Post by Terwilf in thanks + questions + feature ideas :)

Viewing post in thanks + questions + feature ideas :)

Greetings. First, I want to express my gratitude for your program, which has been of great help to me over the years.

However, due to my color blindness, it is difficult for me to recognize the colors of the palettes I import. Would it be possible to add a feature that allows images to be loaded directly as a color source? This would allow me to capture palettes from programs like YY-CHR or Photoshop for more familiar use.

In addition, it would be very useful to be able to create subpalettes mixing the real colors that I have selected, to generate fictitious colors based on “Dithering Bayer” type patterns. This would simplify the process when adapting artwork from one system to another and would avoid having to later recover details that are lost after color reduction.

Thank you for your time, and sorry to borrow this thread, I didn't want to bother creating another one, practically for the same purpose.

with the love studios254 days ago

Hi! Thanks for the kind words. Great to hear the program has proved useful for you. :)

> Would it be possible to add a feature that allows images to be loaded directly as a color source?

The 'Load Palette' feature should already allow you to load any PNG image as palette source. The tool will just extract all the different colors from the image and use that as the palette. Is that what you are asking for? Or are you thinking something different? Like instead of showing the actual colors for a palette, the tool would show icons or images of some sort?

> it would be very useful to be able to create subpalettes mixing the real colors that I have selected, to generate fictitious colors based on “Dithering Bayer” type patterns.

This is a very interesting idea. It might be out of scope for this tool since dithering and color reduction are huge and complex tasks in their own right. Still, I will give it some thought. I could see this being a useful feature if I can puzzle out a way to add support for it without overly complicating the tool's UI.

Terwilf248 days ago

First, thank you for considering my ideas, about your question, exactly, I was referring to loading a static image as the main color source, since when working with a considerable volume of colors, it can become confusing to manage.

For example, here you can see a comparison of how YY-CHR presents the colors, following a logical order, compared to the imported version, by its application, which although functional, is not as intuitive as the original.

Something that becomes more evident, when you need to change the color source constantly.

with the love studios247 days ago

I see what you mean. Perhaps simply being able to adjust the number of display rows for the palette would be enough. If there was some kind of interface to set the number of rows and columns in the palette display. In the case of your example, the palette is displayed on a 14x4 grid. I could see this actually be a very useful feature when working with larger palettes. I'll need to think about how to present it in the UI, but I think this can be done. Thanks very much for the suggestion and I'll keep you posted on my progress with it!

Terwilf246 days ago

I think it's a pretty elegant solution, although I would suggest complementing it with a button to increase or decrease the size of the color swatches; I mean, if I had to manage a palette of 216 colors, for example in 18 columns, that would give me 12 rows of colors, and with the current resolution, I would only be able to display approximately 4 rows.

By the way, I just realized that if you resize the screen with the cursor and then use the maximize screen button (the button in the upper right corner), the work area is bounded to the window without maximizing, greetings, and thanks for your dedication!😉

with the love studios243 days ago

Just wanted to let you know that I put a little time into this today and it looks like this should be fairly easy to implement. I already have it working in basic form, just need a little time to put a proper UI on it. Will keep you posted on how it goes. Thanks again for taking the time to write me with your feedback. To be honest, I can tell already that this is a feature I am personally going to like and use a lot! I'm already kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner. It really does help make the palettes easier to view and work with. :)

> if you resize the screen with the cursor and then use the maximize screen button (the button in the upper right corner), the work area is bounded to the window without maximizing

Are you able to re-produce this problem? I tried a few times and couldn't get anything to trigger, but I do know the interaction between the app and Windows sometimes goes a bit wonky.

with the love studios218 days ago

v1.94 has been released.

It adds the ability to adjust the number of color swatches per row in the Map Palette.

I don't think it's exactly perfect. Among other things, the UI for it is a bit clunky. But it does work so I figured it was better to post the update than make you wait for me to figure out how to UI it all nice and clean.

Give it a go when you get a chance and let me know what you think.

Some things to note, the example palette you gave has a few duplicated colors. Two of the grays IIRC. This throws off their appearance in the tool because the tool simple scans input files for UNIQUE colors. I went ahead and added a version of the palette with all unique colors to the set of sample palettes that are included with the tool. Long term, I'd like to make the tool smarter about handling duplicate colors when loading from a file that is obviously a set of palette swatches (the current behavior is more designed around extracting the palette from an arbitrary image), but again I didn't want to make you wait while I figured out how to make that happen. One work around would be to save the image in an indexed color format as the tool does support duplicate colors when importing from indexed files.

Thanks!

Terwilf213 days ago

Great! I’ll download the application right away. Regarding duplicate colors, since color sets are something users will reuse daily, it’s easier for users to slightly modify those colors to make them unique before indexing them. Alternatively, on the programming side, you could consider adding something like “separators” to readjust their order.

As for ideas, if you plan to integrate support for indexed images, considering how practical PixelPaletteTool is for managing palettes, it would be fantastic to have the ability to export those palettes as PAL or ACT files.

Lastly, I understand if it’s not possible, but since you’ve asked for my opinion, I usually store my favorite toolkit in the cloud to work remotely. For that reason, I think it would be excellent to consider creating a portable version… Without further ado, I want to thank you again for your time, and I bid you farewell with a warm hug! 🤗

with the love studios208 days ago

Cool, let me know what you think of the new features when you get a chance.

> integrate support for indexed images

The tool should load indexed images. By support do you mean saving images in an indexed format?

> it would be fantastic to have the ability to export those palettes as PAL or ACT files.

This is something I've been meaning to do for ages, so thanks for prodding me on it!

Got this working for Microsoft PAL files today, will work on JASC PAL files also.

For PAL, do you mean the JASC PAL files (as supported by http://www.lowspec.com)?

For ACT do you mean the Adobe format described here https://www.online-convert.com/file-format/act ?

Hope to get loading and saving palettes in these formats working shortly and add support for Gimp (GPL) and Paint.Net (TXT) palette files as well just for good measure. :)

Terwilf201 days ago

▪ New features.
I don’t really think the way you’ve integrated the new features into the interface is bad. Perhaps it’s strange that it starts by loading all the colors stacked, but I don’t feel it’s a problem. Anyway, I’ve put together a small mockup to help you brainstorm ideas.

▪ Indexed images.

English isn’t my first language, so I misunderstood something you said earlier.

To provide better context, at that moment, I thought it would be great to be able to manipulate the palettes of images created with this tool as easily as color samples are rearranged.

(In the production of this type of graphics, it’s often necessary to respect a specific order in color entries, either to share a global palette or to identify the transparency mask color. But, as I mentioned, all of this arose from a mistaken assumption.)

▪ PAL or ACT files.

I must confess that I’m not familiar with the technical characteristics of these formats, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to provide an answer in this context. I apologize.

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Viewing post in thanks + questions + feature ideas :)