Pixel Joint Forum: Palette editing, why is it neglected?

Message

   What's your favorite palette editor? I've pretty much realized that no editor or paint app will satisfy ALL my needs at once, but palette editing seems in a worse state than the pixel editing itself... what I'd like to do:

- Create gradients
- Modify gradients all at once (HSV shifts, contrast, brightness, curves would be awesome)
- Move around colors in the palette while either remapping or not remapping pixels in the image
- Have 16x16 palette "bank" support (important for SNES, GBA, DS etc game development)

I'm really using a mixture of applications for all this.. YY-CHR, Usenti, Pro Motion (5.1 for which I own a license, sadly not 6.x), even GIMP for moving colors around. Frustrating!

Author	Message
cadahl Seaman Joined: 12 April 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 12	Topic: Palette editing, why is it neglected? Posted: 17 April 2010 at 1:51am
	What's your favorite palette editor? I've pretty much realized that no editor or paint app will satisfy ALL my needs at once, but palette editing seems in a worse state than the pixel editing itself... what I'd like to do: - Create gradients - Modify gradients all at once (HSV shifts, contrast, brightness, curves would be awesome) - Move around colors in the palette while either remapping or not remapping pixels in the image - Have 16x16 palette "bank" support (important for SNES, GBA, DS etc game development) I'm really using a mixture of applications for all this.. YY-CHR, Usenti, Pro Motion (5.1 for which I own a license, sadly not 6.x), even GIMP for moving colors around. Frustrating!
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greenraven Commander Joined: 08 September 2016 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2598	Posted: 18 April 2010 at 11:47am
	MSPaint cuz I'm hardcore like that.
	"pwnage comes with patience, practice and planning." ~ Jalonso
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Hatch Admiral Joined: 05 August 2015 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1387	Posted: 19 April 2010 at 8:21pm
	Can you elaborate on the palette bank support? I'll post a feature request for GrafX2 once I, you know, understand it :D EDIT: GrafX2 can do everything else on your list. Edited by Hatch - 19 April 2010 at 8:21pm
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cadahl Seaman Joined: 12 April 2010 Online Status: Offline Posts: 12	Posted: 20 April 2010 at 4:44pm
	*Originally posted by Hatch* Can you elaborate on the palette bank support? I'll post a feature request for GrafX2 once I, you know, understand it :D EDIT: GrafX2 can do everything else on your list. Pixels are treated as 4bpp (values 0-15), but the palette is 256 (16x16) colors. Then, in hardware and in-game, entire sprites and individual background tiles are set up to use specific palettes (0-15). Palette 0 maps pixels to colors 0-15 Palette 1 maps pixels to colors 16-31 ...and so on. The Nintendo DS series, GBA, SNES and many other older consoles do this, since it allows easy reuse of assets AND a way to get more colors on screen at 4bpp storage cost. Think of how the bushes and clouds used the same tiles in SMB 1 for the NES (although they were 2bpp, 4 colors x 16 palettes). In fact the DS extends this scheme, and in that mode sprites and backgrounds can select among sixteen 256-color palettes for a total of 4096 usable colors. Not very widely used. But the 16x16 scheme is VERY common. :) This is how YY-CHR does it: The GUI is confusing, but you see a scrollbar in the palette window at the bottom right. There are sixteen rows of colors and I'm currently viewing using one of the palettes (the row with hex numbers everywhere). Clicking a row will switch palette. That's pretty much the minimal support needed.
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