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How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - Printable Version

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How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - wonder_boke - 02-29-2024

Hi! I'm new to ripping sprites, and have made a mistake. Sad
I recorded and ripped an entire game, but since my recording was a little fuzzy, there are lots of "ghost" colors that I need to get rid of.

Please look closely at the visual demonstration of the issue. I increased the contrast so it's easier to see the problem, but you still might need to zoom in.
   

Is there a way, in any program, to specify an allowed palette of colors and automatically reduce the color depth of an image to that palette?
I currently use Paint.net but I'll download whatever I need to.

Full sheet attached if anyone wants to give it a try.

Please help Sad

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - scurest - 02-29-2024

Quote:Is there a way, in any program, to specify an allowed palette of colors and automatically reduce the color depth of an image to that palette?

I know you can do that in mtPaint.

You'd crop out one monster, do "Image > Convert to RGB" if necessary, then edit the palette until it has the colors you want. Then you can do "Image > Convert to Indexed" and use the "Use Current Palette" option with Dithering set to "None". Then assemble monsters into one sheet afterwards.

[Image: S4YRdKy.png]

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - Barack Obama - 02-29-2024

How did you rip these sprites? Ingame screenshots, tile viewer or recorded video file?

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - wonder_boke - 02-29-2024

(02-29-2024, 12:34 AM)scurest Wrote:
Quote:Is there a way, in any program, to specify an allowed palette of colors and automatically reduce the color depth of an image to that palette?

I know you can do that in mtPaint.

You'd crop out one monster, do "Image > Convert to RGB" if necessary, then edit the palette until it has the colors you want. Then you can do "Image > Convert to Indexed" and use the "Use Current Palette" option with Dithering set to "None". Then assemble monsters into one sheet afterwards.

[Image: S4YRdKy.png]

Thanks, I'm gonna try this when I get home!
(02-29-2024, 11:29 AM)Barack Obama Wrote: How did you rip these sprites? Ingame screenshots, tile viewer or recorded video file?

I recorded a video of me playing the game at 4x integer scale, took screenshots of that video file and ripped from them manually.

I need to find a way to record videos without any color compression if I want to do it again like this.

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - Barack Obama - 02-29-2024

The Spriters Resource generally doesn't accept rips from recorded videos due to compression artefacts.

Also there's AnimGet / ScreenGet for this:
https://spritedatabase.net/download

They record animations for you and spit them out as BMP / PNG, which are 100% fine and don't have any errors.

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - wonder_boke - 02-29-2024

(02-29-2024, 02:49 PM)Barack Obama Wrote: The Spriters Resource generally doesn't accept rips from recorded videos due to compression artefacts.

Also there's AnimGet / ScreenGet for this:
https://spritedatabase.net/download

They record animations for you and spit them out as BMP / PNG, which are 100% fine and don't have any errors.

Thanks, those seem awesome!

Also, I wholeheartedly agree with the artifacting problem. I would never upload something that doesn't look 100% identical to the original game (I use aseprite to check if every color is identical to the MAME palette). I'm very anal about this.

Finally, I just noticed that your signature has PC-Engine ripping tutorials. That could be very useful, so double thanks! Last time I tried ripping PC-Engine graphics I failed miserably.

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - Barack Obama - 02-29-2024

No problem, also check out Kramlack's post about PC-Engine ripping:
https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-42382-post-680740.html#pid680740

His suggestion with BizHawk's built-in PC Engine core (TurboNyma) might be even better than Mednafen / Mednaffe.

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - wonder_boke - 02-29-2024

(02-29-2024, 12:34 AM)scurest Wrote:
Quote:Is there a way, in any program, to specify an allowed palette of colors and automatically reduce the color depth of an image to that palette?

I know you can do that in mtPaint.

You'd crop out one monster, do "Image > Convert to RGB" if necessary, then edit the palette until it has the colors you want. Then you can do "Image > Convert to Indexed" and use the "Use Current Palette" option with Dithering set to "None". Then assemble monsters into one sheet afterwards.

[Image: S4YRdKy.png]

Is there a way to delete colors off the current palette? I can only edit them one by one...

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - scurest - 02-29-2024

I believe the only way is "Palette > Set Palette Size" and decrease the size.

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - wonder_boke - 03-02-2024

(02-29-2024, 02:49 PM)Barack Obama Wrote: The Spriters Resource generally doesn't accept rips from recorded videos due to compression artefacts.

Also there's AnimGet / ScreenGet for this:
https://spritedatabase.net/download

They record animations for you and spit them out as BMP / PNG, which are 100% fine and don't have any errors.

ScreenGet just flatout doesn't work, it either errors out or saves "1 of 800 relevant screenshots" (and even the one it saves is corrupted). Is this a known problem? Is there a way to solve it?
AnimGet worked after I set my monitor's resolution to something 2003 appropriate... but 2 minutes of a tiny 240p window came out to be 1.2GB Very Sad My PC only has 12GB of RAM, if I try to record the entire game (40 minutes give or take) it's certainly gonna crash! Embarassed

Do you have any suggestions?

RE: How to reduce color depth to a specified palette? - Barack Obama - 03-03-2024

You need to stop after a certain time, save the screenshots, put them in another folder and start again. These tools work for short sequences, not a 10 min. recording. AnimGet gives you these large .BMP files, while ScreenGet gives you smaller .PNGs. I would use them for old emulators like epsxe with a small resolution, everything else will give you problems. Bonus points if it's possible to deactivate bg layers within the emulator.

Both work for me, btw (Win10, UHD monitor).
Also 12GB of RAM are more than enough, Windows maybe needs a third of that.