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Katamori

TITLEPIC: Good format, awful quality

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My friend made me a cool TITLEPIC for putting in my WAD. It's okay.



However, when I convert the picture to Doom Gfx in SLumped, the quality is terrible. Click to enlarge, and you will be understand... (previous picture has been resized to the Doom image size)




If I keep the original format, my WAD don't be compatible with classic ports (especially PrBoom, which my testing port), only with the new versions of ZDoom-based ports. But if I convert the picture...well...you see...

What should I do?

(Uploaded with ImageShack.us)

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Welcome to the Doom graphics. You have already given the answer yourself; If you don't want your WAD to become a (G)ZDoom only thing, you must adhere to the Doom palette. You could try and hue-shift your original picture slightly so that it better fits certain color ranges that the Doom palette uses. It is some work, because you'll have to keep shifting colors slightly and convert to see the result. Maybe the graphics tools that you use (Photoshop?) can help you do the conversion in a nicer manner if there is some way to get the Doom palette in the format your graphics program expects, but I don't know what you use and what is available for that.

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I'm ABSOLUTELY lame about picture editing :D my previous problem solving was simplier: this picture can see on ZDoom-based ports, but doesn't see on PrBoom

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I am pretty sure I already explained you how to put the full-definition PNG in between hi_start and hi_end markers, and the low-res Doom GFX version at the normal place, and it'd work the best it can in just about every port; displaying the PNG when supported and the other in the rest.

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Gez said:

I am pretty sure I already explained you how to put the full-definition PNG in between hi_start and hi_end markers, and the low-res Doom GFX version at the normal place, and it'd work the best it can in just about every port; displaying the PNG when supported and the other in the rest.


Thank you, it works :)

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I had a go at that thing CodeImp suggested. I don't think it looks too bad if, when you do the colour reduction, you restrict the colours used to just the doom palette's pink and grey ranges. At least I think it matches the proper version a bit better.

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RjY said:

I had a go at that thing CodeImp suggested. I don't think it looks too bad if, when you do the colour reduction, you restrict the colours used to just the doom palette's pink and grey ranges. At least I think it matches the proper version a bit better.

Might look even better without the dithering (which usually looks bad in-game). Sometimes both Floyd and Steinberg need a rest :)

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andrewj said:

Might look even better without the dithering (which usually looks bad in-game). Sometimes both Floyd and Steinberg need a rest :)

I tried that but I didn't think it looked very good.



Turning off dithering works better if you only use the pink range (omitting the grey)



With dithering and without any grey, it looks like this:



But I didn't like those last two - I thought the basic colour was far too bright and lurid, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it didn't compare well to the hue of the original image.

Anyway Katamori you have some different options to choose from now I guess

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The one using only the pink range looks best to my feeble eyes.

I think using one of the brown ranges would look good too, maybe even brown for the background and pink for the demon, or........

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There are many variants... thank you seriously! I will try these pics when I'll have time (tomorrow)

EDIT: can you help me with the intermission screen too?



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Xtroose said:

How about this?

I love that because it reminds me of Diablo 1's dark cinematics.

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entryway said:

How did you make it? Step by step :)

  1. Open the original image in GIMP.
  2. Colors > Desaturate... > Choose shade of gray based on: Average
  3. Image > Mode > Indexed... > Colormap: Use custom palette: Doom ; Dithering: None
  4. Save the image as Title1.bmp and exit the GIMP.
  5. Create a new empty wad file and open it with XWE
  6. Entry > Load > Title1.bmp (it will be automatically converted to the Doom graphic format)
  7. Image > Color Remap
  8. Remap the colors. In this case I started with the darkest shade of gray 8 and remapped it to index 47. Then I continued towards the brightest shade of gray until I used up all colors in the 16-47. I remapped the remaining bright shades of gray to index 16. I find the images in this article on the ZDoom Wiki very helpful when doing color remaps.
  9. Image > Perform Color Remap
  10. Click on the entry TITLE1. You will be asked if you want to save changes. Click Yes.
  11. Entry > Save As... > Title2.bmp
  12. Open Title2.bmp in GIMP.
  13. Drag and drop Title1.bmp in the Layers window. (It will be added as a new layer named Title1.bmp)
  14. Select the Title1.bmp layer
  15. Layer > Transparency > Add Alpha Channel
  16. Filters > Distorts > Erase Every Other Row > Rows/cols: Rows ; Even/odd: Even ; Erase/fill: Erase
  17. Now save the image as Title.png, choose Merge Visible Layers and click Export and then save.
  18. I also loaded the png image with Slade 3 and converted it to Doom image format and then back to png, because I trust it more than I trust XWE and GIMP. :P Then I exported the image and uploaded it here.
You could get rid of the XWE color remapping, but I like it more, because I have more control over it than in GIMP. GIMP sadly does not handle indexed images well. :(

So, why did I make it this way? Well, the original image looked like Doom palette index range 16-47 with less saturation. If you desaturate every other row, you can achieve an illusion of reduced saturation in the entire image.

Also, there was a thread here on Doomworld about creating palettes for use with GIMP. I used to have it bookmarked and I can not find it anymore.

Katamori said:

EDIT: can you help me with the intermission screen too?

Sure.



Something bothers me about this one, though. The middle part looks too "clean" compared to the border. I will see if I can do anything about it.

EDIT: I think this one turned out a little bit better.


EDIT: You can get GIMP palettes here.

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