 7 and Windows 8, and maybe in other VM's, and 
> 
> certainly in MS-DOS.
> 
> 
> 
> >only thing is I like to edit in GIMP and that would potentially wreck the 
> 
> >palette.
> 
> 
> 
> The Gimp has an eyedropper tool and BMPA2FC & Co. comes with samples with 
> the required palette and straight forward instructions. I could try it 
> myself but I'd rather you do it then you would know how.

Best thing to do is make a custom gimp palette.  Load a sample image with all 6 colors and then convert it to an indexed color image (if it isn't already) -- and make sure to limit the size of the palette to 6.  Once you have that, you can go to the palette menu and save it.  It's a bit tricky to find all the right menu options (the palette management in Gimp exists but it's not easy to find for some screwy reason -- I think I had to use an eyedropper and build a custom palette).  You can then apply this palette to other pictures as needed.  If you're feeling tricky you can do some optimizations like doing two 4-color palettes (one with green/purple and one with blue/orange) and interleave the two resulting images using layers and some creative masking tricks to alternate so as to avoid the hi/lo color boundaries.  This would help you simulate the result without having to play guess & check.

I am not far away from having a better conversion routine to eliminate the roundtrip through gimp for color conversion -- except that Java only has a pattern diffusion and lacks a Floyd-Steinberg implementation (and the FS dither yields WAY better results when reducing colors.)  I found some FS java implementations but the code was hard to read and wasn't using the most optimal Java graphics classes (e.g. drawing points with Java 2D instead of just touching the framebuffer directly, which is several times faster.)

Anywho, if you're really crafty you can skip using Gimp and use Image Majick "convert" to do (at least most of) this, but I imagine it may be more bother than its worth.  The advantage of using convert is that once you have it, you just reuse the same script and you can apply it to a stack of images rather quickly.  I used Image Magick to do palette conversions in the past as well as rescaling and gamma correction and was very pleased with the results.  I was not pleased that I was writing a java program that offloaded half its work via a forked process though.  :-)

-B

> 
> 
> 
> I know of one user who is not in high school yet and has no trouble 
> 
> converting back and forth between Windows BMP's and color DHGR with BMPA2FC 
> 
> and A2FCBMP or conversely with DMONO and monochrome DHGR and edits these in 
> 
> Windows with all things singing and dancing.
> 
> 
> 
> It is this young guy through his Dad who asked for the latest changes, and 
> 
> who tested these.
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> 
> 
> But if I understand you correctly, you haven't tried this even though it's 
> 
> "child's play" and you are telling us why it *MIGHT* not work. That's a very 
> 
> interesting POV... and one that I can't fault since I don't understand it, 
> 
> and don't think I want to anymore than I already do either.
> 
> 
> 
> Or maybe all this is just too easy for you to use. That must be it!
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> 
> 
> Good luck then.
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> 
> 
> Bill