PPl,

I've been searching for some way to use photoshop to create screen5 gfx.
I am very familair with photoshop(7) but could not figure this out within a few
minutes.

how to create a 16 color / 9 bit RGB pallete ?

been checking out extensive on the indexed color routines.
maybe ya'll have been here before to gimme sum hints?

I finally figured out how to use my PC mouse on AGE in NLMSX
(yeah, yeah.. I know RTFM...) so I can draw some shit with mouse again
which is very necessary
(remember, my msx mouse died a long time ago)

TIA, ro

I've been using Paint Shop Pro to create palette-based graphics, it works nicely...
Although it doesn't support 9-bit RGB (not 12!) directly, you can always convert them.

Like Guyver says, I would recommend Paintshop for at least the color management, mainly since Photoshop sucks at that particular task. I usually create all my gfx in Photoshop en "downgrade" it with PSP, and organise the palette with it.

I see no problems in using photoshop. Just adjust the image settings to indexed color, 16 colours. Then open up the color table and edit the 16 colors in the pallette. Done.

What's so hard about that? The only problem is that with indexed color images you can't use layers anymore. But hey, DDGraph (age) or GraphSauris didn't have layers, did they?!

YEAH, I know. But it just plain sux.
n'kay was worth the try. well somethings are nice to do with photoshop to set up a base and continue with dd-graph anyway.
To bad the anti-aliasing won't work in bitmap/indexed color mode....

thanx!

Quote:

I see no problems in using photoshop. Just adjust the image settings to indexed color, 16 colours. Then open up the color table and edit the 16 colors in the pallette. Done.

Same in Paint Shop Pro.

What I usually do is create a palette of colors on a different image, and only use those colors in the layered one.

If I want to save it to MSX, I just load the other palette over the layered picture, and save as RAW. Then you just have to combine the lownibbles of 2 consequtive bytes (using a small script/basic program) et voila, SC5 data.

Can you set the color bit-depth in indexed-color mode in photosoep? iirc it's a pain in ye arse to select the exact matching colors.

btw, ro: it's easy to code a designer yourself. You don't need lotsa photoshop stuff here, since PS is aimed at hi-res/hi-color/pro-level projects. Spend a small week and tadaa.. your own designer on pc, aimed at msx.

Maybe some day I'll code a designer as well, piece o' cake

coding something similar as ms paint is piece o' cake.. I'd like to see you do photosoep a-la Wolf

Btw, what you talking about color-depths in indexed color images???

Quote:

Can you set the color bit-depth in indexed-color mode in photosoep? iirc it's a pain in ye arse to select the exact matching colors. btw, ro: it's easy to code a designer yourself. You don't need lotsa photoshop stuff here, since PS is aimed at hi-res/hi-color/pro-level projects. Spend a small week and tadaa.. your own designer on pc, aimed at msx. Maybe some day I'll code a designer as well, piece o' cake

well, I though I could do some quick stuff in PS. Like fonts for example

well, I know how but do not like it that much. we'll see.. back to pixeldrawing again...cool eheh

I know JR smith did a PC designer yeaaaaars ago (during the nosferatu years) which worked great.

I did an efficient full-featured screen4 tile-editor in less than a week.. and I'm only a semi-coder, this editor includes an excelent zoom editor, palette editor, tileorganiser and macroeditor.
A dedicated screen5 editor would even be more simpler as you don't have that 2 colors on a row crap.

You don't need photoshop to do fullsize pictures I guess, just tile-designing..?

And a level editor, using the tiles and macros from the tile-editor is even more simpler.. you can do that in 1 or 2 days.

If I can do all that in a week, then a hi-end coder can do it in a week as well, or less.

@ bart, about that bit-depth.

maybe I'm wrong.. didn't check it for this reply, but when going to indexed color, you pick your colors from a palette (that ~256x256 pixels square with those colorsgradients and those 9 radiobuttons) For msx colors, you need to be able to quick select a compatible color, which is ~ 36 pc values per 1 msx value (0,0,0 = 0,0,0, 1,1,1 = 36,36,36, 7,2,0 = 252,72,0 etc.)

That would be a crappy job.. so I would prefer to see some depth-reduction if possible, so that you can be asure to pick an msx-compatible color always..

Argh.. don't multiply by 36 (255/7), also don't shift down.. These functions work best in my experience:

from 3 bits per channel to 8 bits per channel
if val > 0 then val = (val+1)*32+1

from 8 bits per channel to 3 bits per channel (PC -> MSX):
if val > 0 then val = int((val+31)/32-1)

I developed them myself, they make sure white remains white and medium grey remains medium grey, etc...

err.. can you see the difference between 252,252,252 and 255,255,255, esp. on a CRT monitor ?

and even if you can... do you really care ?

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err.. can you see the difference between 252,252,252 and 255,255,255, esp. on a CRT monitor ? and even if you can... do you really care ?

GuyveR800 is right. Especially on LCD devices you really need that extra brightness. Use his formulas and you're sure you're okay on any display device.

(maybe 255 vs 252 is not that much of a difference... 7 vs 6 is a huge difference, so make sure 6.6 becomes 7 at least.)

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err.. can you see the difference between 252,252,252 and 255,255,255, esp. on a CRT monitor ? and even if you can... do you really care ?

7,7,7 -> 252,252,252 isn't so bad, but using your method 3,3,3 becomes 108,108,108 instead of 127,127,127. You will notice that