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WinImages F/x's palette control allows you to manipulate and alter existing palettes or create new palettes and ranges of color. The Palette controls include operations that will merge two palettes, insert a new palette, mirror the palette, and create various color spreads and sorts. This tool is particularly useful for loading a specific palette for an animation, thus keeping the original palette intact. The palette is also useful for setting a range of colors for one of WinImages F/x's many fill operations.
WinImages F/x's palette can load Microsoft Windows Paintbrush palettes, AVI (Video for Windows) palettes, Bitmap palettes, Adobe Color Table (ACT) palettes, and IFF palettes.
The palette itself is broken up into a number of squares which contain the colors in the current palette. You have the option to increase or decrease the number of squares or cells available in the palette. Your palettes can contain anywhere between 2 and 1024 separate color cells.
Throughout the remainder of the documentation the terms "left color" and "right color" will be used to describe the to palette position selectors. The "left color" is a white with black marker that outlines the current color. This color can be altered using the Hue and Saturation Color Wheel, or the provided RGB text entry fields. This color is the starting point for all spreads, fills, and mirrors. The left color position can be altered by clicking on the palette with the left mouse button. The "right color" is a blue and red marker which defines the ending position for all spreads fills and mirrors.
You cannot manipulate the right color. You do have the option of copying the left color into the right color position, or you can move the left color to the right color position to alter the color, and then move the left color back to its initial position. The right color's position can be altered by pressing the right mouse button while over the desired palette position.
A color is selected by simply clicking, and holding the left mouse button on the color wheel. You can then move the mouse towards the desired color. The current color that the mouse is over will be displayed in the Color Preview Box to the right of the luminance control. Once you have the color you desire, or a lighter or darker version of the desired color, release the left mouse button.
Remember, the left mouse button controls the "left color" or the beginning of any range spreads. You can place a color in the "right color" or end of the range spread by copying the desired color from the left color, and then setting the right color to the desired color. The "brightness" of the color can be altered using the Luminance control. For example, you have a Red color (R=225, G=25, B=32, and Luminance at about 50%), but it is not dark enough for the range you are creating. So, you would adjust the Luminance to about 25%, and the new red would be much darker (R=102, G=15, and B=25).
You do not need to use the color wheel and luminance color to create or specify colors. You have the option of manually altering the RGB (or CMYK, HSL, etc.) values in the provided text entry fields. By doing this you can increment one or more of the components to a specific value. For more information on using the Hue and Saturation wheel, please refer to the sections below on creating spreads and ranges of colors.
For example, a red color can be made black by setting the Luminance control to 0 (bottom of the Luminance control), or it could be made white by setting the control to 100 (top of the Luminance control). A setting in the middle of the control (50%) will produce colors which are completely saturated or "pure colors".
The luminance is set by simply clicking, and holding, the left mouse button over the luminance control. As you move the mouse, you should see the color in the preview increase or decrease in brightness as you move the mouse up and down the control. The preview will reflect all changes that you make to the luminance as they are made. When you have the desired color, release the left mouse button. The color you see in the preview will also be placed in the "left color" position.
If you are loading a palette which contains more colors than the current palette, WinImages F/x will automatically increase the size of the palette to accommodate the new palette.
If you specify a numeric value which is beyond the size of the current palette,WinImages F/x will place the left color marker in the last available color cell. Remember, manipulating the Hue and Saturation color wheel, the Luminance slider, or the numeric color inputs will change the current left color. This is done regardless of the position of the left color marker.
Once the new color space has been selected, all of the values will be recalculated to reflect the differences between the spaces. It is important to remember that WinImages F/x is dealing with pure colors, not real colors. This allows for conversion from color space to color space without altering the current "left color". The color space's letter equivalents will be placed in front of the appropriate dialog, and can be altered as described below.
The first is to simply manually enter the exact numeric values. This will alter the preview and "left color" colors.
The second method is to use the up down gadgets located to the left of each text entry field. These allow you to increase or decrease the desired color component by clicking on the appropriate gadget (up for a value increase and down for a value decrease).
You should notice that there are multiple color spaces available to you. You can alter the change the current color space by following the procedure described in the above section.
If a gray scale color contains a portion of one of the above mentioned colors, it will be sorted in that color group. The colors themselves are sorted with the groups based on their saturation. This means that darker colors will always come before lighter colors of the same hue.
You also have the option of sorting the colors "backwards" by pressing the Shift key and then this button. You can always undo the last change that you've made to the palette by selecting the palette's Undo button.
If you were to select this option for the default palette, you would notice that the palette is already sorted on luminance. The sort will only occur between the "left color" and the "right color" of the palette. All other colors outside of these markers will not be altered.
You also have the option of sorting the colors "backwards" by pressing the Shift key and then this button. You can always undo the last change that you've made to the palette by selecting the palette's Undo button.
For example, a Hue Spread from red to magenta would simply create a range from red to magenta without cycling through yellow, green, cyan, and blue to get to magenta. This method can be thought of as a "shortest path" method. This means that WinImages F/x will take the shortest Hue distance to reach the specified right color. The second method requires you to press and hold the Shift key while pressing the Hue Spread button. This will cause the new range to go through all of the colors linearly to reach the specified right color.
If we use the above example, the hue spread from red to magenta would start with red, pass through yellow, green, cyan, blue, and would end with magenta. It is important to remember that the spread will only evaluate the current left and right colors. All other colors in the palette will be ignored. This includes all of the colors between the left and right colors. The new colors created by this spread will be determined by the initial left and right color.
As an example, setting the left color to red (R=255, G=0, B=0) and the right color to magenta (R=255, G=0, B=255), and then applying a hue spread, with the shift button down, between the two will create a range of colors that is very similar to the Hue and Saturation color wheel (beginning with red and then moving through yellow, green, cyan, blue, and ending with magenta).
It is important to remember that WinImages F/x does not always have to cycle the colors when doing a hue spread. For example, a non-shifted spread between yellow and red would be the exact inverse of a non-shifted spread between red and yellow. This is done to allow you the option of creating color ranges that are the inverse of one another. Remember that pressing the Shift key in conjunction with this button will cause the spread to "cycle" through the hue space to create the spread. You can always undo the last change that you've made to the palette by selecting the palette's Undo button.
You can always undo the last change that you've made to the palette by selecting the palette's Undo button.
This will automatically load and insert the specified palette in the current left color position. If the palette which is being inserted is larger than the remaining space in the palette, the additional colors will be placed beyond the total number of visible colors. If you were to increase the total number of visible colors in the palette (increase the Size value), the colors that were inserted beyond the original palette will become visible. WinImages F/x will only use the number of colors specified in the Size control regardless of any colors that have been inserted beyond the visible palette.
Once you have selected the desired palette file, press the Ok button. WinImages F/x will now merge the two palettes by comparing the colors of both palettes, and selecting the colors which best represent both palettes.
This tool is especially effective for creating render palettes for animations based on two separate palettes.
For example, if there were 32 colors between the left and right color markers, only 16 colors would be used and reflected inside the 32 color range. This means that half of the colors will be eliminated. You also have the option of applying multiple mirror's to the same range which can create some very stunning results.
For example, if you were to repeat the default gray scale palette, you would see two ranges of colors that start with black and move to white. Selecting the Repeat button again will repeat the two gray scale ranges, and will create a palette with a total of four black to white ranges. You should also notice that some of the colors are eliminated. This is due to the fact that WinImages F/x will only repeat within the left and right markers. This means that some colors will be eliminated.
If you placed the left marker in position 0 and the right marker in position 31, only the colors between positions 0 and 32 would be repeated. This is a total of 32 colors in-between the left and right marker. This means that WinImages F/x will select 16 colors from the original 32, and then repeat them. In this case, WinImages F/x would select every other color in the range, and then repeat these colors. You can always undo the last change that you've made to the palette by selecting the palette's Undo button.
A named color is placed into the palette and preview color box by simply selecting the desired named color, and then clicking on the named color preview color box to the right of the list. This will automatically place the named color into the left color position of the palette, and will adjust the RGB values accordingly. The intent of the named colors are to allow you to specifically name colors that you use frequently. This means that you no longer have to remember an obscure RGB value, but can instead remember a name which describes the color in question.
The Named Color section of this palette dialog can be particularly useful for operations like Color Fill or Colorize.
All of the Named Colors are kept in an ASCII text file called colorset.ini located in your Windows directory. You can use any Text Editor to add new named colors to the file. You may find this method to be faster if you are entering multiple colors and names.
The instructions at the top of the file describe the method for adding new colors to the list.
Once you have added the desired colors and names save the file and exit the text editor. The next time that you open the palette the new named colors will be available. Remember, the named colors file (colorset.ini) is used for both the palette and the Pick Color selection dialog. This is not the only method of adding colors to the named colors list. Named colors can be added to the list in both the palette and color selector by pressing the Add button. The Add button's use is described below in the Add documentation.
If you would like the list to remain alphabetical, you will need to manually select the appropriate location for the new named color. After you have the color set, named, and ready to go into the desired position in the list, press the Add button. This will automatically place the new name and color into the list, and make it the current named color. Remember, clicking on the named color preview box (to the right of the name list) will place the color in the current left color position as well as alter the RGB values to their appropriate settings.
You can follow the same procedures to change the name and color. The only difference is that after setting the color you will also need to alter the name. Once that is complete, you can select the Change button to alter the color and color name. The changes made to the named colors list will be saved colorset.clr file when the palette is closed.
Now, we will want to set the last color in the range. Since we want our range to go from blue to red, we will need to set the final color to red. This can be done in one of two ways. The first method is to select a red color using the Hue and Saturation color wheel. The documentation above describes how to select a color by this method. The second way of specifying a color is to enter the values using the provided RGB controls. Once you have a red hue in the color preview box, select the button marked Copy. This will place the current left color into the right color position. The next step is to set the blue color for the beginning of the range. You can use one of the two methods above to select a blue color. Once you have the blue color set, press the Luma Spread button. This will create a luminance based color spread between the specified blue and red.
If you do not want to keep this spread, press the Undo button. All spreads (Hue and Luma) are created in this manner. You can create multiple color spreads by specifying multiple colors and performing spreads between each. Try applying a Hue Spread (and a Shifted Hue Spread) using the colors you have selected. Once you feel comfortable with that, try using some of the advanced tools like Mirror, Repeat, and Merge.
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WinImages F/x Manual Version 7, Revision 5, Level B |