#Windows system palette?
2 messages in this thread
Pretty soon I'll receive WinImages, and the first thing I want to do with
it is use its superior dithering capabilities to convert some Corel
Professional Photos into Windows wallpaper. I'm not too sure what to
expect, however, when Windows tries to harmonize the image with the
current screen palette, which is why I'd like to optimize the images
within WinImages, to take advantage, as I said, of its dithering
capabilities.
Does anyone know what a Windows system palette (both 16 and 256 colors)
looks like? Which positions are not used by Windows, and are therefore
available for wallpaper use? Many thanks.
Blaq!
Blaq,
> Pretty soon I'll receive WinImages, and the first thing I want to do with
> it is use its superior dithering capabilities to convert some Corel
> Professional Photos into Windows wallpaper. I'm not too sure what to
> expect, however, when Windows tries to harmonize the image with the
> current screen palette, which is why I'd like to optimize the images
> within WinImages, to take advantage, as I said, of its dithering
> capabilities.
This will work extremely well for you. WinImages can do an excellent job of
preparing wallpaper.
> Does anyone know what a Windows system palette (both 16 and 256 colors)
> looks like? Which positions are not used by Windows, and are therefore
> available for wallpaper use? Many thanks.
Yes… in fact, WinImages knows. One of the palette options is the "default"
palette. This is the Windows palette at default. Mind you, you can change this
– in Windows – but that's not particularly advisable.
No matter what the Windows palette is, Windows will take the image presented to
it as wallpaper, pick the color is has in its own palette that is closest to
the color in the image, and use that. If the palette the image is prepared with
is the same, all is perfect. However, even if it's not, because the dither
passes thru into the new color space, the image tends to look pretty good,
anyway. The key to this working well is in either a good palette choice which
then passes well into the Window default palette, or in using the default
palette. Either of these are easy for a WinImages user. Then the final trick is
using the best dither possible, not just the run of the mill floyd steinberg or
other standard dither techniques. WinImages uses our exclusive AI dither
technology and the results will be much better than possible with other
packages for that reason.
If you produce images where the palette can be custom – for use in a display
program, for instance – then letting WinImages pick a custom palette for you is
the ideal way to go. Again, exclusive technology lets us do a better job that
anything else out there I am aware of (and I'm aware of a lot… 🙂
If you have more questions, I'll be pleased to elaborate.
Ben Williams
for Black Belt Systems