#16-color Workbench
6 messages in this thread
Try using The Art Department to render some stuff in 8 colors – you will be
astounded. Seriously. If you have ANY interest in graphics at all, you
really NEED this program. With the ability it has to render images into a
fixed palette, using 1 of 8 kinds of dithering (I think thats right, at
least there's a bunch) I have gotten some amazing results in 8 and even 4
color pictures, which make great icons. Try it, you'll like it – but then
again, I was so enthused, I ended up buying ScanLab100 – so be warned, it
gets expensive fast!!!
Dave –
You're right about TAD – and I already have it 8^). I haven't yet tried
to make icons out of pictures. What would I do, set the colors to 8 and
then scale it down to 32×32? And what about the palette – I guess I'd have
to have the same palette for every picture and the workbench, right? One of
these days I'll get around to experimenting … yeah, right 8^).
Harry
Harry:
Try formatting the picture to medium res – 640X200 screen. Them set the
color control to "Custom". Go to the palette screen & do a get WB colors.
Freeze the palette, then set dithering to your favorite mode (you will want
to experiment there) & re-render. Odds are, you will be surprised at the
outcome. If you are using the right icon maker, you are not limited as to
the size of the icon – its kind of neat having a disk icon of 600X150 or
so…. Oh yeah… in the above, set the colors in the palette screen to 4
colors…
Dave –
Thanks. I've saved a copy of this message, and when I get a WB that's
reliable in 16 colors I'll try it. I found HamBench and tried that, but it
seemed to do wierd things in HAM mode, and using it to just set the number
of planes produced the same crashes as the other programs I've tried. Whe
trying to do HAM mode, the result was the upper left quadrant of the screen
became the entire screen. The menu titles stretched all the way across the
top menu bar, I lost my drive icons over to the right (off the monitor) and
generally it didn't seem like a usable setup. I don't doubt I might have
set something up wrong, but several readings of the "docs" didn't tell me
what. Anyway, as I said before, hopefully WB 2.0 doesn't have the same
problems. I'll see when I get it (unless someone who has access to it has
tried this stuff and wants to let me know? 8^) ). Thanks again.
Harry
Uhhh, the reason for your problems is simple – hambench switches to lo-res
(320 pixels across) – you MUST do that to go into HAM.(That's a hardware
limitation – if you try it, you'll just get a blank screen). The reason for
the crashes you are having IS explained in the hambench docs…
On another front – mebbe I didn't make clear in my last message, I wasn't
talking about a 16 color WB, just our good old 4 color version. (Look at
the icons that either DigiPaint3 or Deluxe Photolab create.)
Dave –
The light begins to pierce the fog … 8^). So that must mean that
normal (non-interlace) WB is 640×200. I always assumed it was 320×200, thus
confusion built upon confusion … And you probably did say 4-color in your
last message, but since we had been talking 16-color WB, my work-weary
brain refused to switch gears. I must remember to keep these messages and
read them sometime when my thought processes are actually active <grin>.
Thanks for the info.
Harry