Images generated by RastaConverter

[Beeblebrox]

@Atari8man2004  Ok, left this double dithered conversion of your excellent one cooking for a long time. Pretty pleased with the results.

 

PAL XEX below.

 

So the details and process:

 

In Irfanview I took the 320*240 Cyborg source png image you provided, then reduced the colour depth to 256 colours. (I had reduced it to 128 colours initially like I normally do but it was too rough, especially around the the face, so I reversed and did 256.)

 

I then bumped up the contrast, saturation and (a little) gamma in Irfanview and saved the image. Then I copied the image into Paint.net where I created a 'nibble" mask from it which still covers almost the entire screen, copying this 320*240 back to irfanview, where I pasted and reduced the mask colour depth to 2 x colours (black and white). (For those reading this and wondering what the hell a nibble mask is, see here)

 

I then saved the mask with a file name suffixed with MASK.

 

I loaded up the RC GUI, plugged the source and mask images in, and after tweaking the contrast, brightness and gamma settings, plus the dithering, and previewing it till it looked right, I ran it for a few seconds to create a destination image.

Here are the settings:

  

 

I stopped the conversion after a few seconds but left the GUI on screen, and grabbed the destination output file from the root of the RC folder and suffixed DEST in the filename. Then I plugged this destination file into the RC GUI as the new source file, and started to play around with the RC gui contrast, gamma and brightness settings, as well as the dithering. The latter 2nd dithering layer effectively means you can add two layers of dithering and it can really be good to bring depth, shading, and colour into a conversion where normally dithering can introduce cross hatching, etc. I kept previewing it until it looked right. Often this means bring the contrast settings down again.

 

So eventually the settings for the final conversion were:

 

I've ran the conversion for 6.4billion evaluations with 25000 solutions over 3 days, (where I put my computer into hibernation each time), so it's had around 20-24 hrs conversion time in total when you add it up. I only use 8 threads as otherwise my laptop will slow down. It's a good HP Omen Core I7 8th gen VR gaming lappy with 16GB ram, but RC can really take it out of it at 9 - 12 threads. 8 seems to work.

 

Here is the conversion in progress

 

Here is the final XEX which has been run through Sheddy's 3.4 Hpos removal tool which cleared up some unwanted lines.

 

Stats:

84 Unique colours

6.4bill evals

285 norm dist

YUV/YUV

Altirra pallette

"Nibble" mask used

Double dithering (Floyd algorythm) used in both instances of adding dithering

Destination image used as source

Background left in.

 

Filename: Cyborg_BB_Attempt1withD_DSM1_DEST_09_fixed.xex

 

(image grab from Altirra with pal high artifacting enabled)

Cyborg_BB_Attempt1withD_DSM1_DEST_09_fixed.xex

 

I am really pleased with how it turned out. IMHO the double dithering brings some great tones into the skin areas.

Now whether you like using dithering or not, as it is grainy by nature, I feel it added some richness to the image. I'd be very interested to know how this looks on a CRT as these dithered conversions tend to look better on a CRT than an LCD.

 

I am also cooking a non dithered version with the background removed but already I don't like the look of a non dithered version. The skin tones don't look right at all. Plus the colour count for the non dithered version, even after running for 10 hours, is 40, compared with the dithered one's 84 colours. That's half the colours! Also I like the background lights to the left of the image.They add depth. I don't always like a completely blank background in an image. It works well sometimes of course, and usually makes for a better conversion if you do ahave a blank or black background. This was the right balance.

 

Very happy

 

Edit: @Atari8man2004  Just to add I still love your original conversion - it's got a more metallic/grey aesthetic which is great, whereas I've ended up adding blues and richer skins tones as well.But it's a good opportunity to see how different approaches and pre-processing, experimental techniques can offer many different ways to do things. At the end of the day we want to create images that look great on the A8 and really show what it can do.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[Beeblebrox]

My bad, I just realised I forgot the naming convention for the image - I meant to prefix mine with Beeblebrox. opps. 😬😉

[Atari8man2004]

Beeblebrox you where able to get more face colors and tones .  Great work and on a CRT they look awesome.

[Beeblebrox]

Thanks. Looks great on your CRT

 

I wonder, does the saturation on your CRT need turning up a little? Looks like the reds are very low.

 

Edit: I forget but are you running an NTSC A8 with a PAL Antic/GTIA in place?

Edited November 6, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[Atari8man2004]

38 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

Thanks. Looks great on your CRT

 

I wonder, does the saturation on your CRT need turning up a little? Looks like the reds are very low.

I was going to ask you do you have a color test picture to tune the Atari color pod?  My 8bits where in storage for over 20 years and there color seems to be off a bit. they also have pal Antic chips.

[Beeblebrox]

23 minutes ago, Atari8man2004 said:

I was going to ask you do you have a color test picture to tune the Atari color pod?  My 8bits where in storage for over 20 years and there color seems to be off a bit. they also have pal Antic chips.

sure, the acp is in this post:

 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/260267-the-uav-rev-d-video-upgrade-thread/?do=findComment&comment=3842039

 

I do think that the CRT's saturation and colour balance may well be off. It's more tuned to blues and greens and less reds from what I can see - but I may well be wrong.

 

How are you connecting to the CRT btw?

 

Also not sure what happens where an NTSC A8 is running a PAL antic chip, in terms of colour reproduction for PAL software.

 

Edit: Just out of interest can you run the PAL game Henry's house on that A8 via the CRT and snap a close up pic?

HenrysH.xex

 

It should look like this in terms of colours (fyi the score bar colour changes at random):

 

 

 

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by Beeblebrox

[+Stephen]

Finally managed to get a decent photo.  I'm attaching a small video so you can see how bad this phone is - it shows what I see when trying to even take still shots.

 

[Atari8man2004]

Two Tone Cat

Atari8man_2tone_Cat.xex

[Atari8man2004]

Beeblebrox  I have 4 images cooking there big ones I had to redo them cause I was not happy with the backround on all 4 I also changed the dither patterns and used "Nibble mask" on all 4.   

[Beeblebrox]

7 minutes ago, Atari8man2004 said:

Beeblebrox  I have 4 images cooking there big ones I had to redo them cause I was not happy with the backround on all 4 I also changed the dither patterns and used "Nibble mask" on all 4.   

Cool, looking forward to seeing them.

 

BTW did you run the Henry's house pal game as well as the acp.xex on your crt?  Would be interested to see if the Henry's house colours are right on your pal antic NTSC machine. 

[+CharlieChaplin]

7 hours ago, Atari8man2004 said:

Two Tone Cat

Atari8man_2tone_Cat.xex 20.17 kB · 7 downloads

 

Looks like you stretched a 4:3 picture (or vertically oriented picture) onto a 16:9 (or horizontally oriented) screen.

 

[Atari8man2004]

2 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

 

Looks like you stretched a 4:3 picture (or vertically oriented picture) onto a 16:9 (or horizontally oriented) screen.

 

I resized it  from 526x697 to 181x240 was the best FastStone Photo Resizer could do. I have not seen it on the Atari is it squashed ?

Edited November 9, 2023 by Atari8man2004

[Atari8man2004]

6 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Cool, looking forward to seeing them.

 

BTW did you run the Henry's house pal game as well as the acp.xex on your crt?  Would be interested to see if the Henry's house colours are right on your pal antic NTSC machine. 

I'll do that later tonight if time permits. I've been cleaning up my desktop files everywhere. I use to have a tidy desktop not anymore   . 

[Atari8man2004]

Cyborg_2  "Nibble mask"  was used 

 

atari8man_Cyborg2.xex

Edited November 9, 2023 by Atari8man2004

[Atari8man2004]

Mary

Atari8man_Mary.xex

[ivop]

On 10/26/2023 at 12:26 AM, Stephen said:

Yeah - they are not all named properly, but no way would I attempt to go back and fix that.  I do have a GitHub account, so if anyone has suggestions on how you would like me to create and of course share a repo for these, let me know and I'll get them added there so everyone can keep their collections updated.

If you are too busy, I am willing to create the github repo if you don't mind? I wrote a small program that automatically creates screenshots, but because of a bug in libatari800 (https://github.com/atari800/atari800/issues/196) I abandoned that for now and wrote a new script instead that uses Xephyr as a 336x240 backend for atari800 which works fine, although not as fast. Still under 3 seconds per screenshot. I use the laoo palette, but that can be changed.

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, ivop said:

If you are too busy, I am willing to create the github repo if you don't mind? I wrote a small program that automatically creates screenshots, but because of a bug in libatari800 (https://github.com/atari800/atari800/issues/196) I abandoned that for now and wrote a new script instead that uses Xephyr as a 336x240 backend for atari800 which works fine, although not as fast. Still under 3 seconds per screenshot. I use the laoo palette, but that can be changed.

Oh wow - that would be awesome.  Let me know if there's any files you need.

[GravityWorm]

On 11/6/2023 at 7:06 PM, Beeblebrox said:

Thanks. Looks great on your CRT

 

I wonder, does the saturation on your CRT need turning up a little? Looks like the reds are very low.

 

Edit: I forget but are you running an NTSC A8 with a PAL Antic/GTIA in place?

On every CRT different. Faces probably would look awesome on CRT TV's  than on monitors
- that's my guess

[ivop]

On 11/10/2023 at 4:23 AM, Stephen said:

Oh wow - that would be awesome.  Let me know if there's any files you need.

I have downloaded you latest ZIP archive and converted it to:

 

https://github.com/ivop/rc-archive/

 

This includes all conversions up to the 25th of October 2023. Sadly, a lot of files are not properly labelled. I could use some group help here. Around 45% has no author, including most Gunstar conversions, and only 60 NTSC seems a little low.

 

So anybody that wants to help, either fork the repo and send a pull request, or open an issue and post a list of all updates, and I'll make sure to update the archive.

 

Note that the screenshots can be clicked to download the corresponding .xex file.

Edited November 11, 2023 by ivop

[Beeblebrox]

On 11/9/2023 at 10:09 PM, Atari8man2004 said:

Cyborg_2  "Nibble mask"  was used 

 

atari8man_Cyborg2.xex 22.01 kB · 11 downloads

love this one

[GravityWorm]

On a CRT it would look better?

BB_Arakis001.xex

[GravityWorm]

On 11/8/2023 at 5:08 PM, Atari8man2004 said:

Two Tone Cat

Atari8man_2tone_Cat.xex 20.17 kB · 12 downloads

She has 3 color fur?

[José Pereira]

26 minutes ago, GravityWorm said:

She has 3 color fur?

and 2 color eyes...

😄

Edited November 13, 2023 by José Pereira

[Atari8man2004]

9 hours ago, GravityWorm said:

She has 3 color fur?

Someone posted there cat on facebook I just had to convert it. 

[Beeblebrox]

@Atari8man2004 got any more images cookin?