Color Conversion

[fishy_fiz]

Are there palette restrictions? The "problem" with doing a quick conversion is that the colors in the ranges defined also allow for a few colors that work within a range for an enemy that isnt that color (ie greys work for shading fo both green and red) is that those greys will also get a tinge of red.
The best way around it is to manually edit the palette, while leaving the greys alone (as theyre also used with the horn).

Here's a few quick mock-ups to show what I mean......

http://imageshack.us/f/213/a1automaticrecolour.png/   <-- automatic color conversion
http://imageshack.us/f/7/a1bmanualpallete.png/           <-- manual palette edit

Bare in mind the manual edit was done quickly, the colors need to be editted further for more saturation (ala automatic conversion). It will also retain greys, etc. unlike automatic conversions.

[fishy_fiz]

Yeah, I realised it wasnt right yet (kinda embarassed to have people think that was a real attempt actually . It was just to demonstrate that you cant just change colorbalance/saturation and that it involves manual work. While the latter (manual edit) isnt as red as it needs to be it was to show that the image itself doesnt suffer, unlike the auto conversion.

Can you re-upload the palette please by the way? That one has too many artifacts (over 7000 colors), making it nigh on impossible to work with

[fishy_fiz]

Im gonna guess some sort of "load palette" was used there, which makes things easy, but gives pretty poor results. I mean no offense, but I thought that was pretty bad. Look at the graphics for example. There's been considerable detail lost by automatic palette conversion, which will often "chose" badly when looking for closest color within a palette.
Again, quick, but results are heavily compromised.

[fishy_fiz]

Sorry, re-reading that back it sounded harsher than I intended.

A few typos, or misplaced words, etc. What Id meant was more along the lines of:

"I mean no offense, but I thought that converted pretty bad. Look at the graphics closely for example. There's been considerable detail lost by automatic palette conversion".

Sorry, I dont mean to drone on it, just wanted to "correct" it 'cos I felt I came across too harshly (which was then repeated by XDelusion as well  

@XDelusion

So basically you want all the graphics using a universal 256 color palette?
Are there any "rules" in regards to palette indexes with different types of graphics (for example, do backgrounds, walls, floors, etc. use 1st 128 colors and "objects" use last 128?). Not an actual question by the way, just as an example of what I mean by "rules" to the palette.

Also, where did you obtain the graphics? Im looking for a fun, mostly gfx oriented project to play with at the moment, and have some free time, so Im happy to finally help you with some sort of AB3d "conversion" game if you'd like?

[fishy_fiz]

The tricky part so far with my experiments is that when the monster is green it uses some greys for shading on its arms. When changing palette indexes to instead use reds the greys for shading no longer looks right. Unfortunately the same palette indexes for those greys are used elsewhere so you cant just change them to a new color.

I did this mock-up to show what I mean,....

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/a1bmanualpallete2.png/

As you can see the right hand and lower forearm look all wrong and messy 'cos of the greys. I manually retouched the left side though, just by matching brightness levels of greys and reds in the palette. Worked ok, but a bit time consuming