Well, the lady who has a system on a TSU6000 that controls house audio, lighting, upstairs system, and downstairs system with one plasma above another just decided that she always wanted the upper plasma's audio to work through headphones.

I will make new panels for the headphone half of the system, and the best way I can think of to distinguish the headphone audio's source controls from the speaker audio's source controls is color-coding. But I use artwork from Paint, and I can't seem to get the colors to match those from PE4, so the backgrounds look strange -- one color around the artwork and another on the entire rest of the screen.

I looked at PE4 help, and it says there are 44 colors, with 216 more available via the "More" button. Only problem is that the first 44, if there are 44, are in repeating patterns in a 16 x 13 1/2 block of colors, and there is no "More" button. How the heck do you get the colors to match?

I am storing the bmps as 256 color, because my primitive version of Paint has nothing between 256 and 24 bit.

You can't load palettes in Paint. Look at some other tools such as PaintShop Pro (retail), PhotoShop (retail but expensive) or a tool with a rather low learning curve such as LViewPro (available via shareware). Do a google search. I believe LViewPro does support dithering (reducing # of colors of) an image down to a predefined palette (A palette is nothing more than a 1x1 pixel bitmap with a 256 color palette.

To create a palette, you can use CCFTools to decompile the CCF, pick a bitmap used for the Macro Template, resize it to 1x1 and use if for a palette.

Lyndel

Lyndel, thanks for the help.

I don't quite get what you said there at the end about resizing to 1x1. Let's say the bmp for the button I am dealing with is 65 x 37 pixels. What does resizing to 1x1 mean?

I am also not sure about "bitmap used for the macro template." I am not sure if any of this relates, but I do not use the macro side of the Prontos, but build macros on home pages; I do not know what you mean by "the macro template." Do you mean a button that appears on the panel and has the macro attached to it?

Well, here's a curious one: I decided to see if I could make it work with what I have.

I extracted the bmps from the TSU6000 gallery and colored the backgrounds with the light yellow from Paint. I did this in Paint. Stored the modified bmps as 256 color bmps.

I also created a solid color panel, 240 x 219 pixels, to use as a background behind the buttons, to unify the look of the panel. I did this in Paint and made it the same color that I had used for the backgrounds of the buttons.

These two different types of things, both with the same color from the same box in the same palette of Paint, look different on my laptop's LCD screen. The background that I put on the buttons is lighter than the solid 240 x 219 panel. I don't have the remote with me right now, so I don't know if it looks different there, but when I first started this, I was seeing differences on the remote that hardly showed on the laptop.

What the heck?

Ernie,

1x1 is a 1x1pixel bitmap created by resizing a Pronto CCF bitmap down to 1x1pixels. The goal here is to capture a .BMP with the correct 256 color palette used by the Pronto. This .BMP can then be used by non-MSPaint programs to generate images with the same color palette entries.

What you appear to be experiencing is...

Palette color matching to nearest color.

See the first paragraph on this link for an explanation of how palettes factor into a Pronto .BMP image.

[Link: fortunecity.com]

And the "What's a palette?" paragraph in this one.

[Link: michaelmoser.org]

Following these, you should now realize that all images in the Pronto must use the same 256 color palette.

If an image contains a Palette color entry that is not one of these 256 colors, the offending color is matched as close as possible to a valid Pronto Palette color.

I hope this helps.

Lyndel

So I open a Pronto bmp in Paint, then reduce it to 1x1 in size? Store it and this gives me subsequent palette for files I open or create in Paint? If I understood the articles correctly, colors that are already extant on the screen will bias new colors shown toward their pallete, so how can any new palette be introduced once there is video on the screen? Do I set my monitor to 65,000 colors, then open the 1x1 in Paint, and this smaller palette will determine how subsequent colors are "bent" or biased?

And if I added the background colors to Pronto buttons in Paint, then made a solid full-Pronto screen background with the same color in the same session after working with the Pronto buttons, why are the colors different when I load them into ProntoEdit as icons?




I see. That is what I am referring to as "bias" or "bending" up above. But again, my last question above. I created both icons in the same session in Paint, then imported them in the same session into ProntoEdit.

Ernie, PaintShop Pro is much easier to deal with when creating or editing graphics. I would recommend getting it if you do ANY graphic work for clients. It only costs $90 (Very cheap for a graphic/photo program) and is very powerful. The ease of use will save you that $90 in labor time alone. You can also save a palette for the TSU6000 and 3000, and I'm sure just about anyone here would send it to you. Check it out if you haven't already http://www.jasc.com

Ernie,

Sorry for so much confusion.

Refer to the first sentence of my first post on this thread. Steve is correct. Use something other than MSPaint as there is absolutely no way to use another bitmap to specify entries contained in a palette.

I went into detail as to how to build a palette presuming that you would read the first sentence and abandon MSPaint. The 1x1 bitmap you build can be used easily in PaintShopPro 7 or the latest version 8(you may be able to order "upgrade" directly from www.jasc.com for a discount.)

If I remember correctly, LViewPro (shareware) also supports loading palettes.

Best of Luck,
Lyndel

If you wish, the color pallete can be downloaded here: [Link: carltonbale.com]

Jim L