Duck and Cover

I posted a little while back about my woes with the palette being limited to a single default palette defined by Fallout 2. I thought this was the end as I'd never be able to take pictures from the web and use them properly in Fallout 2. I'm happy to report that I was completely wrong and there is a very easy way to solve this problem (provided you have Photoshop, but of course, who doesn't? :))

Ok, first you'll need the Fallout 2 palette in ACT format. Then, do the following, take your picture to be and set the color in Photoshop to RGB color. This effectively removes the palette. Now, set the palette to Indexed Color... and for the palette option chose Custom... and load the ACT file. This automatically performs best match to the colors in the picture to the colors in the default palette.

I have a good example with the results but I don't have a place to host it. But I'm more than willing to e-mail it to you if your interested to see what the results are.

Ok, I hope this helps! And if this was already just extreme common knowledge, then, well, oops.[/img]

You can skip the "load ACT and convert back to RGB" step.

All you need to do is apply the Fallout palette on you image (the last step you described).

Really? When I try that it simply takes the picture and makes it go all crazy. When I do the straight load of the palette it overwrites the palette only, it doesn't do a color match to the new palette. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Well, remember that the normal fallout palette isn't necessarely in the same format as the ACT file...

Just load the proper fallout palette (however you need it to be done) and save it (as the ACT file it needs to be).

You can then use the palette as I mentioned without all the trouble.

The problem you mentioned wasn't highlighted in the post so I didn'T think there was a format problem, but it seems there is one since you mention it :D

Ah, I see what you're getting at. But that's not quite what I meant.

First, you need the Fallout 2 palette in ACT format anyhow, I left it up to the reader to get it there. My problem was that whenever I took a random picture, then applied the Fallout 2 palette, the colors were all crazy. Now let me specify that I was using an Indexed Color picture. So in other words, even though there was a red in the F2 palette, it was index 34 (or whatever it really is) but in the random picture, red was index 54. So now the red is not really red since the colors changed but the indexes didn't. What Photoshop did was change the the picture values to indexes that closely matched the F2 palette.

I think you already know this, but I wasn't clear enough in my description. Hopefully you understand why you have to convert to RGB first because simply changing the color values at the indexes does nothing useful. It has to reconvert the pixel RGB values back to the colors in the F2 palette.

I get it now... If the picutre's already indexed and you load a new palette, photoshop thinks you want just to "overwrite" the palette rather than adapt the picture to the new pallette.

Indeed in such a case the procedure you described solves the problem.

My recommendation though would be not to convert to an indexed mode until you really need it (ie: when you export to the Fallout palette).

Course as you mentioned those were just images from the web, I'm expecting those to be GIFs, thus explaining all the trouble you had...

Cool, I'm glad I was able to clarify. I don't know how many people have run into this problem but I thought it'd be helpful. This is really only truly useful for people like me, people who can't draw for anything and need to "borrow" art and adapt it to their needs. :)

Make sure to keep tabs on the original authors when you can for credits...

I'm not a god artist either, but I know how to handle images (well, for the most part anyway).

Well, technically the original authors are the companies whose products the photographed. I'm modding the weapons and I'm converting the photographs of the weapons into Fallout 2 usable pictures. So, umm.., I guess I credit the makers of the weapons, no?

Ahah, well, guess not for that... Actually technically you should be crediting the photographer (which is probably the company). And more specifically you should be asking for rights to use them, but um...

Who the hell cares :P.

Sorry to bring out the dead, but I'm not completely following this. I think I'm doing what you describe, but the end product is far from decent. Could you go into a bit more detail about this procedure?

Here's my end result:
http://www.unc.edu/~cagney/images/misc_ ... _ELDER.png

welcome back on to the radar Red!.. long time no hear from you..

ColJack wrote:welcome back on to the radar Red!.. long time no hear from you..

I thought the same thing myself when I saw his post.. You might want to take another look at the date of his post, though..

That's why I said "sorry to bring out the dead." My apologies for the confusion.