There has been much information posted on how to add new resources to the resources.pcx file. But I can't really find anything that details how to make the need, corresponding icons that go in the Art/Civilopedia/Icons/Resources folder, the large & small icons.

Now, it's not that I don't know how to do this, I do. Here is my issue:

There are three resource types, strategic, luxury & bonus. Each have there own color that fades to the bottom. The icon pcx files are in 256 colors. If you want to copy something onto one of the colored backgrounds, you have to increase the color depth. If you don't the 256 color palette inevitably does not have enough colors to match the image that you are copying. Consequently it becomes discolored, or washed out.

Now the solution, obviously, is to increase the color count of the icon background. No problems there. Paste in the new image and it looks just like you want it. But now you have to reduce the colors back down to 256. And this is where the sticky wicket lies. Because once you reduce to 256, horizontal lines appear in the background color, segmenting the fade, disrupting the smooth transition that you started with.

Does anyone know how to preserve the smooth fade?
Or know of a better way to make the icons?

Thank you.

Never seen this is much of a problem but if it becomes too visible you can do this: copy the relevant (backgroud colors) part of the original palette to the new one, and apply it to RGB file.

e.g. in PS: In the original PCX, go to Color Table -> remove all other (non background) colors -> save to palette (.act) file. Then go to your new PCX, convert to RGB, paste your pics etc. and when you convert back to 256 colors, use "Indexed Palette", then select Forced... Custom->Load and load your .act file.

Thanks ED.
See you changed your avatar. Interesting.

Would the suggestion you provided work similarly in PSP?

Thanks again.

I don't have PSP to provide the exact commands but it certainly does have these palette functions (file extension will be .pal probably)