Palette Editor

Community Forums/Showcase/Palette Editor

AdamStrange(Posted 2016) [#1]
As promised. Here is the first peek at the new stand alone palette editor.
I've needed to rewrite a few controls which were mojox based. but it's all working together well.

still work to do, but thought you'd all like a look


Derron(Posted 2016) [#2]
Just regarding the visuals:

Brush-size-slider: maybe better put a big "|----|" on top, and a " |-| " at the bottom, so you could use a normal "triangle" inbetween. Avoids the odd look of the blue rectangle being "half over" a brush.

Right side of "brightness slider": is this a alpha-slider? Maybe really fade off into the background color - or let a checkerboard shine through (...hey right sided of this there is already one ;-)).


All three controls: if you would lower the height of all three of them, you could:
- put the current brush size in a small quad on top of the brush-size-slider
- put the current color in a 2x1 quad-rectangle over both color-variation-sliders (brightness and alpha)

So you get space for another slider / brush-preset/... and narrowing the control panel.


@ icon toolbar
I understand that "copy paste save load" are next to the color-preview as you want this color to be saved/copied/whatever. But it is a bit "uncommon" to have the color controls in a different part of the application (preview=top, controls=bottom).


@ color of "panel headers"
Are they adjusted to something (choosen color, a "GUI"...) ? For now I would say a "color app" should avoid "colors" - to avoid "tampering" what you see on the screen while choosing colors (hard to describe what I mean, but I am sure you understand what I intent to say)



@ color-variation-list (right top):
- maybe split R, G, B -Text drawing so you could align the values properly (so all Rs are printed below each other, all Gs, all Bs ...)



Hope you already plan that thing as "module" of a bigger app, so you can mix them into a bigger project at the end.


bye
Ron


AdamStrange(Posted 2016) [#3]
panel header colors are fixed. its my bad for showing the same 'cool' being used as well.

Hope you already plan that thing as "module" of a bigger app
This is actually the reverse.
They are already part of a bigger project. this is the stand-alone version that allows you 'just' to create palettes. I'll be posting the actual code for the palette load/save when it's finished.

This way you can use the source to include palette loading into your own apps - for whatever purpose you want. and use the app to create the palettes


Derron(Posted 2016) [#4]
I am not sure whether there is a real need for such an app (except for your personal tasks)

a) the user is professional pixel artist
-> this user of course has his favorite pixel tool which already handles palettes


b) the user is a hobby spriter and just draws pixel by pixel
-> these users select their colors out of the default color selectors (all colors from darkest to brightest)


So there is only this group left (imho ... I might miss things):

c) people needing color definitions in source code to programmatically create sprites (by formulas etc.)
-> they benefit from an external palette tool. Exception: they also belong to a)



So what do I miss, what is the "target group" for this tool? For the spriter-tool I understand that there might be users, but "palette" is so small, it is just a "sub function" of something.


Nonetheless I have an idea for an extra function:
"open palette from image"
-> open dialogue allows to load in an image file
-> app then processes the image and extracts all colors found in there (and eg. sorts them by R, then G, then B - or by luminance/brightness (my github.com/GWRon/Dig.git/base.util.color.bmx contains functions/formulas for this))

This would allow to eg. extract palettes from "spritesets" found somewhere or created in other programmes not exporting palettes.


Another "maybe handy" function is a "checkboard pattern"-preview consisting of 2 colors: in "low res art" sometimes you want to limit colors to eg. 16 - and to create "mixtures" you then do c1,c2,c1,c2 .... to help the "palette designer" to choose colors, such a checkboard pattern (maybe make it a dropdown allowing for multiple known patterns ... like ///// or \\\\\ or ==== or xxxx) could help finding the right color choice.

This is no function for the "palette" itself, but to choose the right colors.


bye
Ron


AdamStrange(Posted 2016) [#5]
here's the latest pic -almost finished now


first off is the addition of the color buttons to the toolbar. these are:
color to mono
color ramp
swap color
copy color

next up are the colorbox buttons
pick - allows you to pick a color from the colorbox
profile - allows you to profile the colors in the colorbox and create a palette from these (thanks Derron)
clear - clear the coilorbox to the current color
use - assign the current color to the color palette

I've also activated the loading of images into the colorbox. as shown. The palette has been grabbed/profiled from this image


AdamStrange(Posted 2016) [#6]
one more thing (i forgot)
as you can now load images into the colorbox and pick colors from the colorbox. you can directly create your own custom palettes from images.

E.G.
Here is the same image loaded into the colorbox, but with user colors picked from it


You can see that the palette has changed size. so how do you do this?
Easy, just click the eye:


And finally if you need to edit a color in the palette, just click the main color and you get the rgb/light/sat controls: