Programmers Palettes for other Systems and Platforms

This part of the programmers-palettes contains downloads for non-PC platforms, usually retro (old) hardware platforms, that are not already available in each color set. For example, Grafx2 is available on many platforms, and uses a JASC-PAL format file, as used by PaintShop Pro.

Each folder contains file formats specific to that platform. Where applicable, those may be: system palette files, palette as image, art package palette files.

There are three main reasons for this:

there are many platforms still being actively developed for
on some platforms there are many art packages specific to that platform
some palette formats on those platforms require human intervention to create properly
on some platforms there are more that one standard used for system palettes

An example of this is the Atari ST GEM VDI 256 color palette.

a new 16 color palette needs to be remapped into the ordered color list
the orginal 16 colors needs to be remapped into the palette to be usable, as they are usually based colors
the default color palette was mathmatically generated, so it is dark
the alternative color palette is more common, with many pastel colors, so it is light

In the Atari ST case, although some art packages can handle image formats from other plaforms, some art packages can load a GEM control panel 16 color palette, while others have there own palette formats, and still others do not handle palette files. The GEM Desktop also saves the 16 color palette as part of its DESKTOP.INF file.

A color palette is most often stored in headers in an image format, but not always, like MSX screen grabs, so a palette needs to be loaded programmatically (with code).

Sometimes there are no conversion tools available to convert a GIF or PNG to a native art package format. And on older platforms, a lot of GIF conversion tools can't handle more than 256 colors. Even on PC some tools have better conversion algorithms than others, even within the same software company. For example, Adobe ImageReady produces better 256 color GIF files than Adobe Photoshop does, and can produce 16 million color GIF files.

Currently available:

Atari ST, Falcon, ARAnyM

system palettes: remapped GiMP palette files

remapped 256 color default VDI

remapped 256 color alternate VDI

palettes formats: Control Panel .PAL

X-Control .PAL

Z-Control .PAL

image formats: .PI1 Degas / Degas Elite

.NEO Neochrome / Neochrome Master

.GIF Graphics Interchange Format

Atari ST, Falcon, ARAnyM
system palettes:	remapped GiMP palette files
	remapped 256 color default VDI
	remapped 256 color alternate VDI
palettes formats:	Control Panel .PAL
	X-Control .PAL
	Z-Control .PAL
image formats:	.PI1 Degas / Degas Elite
	.NEO Neochrome / Neochrome Master
	.GIF Graphics Interchange Format