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Wanted: GIF or PNG of palettised NTSC colours


Andrew Davie

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My google skills have failed me. I am looking for an image in palettised format (128 or 256 colours is fine) of the Atari 2600 NTSC palette.

Can you help? I can't use a RGB image - those are easy to find. I need an image with a palette with the colours in the correct indexed order.
I'm surprised there isn't one out there... or is there...?

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24 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

 

Thank you but no, you did not understand my request. I am well aware of what the colours look like.

I need a palettised GIF or PNG with the colours in correct order in the palette, so that palette index corresponds to colour value.

Looks like I'm going to have to make one myself!

 

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Doesn’t Random Terrain’s chart show the TIA colors organized by index? The vertical rows being the high nibble, and the columns across being the low nibble.

 

Wikipedia has a similar chart for NTSC and PAL for the TIA. It appears as though the high/low nibbles are reversed.

Lum(row)/

Hue(column)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0                                
2                                
4                                
6                                
8                                
A                                
C                                
E                                

The above image assumes there is no limit on the

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes

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7 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

Doesn’t Random Terrain’s chart show the TIA colors organized by index? The vertical rows being the high nibble, and the columns across being the low nibble.

 

Wikipedia has a similar chart for NTSC and PAL for the TIA. It appears as though the high/low nibbles are reversed.

Lum(row)/

Hue(column)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0                                
2                                
4                                
6                                
8                                
A                                
C                                
E                                

The above image assumes there is no limit on the

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes

 

Yes. It does.

But I don't want a PICTURE of the colours. I want an actual physical image file of the colours in the palette in the correct order.

The image file can be totally black, but it needs to have the *palette* with the colours setup correctly.

It seems not many people understand what a palettised image is...?

 

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If I understand you correctly, you need the actual palette changed. The last time I did anything like that was for a DOS demo program. I had all 256 colors shades of red so when run it looked like you were traveling down a tube. I used a program called DPAINT2 and could only save the file as .LBM. I'm not sure how I would do that today.

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7 minutes ago, JasperAK said:

If I understand you correctly, you need the actual palette changed. The last time I did anything like that was for a DOS demo program. I had all 256 colors shades of red so when run it looked like you were traveling down a tube. I used a program called DPAINT2 and could only save the file as .LBM. I'm not sure how I would do that today.

 

Yes, that's it. I was hoping someone already has a GIF or PNG with a 256 colour palette with the colours in the palette in the correct order. That is, colour #$32 (say) would be a dark reddish colour. I can do it myself, of course, without too much fuss. I was just hoping that by the time I woke up today someone would have posted what I needed. Didn't want to re-invent the wheel, so to speak.

And why would I want to do this?  Well, so I can give the image palette to someone to do art with, and a) I know "exact" colours are being used, and b) I can just use the pixel value directly to get the correct colour when used on the '2600.

But, looks like I'll be doing it myself. I'll post the result here for others to use, if needed.

 

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23 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said:

 

Yes, that's it. I was hoping someone already has a GIF or PNG with a 256 colour palette with the colours in the palette in the correct order. That is, colour #$32 (say) would be a dark reddish colour.

And why would I want to do this?  Well, so I can give the image palette to someone to do art with, and a) I know "exact" colours are being used, and b) I can just use the pixel value directly to get the correct colour when used on the '2600.

 

It appears that the above palette is in the right order, and that GIMP (as well as other image editors) supports the text format that the palette above is in. 

 

https://www.lifewire.com/import-a-color-palette-into-gimp-1701682

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4 minutes ago, orange808 said:

What's the source of these color charts?  Are these caps of real NTSC professional video monitors?

 

Also, you will need to mind your computer monitor.  It also has to be able to reproduce colors accurately.

 

Otherwise, you're spinning your wheels.

 

Exactness is not a requirement. I just need a palette with "good enough" colours, with - as noted - the palette colours in the correct order.

 

 

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16 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

It looks like GIMP supports a text palette format. Someone created a palette for Atari NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.

 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/denilsonsa/gimp-palettes/master/palettes/HW-Atari-2600-NTSC.gpl

 

http://denilson.sa.nom.br/gimp-palettes/index.html

Yes, I use GIMP and I'm familiar with palette editing. As I said, it's not difficult to DO... just time consuming and I didn't want to re-invent the wheel.

 

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21 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

It looks like GIMP supports a text palette format. Someone created a palette for Atari NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.

 

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/denilsonsa/gimp-palettes/master/palettes/HW-Atari-2600-NTSC.gpl

 

http://denilson.sa.nom.br/gimp-palettes/index.html

 

I re-read this, and it has done the job!  Many thanks :)

I now have a correct palette.

 

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And... here is what I needed. Thanks @CapitanClassic for saving me hours of work!

The image shows not only the NTSC colours (give or take) visually, but the PALETTE is organised correctly.
So, in this image, colour #32 is... dark red.  Colour #195 ($C3) is dark green... perfect!

You can draw stuff using this image as a starting point (erase the colour grid, draw your stuff), and the PIXEL VALUES will give you the actual correct COLU* value to write to the '2600 (NTSC) with no conversions required. What you see will be pretty much what you get.

 

This is a *128* byte palette, so the colours don't exactly correspond. I'm working on a 256 byte one :)


 

2600NTSCpalettised.png

Edited by Andrew Davie
128 colour comment
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Here is a 256 colour version, using the RGB from the original text palette given in the link above.

I will do one more pass on this, and convert to use the Stella colours.

But for now, this one lets you draw in palette colour N and you see the colour that you would on an NTSC '2600.

To be clear, this is an image with a 256 colour palette. The colours in the palette correspond to the colours when viewed on an NTSC '2600. The pixel values, therefore (0-255) are the same as the COLUP* values that you write to the '2600 registers to get the colour that you see.

 

2600NTSCpalettised_256colours.png.e0fbbe46cc356fb77435cb4504d81e5a.png

 

Edited by Andrew Davie
fixed palette
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56 minutes ago, ChildOfCv said:

Atari 2600 only has 8 shades and 16 colors.  That's 128 colors total to work with.  7800 added a 4th bit for the shade, but only for 7800 games.  So the 128-color palette seems correct to me.  I'd expect 256 on the 2600 to be just 128 twice.

You are correct, and that's exactly what that image is. Each colour is repeated twice. Your eye is tricking you if you see more than 8 different shades on each horizontal line. There are 8, in pairs, each pair exactly the same colour/intensity. I have it in a block of 256, because although there are 128 colours - they are expressed with a range of 256 values. The low bit is always ignored. But to allow a direct 1:1 correspondence with palette value and colour index, you need 256 in the image palette.

 

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9 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

You are correct, and that's exactly what that image is. Each colour is repeated twice. Your eye is tricking you if you see more than 8 different shades on each horizontal line. There are 8, in pairs, each pair exactly the same colour/intensity. I have it in a block of 256, because although there are 128 colours - they are expressed with a range of 256 values. The low bit is always ignored. But to allow a direct 1:1 correspondence with palette value and colour index, you need 256 in the image palette.

 

I noticed the same thing, but realized it was a trick if the eyes. You can easily tell by zooming in so only the pairs of colors can be seen side by side. If you don’t, your mind has a tendency to try to make a two-dimensional image appear to be three-dimensional. Your mind makes the color that is next to the brighter color on the right appear darker, and the color on the left next to the darker color appear brighter.

 

the famous image is this one, where the brown center square on the top and the shadowy side are both the exact same RGB values. Your mind, trying to make sense of the image, determines that the brown in the the shadow must be brighter than it actually is, because that 2D image of a 3D object is in shadow.

=rubiks-cube-2.jpg

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4 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

the famous image is this one, where the brown center square on the top and the shadowy side are both the exact same RGB values. Your mind, trying to make sense of the image, determines that the brown in the the shadow must be brighter than it actually is, because that 2D image of a 3D object is in shadow.

=rubiks-cube-2.jpg

 

Here's my favourite...
 

checker-shadow-illusion.thumb.jpg.17c402e59f4a6eba2d45db5a66f0a717.jpg

The squares marked "A" and "B" are exactly the same shade/intensity.

 

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On ‎8‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 11:24 AM, CapitanClassic said:

I noticed the same thing, but realized it was a trick if the eyes. You can easily tell by zooming in so only the pairs of colors can be seen side by side. If you don’t, your mind has a tendency to try to make a two-dimensional image appear to be three-dimensional. Your mind makes the color that is next to the brighter color on the right appear darker, and the color on the left next to the darker color appear brighter.

 

the famous image is this one, where the brown center square on the top and the shadowy side are both the exact same RGB values. Your mind, trying to make sense of the image, determines that the brown in the the shadow must be brighter than it actually is, because that 2D image of a 3D object is in shadow.

=rubiks-cube-2.jpg

 

On ‎8‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 11:33 AM, Andrew Davie said:

 

Here's my favourite...
 

checker-shadow-illusion.thumb.jpg.17c402e59f4a6eba2d45db5a66f0a717.jpg

The squares marked "A" and "B" are exactly the same shade/intensity.

 

Those images are so insane, I almost can't believe that they are actually real.  Our brains are clearly screwed up!  :-o

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