SpaceWeasel
Chieftain
Hey guys, I just finished figuring out how to maintain palette integrity in photoshop, and I thought I might post my method for doing it. It seems a little hackish so there may be a better way. Please excuse any spelling errors, I'm quite tired =). Here goes:
1. Open the file for the graphics you want to edit. I was editing goodyhuts.pcx to change how the goody huts look in the game.
2. Go to the image menu, mode, then RGB. Now add a new layer. I usually edit all of my graphics on this layer (adding more as necessary, depending on what I'm doing). Most of the in-game still graphics will have either triangular-shaped magenta areas surrounded by green, or magenta with a green grid. Your basic rule of thumb here is "stay inside the green" since that's what will be displayed. If you go beyond the green grid, bits of your new building or whatever will show up on other building icons and it will generally be a mess. If you go outside the magenta diamonds, those bits will overlap out of the tile, which can be desireable.
3. Once you've edited the graphics to your liking and want to save, you will want to go back to the 256 color PCX format. Now, one of the problems with photoshop is that it will ALWAYS blend two discrete color areas at least a little, no matter what you do. Sometimes it will also take the solid magenta and green areas and decide they should be slightly different colors. So the first thing I usually do is go to the color picker and pick magenta (255 0 255). Then go to select, color range, and jack the fuziness up to 200. This will select all of the places where photoshop is blending your graphics with the magenta, which will give them a silly pink "fuzz" in the game. Now, go to edit:fill and fill this area with solid magenta (sometimes I do this on an overlay layer to see how it will look; it will merge down when you convert to PCX). Now, you may need to edit a little more if this creates too jagged of an edge, but after you do so make sure to do this process again. Repeat until it looks good. This also serves the added purpose of making sure all of the solid magenta is one color. Select green in the color picker (0 255 0) and do the same thing; this shouldn't affect your graphics at all unless they have bright green in them.
4. Go to image:mode:indexed color. Now, from the choice of palette types select something like "perceptual" or any type you think looks good, assuming you have made GIFs and such before. Once it looks good, go to the palette menu and select "custom." Chances are no matter what you did, you will see two blocks of colors: one magenta/pink -ish and one green-ish. Now, the first thing to do is go to the VERY FIRST color square (in the top left) and click on it. Change this square to magenta (255 0 255). Now select the SECOND square and change it to green (0 255 0). Now, hold down shift and click-drag to select the blocks of magentaish and greenish. Now you have several options: you could change them to all be one color that resembles the main color you used in your image. If you use lots of colors, don't worry about it and just go to the next option (in my case the graphics were mostly gray so I could have changed it to a shade of gray). The downside is, this might give your image a solid-color border or little flecks of the wrong color, or both. I typically use option 2, which is to change these blocks to some color that my graphic doesn't use, like bright blue. The downside is that you lose some palette spaces, but it shouldn't be too big of a problem. As you edit the palette, keep an eye on the graphic to make sure it looks ok. When you're satisfied hit "ok" and go ahead and save the graphic as a PCX, making sure to back up the original first. Now open Civ3edit (or the game, depending on what you changed) and observe your handiwork!
I hope this is helpful to someone, somewhere, somehow. Also, if you know of a better way to elimiante "blending fuzz" without making it some unused color, please tell me =).
-SpaceWeasel
1. Open the file for the graphics you want to edit. I was editing goodyhuts.pcx to change how the goody huts look in the game.
2. Go to the image menu, mode, then RGB. Now add a new layer. I usually edit all of my graphics on this layer (adding more as necessary, depending on what I'm doing). Most of the in-game still graphics will have either triangular-shaped magenta areas surrounded by green, or magenta with a green grid. Your basic rule of thumb here is "stay inside the green" since that's what will be displayed. If you go beyond the green grid, bits of your new building or whatever will show up on other building icons and it will generally be a mess. If you go outside the magenta diamonds, those bits will overlap out of the tile, which can be desireable.
3. Once you've edited the graphics to your liking and want to save, you will want to go back to the 256 color PCX format. Now, one of the problems with photoshop is that it will ALWAYS blend two discrete color areas at least a little, no matter what you do. Sometimes it will also take the solid magenta and green areas and decide they should be slightly different colors. So the first thing I usually do is go to the color picker and pick magenta (255 0 255). Then go to select, color range, and jack the fuziness up to 200. This will select all of the places where photoshop is blending your graphics with the magenta, which will give them a silly pink "fuzz" in the game. Now, go to edit:fill and fill this area with solid magenta (sometimes I do this on an overlay layer to see how it will look; it will merge down when you convert to PCX). Now, you may need to edit a little more if this creates too jagged of an edge, but after you do so make sure to do this process again. Repeat until it looks good. This also serves the added purpose of making sure all of the solid magenta is one color. Select green in the color picker (0 255 0) and do the same thing; this shouldn't affect your graphics at all unless they have bright green in them.
4. Go to image:mode:indexed color. Now, from the choice of palette types select something like "perceptual" or any type you think looks good, assuming you have made GIFs and such before. Once it looks good, go to the palette menu and select "custom." Chances are no matter what you did, you will see two blocks of colors: one magenta/pink -ish and one green-ish. Now, the first thing to do is go to the VERY FIRST color square (in the top left) and click on it. Change this square to magenta (255 0 255). Now select the SECOND square and change it to green (0 255 0). Now, hold down shift and click-drag to select the blocks of magentaish and greenish. Now you have several options: you could change them to all be one color that resembles the main color you used in your image. If you use lots of colors, don't worry about it and just go to the next option (in my case the graphics were mostly gray so I could have changed it to a shade of gray). The downside is, this might give your image a solid-color border or little flecks of the wrong color, or both. I typically use option 2, which is to change these blocks to some color that my graphic doesn't use, like bright blue. The downside is that you lose some palette spaces, but it shouldn't be too big of a problem. As you edit the palette, keep an eye on the graphic to make sure it looks ok. When you're satisfied hit "ok" and go ahead and save the graphic as a PCX, making sure to back up the original first. Now open Civ3edit (or the game, depending on what you changed) and observe your handiwork!
I hope this is helpful to someone, somewhere, somehow. Also, if you know of a better way to elimiante "blending fuzz" without making it some unused color, please tell me =).
-SpaceWeasel
Help please?
