Atari 128 Color Palettes

[+MrFish]

I wanted to move this over to a new thread, as it really doesn't relate directly to Altirra updates at this point.

 

Here are the files I've posted in the Altirra thread so far, plus the NTSC (PAL to be posted later) ACO file, which is a "Swatch" file for Photoshop that contains the color palette data from the ACT file plus descriptive text for each entry. I've edited the descriptive text to be the Hex, Decimal, and Binary Atari equivalents -- which will appear as a tooltip as shown in the swatch image below.

 

Some of you might be asking what's the use/point of these files compared to the regular 256 color palettes available as output from Altirra and included with some other emulators. The point is that most Atari graphics modes (read non-GTIA) are only going to have 128 of the 256 colors available for display. So if you index your non-GTIA artwork using a 256 color palette, your graphics editing program is most likely going to choose some colors that aren't possible for your selected Atari graphics mode.

 

The palette images are just for use if you want to open them up in your selected program and use the eyedropper to select colors, rather than using swatches/palettes, and also as an additional reference.

 

As noted in the Altirra thread, these files are all based on the "Default" Altirra palettes, with no manual adjustments.

 

 

Atari 128 Colors - ACT (NTSC, PAL).zip

 

 

 

Edited October 3, 2015 by MrFish

[+MrFish]

Corrected a couple small errors in the descriptive text entries for the ACO file that was posted above (now deleted):

 

 

[+MrFish]

Here are the Swatch/ACO files for both NTSC and PAL:

 

Atari 128 Colors - ACO (NTSC, PAL).zip

[+MrFish]

BTW, you can also lay out your swatch like this, which is little more organized for the Atari palette structure:

 

 

[popmilo]

Thanks for these !

[Caterpiggle]

Opps ....

My mistake ...

Edited October 4, 2015 by Caterpiggle

[+MrFish]

Here's another reference:

 

 

 

[Gury]

Very good reference, thank you very much!

[popmilo]

Cool !

[+MrFish]

You can get a similar display using the appropriate view setting and palette window size for your swatch in Photoshop. But it forces the horizontal width of entries to be the size of the maximum characters allowed for the text label -- which means a lot of extra white space. Plus for NTSC, using a gray background tends to make the darkest luminances of some colors appear dark to the point of looking black, whereas a black background will give enough contrast to allow them to be seen better. Also some of the vertical spacing is pretty tight.

 

So those are a few reasons why I made up the above reference sheets. The swatch layout is still useful to have though. You can also lay it out as a single long list, and use larger thumbnails. Too bad you can't choose a mono-spaced font for the text labels, but it's still not too bad since there are at most only 2 letters per line/entry.

 

 

[Aloan]

ok ok ok (trembling hands) it has been years, so bear with me.... These colors..... these colors...... Have I been wrong all along? listen......

 

The very "white" is supposed to be ECECEC..... uhhhhh.... correct? "yours" come up as EDEDED and most if not all other colors do not match the palette below.

 

I mean, your colors are beautiful, I mean, these colors. They are so nice and colorful.

 

But take a look at the palette I always thought is the right one right here:

 

 

 

If yours is the right one (I mean I have looked over the net and saw many palettes which end up being this one right here!) then I will switch mine to the one on this post! (NTSC)... maybe "your" palette is not the Atari 2600 palette? I never heard of Altirra before, maybe that palette is Altirra's whatever it is, lol ;D

Edited January 10, 2019 by Aloan