Palette tutorial, with special guest Ali Landry

So let's say that you're deep in production of XBABESX.WAD and you've started trying to import some new textures to use. You'll soon learn that Doom does not handle high-color images well, and in a stunning lack of foresight, id Software included a palette which does not go particularly well with pictures of hot babes.

So you take your first picture and resize it down to the size of a Doom texture:



Mmmm, Ali Landry. This will undoubtedly be a top-notch level! Anyways, since it's a photo, you'll probably try error diffusion dithering to bring it down to the Doom palette:



Jesus Christ. I don't know where to even begin fixing up that image. So dithering probably isn't the way to go. Let's try nearest color matching instead:



Much better! There's some weird discolorations in the sky and in Ali's hot-pants, but those are easily remedied with the eyedropper and the fill tool:



Now really, you could stop here, but there are some abrupt shifts in color, especially in the sky and in her tight, tanned, luscious... uh, her belly.

So let's raise the image back up to 24-bit and use the soften tool to smooth out those hard lines:



Looking good! Now, let's bring it back down to the Doom palette again, but this time use error diffusion dithering:



Wow, much better. Now Ali Landry is ready for a night on the town... stuck on the wall... of a porno Doom WAD. Actually, that's pretty sad. You really are a perv.

hah, if I am a perv, what are you who's writing this tutorial? :P

great tutorial btw.

hahahaha fantastic

thanks ling

You are a genius of our time. Please create more Porn Doom add-on graphics so that we may bathe in the glory that is your intelligence.

Release a wad of porno pic textures!!!%()@*

Yeah, I thought you guys were adverse to female flesh (so I've been told).

Nothing's more fun than color matching babes. I have a special test wad called BABES that has some incredible examples of how WELL the DOOM palette works.

From the above, seems the results depend totally on the program used. Arguably PSP does a better job in ONE step, using just dithering compared to the final result above. I invite everyone to just do it and see for yourself:)

In the XTHEATERIII level for ZDOOM (sbsoftware.com) there are quite a few examples of female flesh. I did them various ways, but they all took at most 2 steps. None of my BABES made it, figured somebody would freak out. Some are hidden. Some of the dithering I did on purpose to tone done the righteous out there - although I wonder why they played it in the first place.

Here's other simple ways to get stuff to match: Sometimes, the trick is to change the RGB a tiny bit or the gamma then THEN match the DOOM palette.

deep said:

From the above, seems the results depend totally on the program used. Arguably PSP does a better job in ONE step, using just dithering compared to the final result above. I invite everyone to just do it and see for yourself:)

If you're saying that using PSP and dithering the intitial image generates better results, I DID use PSP and I DID dither it and I got the nasty-ass second picture.

Then how come I did NOT?:))

Edit: I know, you have an older version? Mine came out sweet trust me.

Uh, here's the original picture dithered in Photoshop 6.



Lesson of tutorial: use Photoshop.

Lüt said:

Uh, here's the original picture dithered in Photoshop 6.



Lesson of tutorial: use Photoshop.

that is not the doom palette.

oblivion said:

that is not the doom palette.

That's not the point of that picture...

Paint Shop Pro dithering.

Photoshop dithering.

Spot the difference...

EDIT: ok, this post was pointless, I just realised exactly what everyone was saying, so I took the liberty to import the Doom pallette on top of that gif, and this is what I got:

deep said:

Then how come I did NOT?:))

Edit: I know, you have an older version? Mine came out sweet trust me.

Perhaps you could have posted the image so I could see.

Lüt said:

Uh, here's the original picture dithered in Photoshop 6.

(NON DOOM PALETTE IMAGE)

Lesson of tutorial: use Photoshop.

Hey smart guy, try loading that picture into Doom, oh wait it's not using the Doom palette. Thank you, drive through.

My webspace provider doesn't allow direct linking of files, so I'll have to do it like this.

Lüt gets 0wned:

http://haunt.8m.com/psvspsp.html


Ling's suggestion about putting the image back up to 24bit and smoothing it is definitely good advice. However, depending on the image in question, adding a bit of noise (5% - 7% or so) before you reload the palette often produces a slightly nicer result.

Linguica said:

Perhaps you could have posted the image so I could see.

It would been EASIER to tell me what version you are using:)

Original:

http://www.doomworld.com/linguica/palette/pal1.jpg

Mine using a ONE-STEP conversion in PSP 6.02 to the REAL doom palette.

http://www.sbsoftware.com/images/pal1psp.gif

Compare to Photoshop 7 ONE-STEP 75% dither REAL doom palette for once

http://www.sbsoftware.com/images/pal1photoshop.gif

Yours:

http://www.doomworld.com/linguica/palette/pal6.gif

You decide:)

Linguica said:

Hey smart guy, try loading that picture into Doom, oh wait it's not using the Doom palette.

o_O

SO PS5'S DITHERING ALWAYS CONVERTED EVERY DITHERED IMAGE INTO WORKING DOOM FORMAT WITHOUT A SECOND STEP, I HAD NO IDEA IT WOULD SUDDENLY BE BROKEN WITH PS6.

"Latest and greatest" my ass.

Whatever, complain to the Photoshop crew.

NiGHTMARE said:

Lüt gets 0wned:

http://haunt.8m.com/psvspsp.html

HEY YOU FRIDGE, you dithered it at 180x384 - resize it to Doom size (60x128), then do your dithering and see what you come up with.

Anyway, I'll do it your way now:

PS: vs. PSP:

WHO'S GOT THE BETTER DITHERING NOW??

same image

Try again Lut, this time using the DOOM palette.

This is getting old. Let me do one in Photoshop 7 in a bit. Take light years to load though:)

Edit: Did it - posted Photoshop image my comparison post above.

deep said:

Try again Lut, this time using the DOOM palette.

I was arguing with NiGHTMARE about dithering in general, not dithering to the Doom palette.

deep said:

Blah blah images

Great, except those images are nine times larger than the one I was dithering. Makes a bit of a difference.

Linguica said:

Great, except those images are nine times larger than the one I was dithering. Makes a bit of a difference.

They are all 180x384.

IOW, your original is 180x384, your final was 180x384 and all the ones I did were 180x384.

If you had a different size, you should have posted THOSE, not the 180x384 images.

So post the actual images instead.

Btw, ZDOOM and BOOMSDAY can display the original image and so can most of the ports.
=================

LOL - I finally figured out where you went wrong. You used the palette created by Wintex. You got the transparent color in there, which of course is NOT a DOOM color.

I made it 60x128 and it still comes out pretty decent. But in discussions like this, you should always post the actual size images to avoid confusion.

Eh, what are you talking about some 60x128 thing for? The original image, my image and yours are all 180x384.

NiGHTMARE said:

Eh, what are you talking about some 60x128 thing for? The original image, my image and yours are all 180x384.

Ling said that size isn't the right one. Yet EVERYONE that messed with it used 180x384 - so should have said that right away eh.

However, I think what he REALLY did was make it into a 60x128 and then expanded it back to 180x384. Only because doing it that way I could duplicate his image using the Wintex colors that screw up this image royally.

All in all very confusing:)

===========

PS: Here's another method to add for getting colors to match. Take all the odd speckles and edit the palette to be the color it should be. When all done, just reload the original DOOM palette. Just don't forget to reload the DOOM palette:)

are you people blind or something? ling's images are clearly 60x128 images that were sized up to be seen better. What could you do with a 180x384 image in doom anyway?

oblivion said:

are you people blind or something? ling's images are clearly 60x128 images that were sized up to be seen better. What could you do with a 180x384 image in doom anyway?

Clear to whom? ALL the people here messed with 180x384 images - so clearly this was not communicated properly.

As I already explained, almost all ports display this. And for sure ZDOOM and BOOMSDAY display it anyway you want. Heck I have images 800 tall in XtheaterIII:) So it was pretty natural for me to assume that was the image to work with.

Actually DOOM shows it too, just limited to 128. Probably with offsets can get it to show it in 3 parts. Use DeePsea to Import and you can check it out for yourself.

deep said:

Clear to whom? ALL the people here messed with 180x384 images - so clearly this was not communicated properly.

As I already explained, almost all ports display this. And for sure ZDOOM and BOOMSDAY display it anyway you want. Heck I have images 800 tall in XtheaterIII:) So it was pretty natural for me to assume that was the image to work with.

Actually DOOM shows it too, just limited to 128. Probably with offsets can get it to show it in 3 parts. Use DeePsea to Import and you can check it out for yourself.

until Nightmare's post, they were ALL 60x128 resized up

While we're on the subject,

where can I get the REAL Doom palette?

oblivion said:

until Nightmare's post, they were ALL 60x128 resized up

How do you figure? Lut didn't. I don't think Gooberman did (can't remember for sure how it looks at 60x128), Nightmare didn't.

Why don't you try to duplicate those I listed using a 60x128 and see what you get. Hey, I could be wrong:)

Lobo said:

where can I get the REAL Doom palette?

Lotsa ways - take a screen shot ingame (make sure gamma is not turned up to make sure a port is not giving you a gamma corrected palette.

Export any image using DeePsea. Export any image in XWE or Wintex but make sure you change the transparency index to the real thing, since THAT is not a real DOOM color and will mess up palette matching. If nothing else, we learned that in this lesson:)

Both PSP and Photoshop let you save (extract) the palette from those and then you can use them in other images that don't have the Doom palette.

I thought it was fairly obvious to even the least astute observer that for the interest of clarity I increased the size of the images 3X. Why else would there be be giant pixels visible? Quite a few people noticed right away, so it certainly wasn't some Sherlock Holmesian mystery that I left as a conundrum to be unraveled. Apparently, however, I was wrong.

deep said:

LOL - I finally figured out where you went wrong. You used the palette created by Wintex. You got the transparent color in there, which of course is NOT a DOOM color.

/me loads doom2.exe -devparm

/me takes a screenshot

/me saves the palette from the Doom 2 screenshot

/me loads it into his last image perfectly.

The color that Wintex uses for the transparent colors is user selectable because it is NOT considered a part of the Doom palette. You need to specify a color in an image to serve as the transparent color because images don't have such a thing as a null pixel.

In conclusion, I am right about everything, as usual.

deep said:

How do you figure? Lut didn't. I don't think Gooberman did (can't remember for sure how it looks at 60x128), Nightmare didn't.

Why don't you try to duplicate those I listed using a 60x128 and see what you get. Hey, I could be wrong:)

Linguica's original post - all images were 60x128 enlarged for clarity

Lüt's first post in thread - all images were 60x128 enlarged for clarity

GooberMan's first post in thread - all images were 60x128 enlarged for clarity

I'm not sure what there is to figure; linguica set a precedent that was easily recognized by two out of four that posted other edits of the image (nightmare and you not getting it)