G2F - Problems with BMP/PNG/GIF import

[Heaven/TQA]

Hi guys.

 

I spend 2 hours yesterday and did not find a solution. One of our gfx guys made textures in 4 col which I tried to import into G2F. G2F most of the times lost colors (e.g. only showing 2 colors or 3 instead of 4). I tried PNG/BMP/GIF all did not work. I even tried using GIMP to convert to RGB. no success. Sometimes I could import 4 col textures when I converted them to 5 color BMPs. and I included the background color.

 

He then send me the true color files and I tried several color reduction methods just to find the right way of importing the files correctly as I want to use G2F to save MIC files.

 

What I am doing wrong or is it G2F? never had such issues before.

 

Btw. Phase0 does import them correctly. Could one potential reason be that the colors are "too close"?

 

 

[+MrFish]

Could one potential reason be that the colors are "too close"?

 

Yes. Could you post the file in question?

[MaPa]

Probably "too close" colors as you wrote. Sometimes I have to adjust colors in imported image to import it correctly. I don't know why G2f is unable to load simple 4 color pictures and it is annoying.

[José Pereira]

Yes it could be simijar luminances/colours.

But it usually you can do it like this:

When you load a pic into g2f it opens a horizontal outside window. There you have all colours of your original imagine (even if they are more than 4). Select resize picture, match colours and using that arrow for each colour assign each to the PF you want. It should work.

[pps]

Did you try JAC!'s bitmap import option within WUSDN? He wrote somewhere that he often uses this: importing grayscale and adjusting the colors then in the source code manually.

[Heaven/TQA]

MaPa... yes... correct... "annoying" sometimes...

 

PPS... the issue is that the import window does only show 2 colors or 3 instead of 4... that's the reason... so actually the importer seems not recognising the file...

 

pps. I try Peter's importer in WUDSN and see if that works out faster... I would like to spend time on coding and polishing the product and not spending time on "import textures" issue

 

ps. I can not show the texture here unfortunatly wait 3 weeks

Edited March 31, 2014 by Heaven/TQA

[José Pereira]

Other thing that you can do is on that window also select black and white. If this you'll get you pic in black and grays. Then just change them to the colours,luminaces you want on the main G2F.

It seems that with this G2F can always read any colours even the similar ones.

[Heaven/TQA]

Jose... nope... BW did not work either.

[tebe]

g2f convert RGB Colors to Atari Palette (G2F -> View -> Palette)

 

1: load G2F Atari Palette to PhotoShop, Paint Shop, Gimp etc.

2: draw any pictures

3: load pictures to G2F

 

if G2F use JAKUB.pal and any graphics program use JAKUB.pal THEN is OK

[MaPa]

Is it possible to add option to assign "random" color if more distinct colors are mapped to one color in Atari pallete? Some checkbox in import dialog.

[Heaven/TQA]

thx tebe will check.

[Synthpopalooza]

Suggestion:

 

Use GIMP to prepare your files before you import them into G2F.

 

Here's an image of a 128 color Atari Palette:

 

 

You can import this into the palette dialog of GIMP, and then when you load pictures into GIMP, you can reduce the image to 4 or 5 colors for Antic 4 (or 9 if you use Graphics 10) using this palette. It's then easier to import into G2F with better color accuracy. I used this method all the time with my Super IRG and PCIN experiments.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[Heaven/TQA]

another workaround I found... in colors menu of GIMP there is a "contrastrange expanding" feature... with that the close colors will spreaded... (do not know the naming correctly as I am using the german edition).

 

done that G2F recongises all 4 colors.

[Heaven/TQA]

thx for the platte file... unfortunatly it is for NTSC and I guess PAL differs?

[José Pereira]

On the .act preset in g2f I always and will continue to use for PAL is laoo.

[Xuel]

You can import this into the palette dialog of GIMP, and then when you load pictures into GIMP, you can reduce the image to 4 or 5 colors for Antic 4 (or 9 if you use Graphics 10) using this palette.

 

Interesting. Can Gimp auto-select optimal colors from the Atari palette or do you have to create a reduced palette with just the 4, 5 or 9 colors that you want and then map to that? I'd be interested in step-by-step instructions for the former if possible.

[+MrFish]

Interesting. Can Gimp auto-select optimal colors from the Atari palette or do you have to create a reduced palette with just the 4, 5 or 9 colors that you want and then map to that? I'd be interested in step-by-step instructions for the former if possible.

 

Photoshop will. But all the Atari palettes I've seen for Photoshop are 256 colors. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to create a 128 color palette from the 256 color ones. But I never found it much of a hassle to hand adjust what usually ends of being 4 or 5 colors. I do most of the adjusting in G2F, and often just work in greyscale, or whatever else is convenient, in Photoshop.

[Synthpopalooza]

 

Interesting. Can Gimp auto-select optimal colors from the Atari palette or do you have to create a reduced palette with just the 4, 5 or 9 colors that you want and then map to that? I'd be interested in step-by-step instructions for the former if possible.

 

Gimp auto selects the colors. Just remember that you should use the 128 color one (not 256) as GTIA 10 and the Antic modes only support a 128 palette.

 

The steps are done in this order:

 

First, the above image needs to be imported into GIMP as a palette. So, first step in that is, load the image into GIMP.

Next, do Windows:Dockable Dialogs:Palettes

Then, when the Palette window opens up, tick the Image button, it should bring up all 128 colors, though they may be out of order.

Hit the "Import" button, and it will import the Palette as "Untitled", you can rename it Atari 128 if you like.

 

Now, to reduce an image, takes these steps:

 

Resize the image to 320x200 or some similar setting with 320 columns.

Image:Mode:Indexed ... then tick "Use Custom Palette" and select the Atari 128 palette. No dithering. Hit "Convert"

Repeat using Image:Mode:RGB

Then Again, Image:Mode:Indexed, but this time reduce the image down to 4, 5, or 9 colors. Hit "Convert"

Export the image as a PNG.

 

Keep in mind, when using 5 color export, there may be some PF2-PF3 conflicts when loading the image into G2F, but they aren't real bad. I use this alot when creating my IPC (PCIN 10+12) pictures, as when doing both renders, it seems to keep the PF0-PF3 colors constant with both the Gr. 12 and Gr. 10 renders.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[Synthpopalooza]

 

Photoshop will. But all the Atari palettes I've seen for Photoshop are 256 colors. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to create a 128 color palette from the 256 color ones. But I never found it much of a hassle to hand adjust what usually ends of being 4 or 5 colors. I do most of the adjusting in G2F, and often just work in greyscale, or whatever else is convenient, in Photoshop.

 

Just use an Atari 2600 palette. It's pretty much the same as the Atari 128 palette.

 

Also, to convert to PAL, it should work. G2F uses PAL settings by default anyway, basically PAL moves the chromas (excepting for 0) forward by one step.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Synthpopalooza

[MaPa]

Yes.. there are workarounds but they are WORKAROUNDS. It would be better to can deal with it in G2F itself. You all write about Atari colors etc. but I use G2F as converter (and I think that Heaven too) so I don't care about colors in G2F. All you need is to import 4 color image to have 4 color image in G2F whatever colors they would be as the important thing is the bit combinations of pixels. You just arrange it, export and use in your program. And it's easy to change and swap colors in G2F if you need to view it like it should be.

Edited April 1, 2014 by MaPa

[Xuel]

Then Again, Image:Mode:Indexed, but this time reduce the image down to 4, 5, or 9 colors. Hit "Convert"

 

Works great. Thanks! So, it really comes down to converting to indexed color mode twice: once to map to all available Atari colors and then again to choose a subset of those. Great tip.

 

Yes.. there are workarounds but they are WORKAROUNDS. It would be better to can deal with it in G2F itself. You all write about Atari colors etc. but I use G2F as converter (and I think that Heaven too) so I don't care about colors in G2F. All you need is to import 4 color image to have 4 color image in G2F whatever colors they would be as the important thing is the bit combinations of pixels. You just arrange it, export and use in your program. And it's easy to change and swap colors in G2F if you need to view it like it should be.

 

I think the point of the color discussion is that G2F may have better success importing an image if the colors in the source image are already valid Atari colors. Then there would be less likelihood of it trying to represent two or more different source image colors with one Atari color.

[Heaven/TQA]

MaPa... exactly... using as converter for fonts, raw bitmap data, PM data, reorganising gfx assets. not for painting. so as MaPa wrote... in general I am setting my colors anyway separatly. wait and see in few weeks. I don't even use kernel anymore for simple gfx only the data files.

[Heaven/TQA]

former I used Turbo Basic but now for fullscreen gfx (192x240) I can use G2F without firing Turbo Basic where I have to write my converter. or using PureBasic.

[Synthpopalooza]

On a related trick, you can use a similar method to import Antic 2 (Graphics 0 - 320 pixel) pictures.

 

Same as above but use the binary palette (black and white) setting ... and for really neat effects, choose Floyd Stienberg dithering. You may have to reverse the bit order of the picture in GIMP to get it to work though. I used this method when I was doing PC0 (Graphics 0 + 10) and DIN (Graphics 0 + 12) pictures.