iScreensaver Forums

posted 01-13-2003 06:11 AM            

I made icons for the control panel and installer in photoshop and saved them as pict files. I applied them to the Mac/Win icons in the iScreensaver program. After the files were built, the Mac icon changed color. I checked to see if some how it had a "Label" color but not.

Got any clues?

posted 01-13-2003 09:05 AM            

You will get the best results if you pre-dither your artwork to 256 colors in a graphics program. Most of them have presets for the standard mac and windows color palettes (also called CLUTs).

Unfortunately, the color palette choices are severely limited and sometimes non-consistent under Windows versions, limiting the final icon quality.

One work-around is to manually edit the installer icon after you have built the installer, using a resource editing tool (such as ResEdit or Resourceror on Mac, or various windows tools), but this only changes the installer icon, not the control panel icon.

To summarize: Pre dither your artwork to the standard 256 color system palettes on Mac and Windows.

In photoshop, do this:
Create your artwork.
From the "Image" menu choose "Mode" then "Index Colored".
From the "Palette" popup, choose either "System (Mac OS)" or "System (Windows)". Leave the "Dither:" setting as is, unless you know a setting you like.

Then save the image and re-import into iScreensaver.

posted 01-13-2003 09:51 AM            

Hey, I just had a look at the Control panel icon, it still has the default graphic in it. The alias that is in the Apple menu is also miscolored.

I will look into using Color Look-Up Tables like you mentioned.

Thanks