Simple desktop backgrounds

[steve30]

I have finally got my A1200 set up with an HD and WB3.1.

But it lacks a background. Looking at grey all the time is boring.

I only want something that uses <32 colours because anthing higher and it slows the machine down.

I have looked all over and I don't seem to be able to find any decent backgrouns that are 640x480 and <32 colours.

Does anyone know where I could find some?

[motorollin]

I don't know where you could find one in 32 colours at that resolution, but you could scale a larger picture down and reduce its colour depth.

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moto

[steve30]

The image would look ugly if I removed a load of the colours.

That's why I want pics that actually use <32 colours.

[motorollin]

Not necessarily.

Although a picture's colour depth may be 16 or 24 bit, the chances are it isn't actually using all the colours available in that colour depth. If it is, then many of the colours may be duplicated, or so similar that you wouldn't notice if they were adjusted to the same position in the palette.

If you use a decent paint package (I use Photoshop) then it will look at what colours are actually used, and then decide how best to reduce the colour depth.

--
moto

[steve30]

I see what you mean now.

I loaded several high colour images up in Personal Paint 7 and converted them to 32 colours.

They now run nicely in my Workbench.

I hope we have a nice day soon so I can go out armed with my camera to take some nice pics to use as desktop backgrounds.

[motorollin]

Seems a shame to dither nice Yorkshire landscapes to 32 colours though! Can't you run in a few more colours?

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moto

[uncharted]

At that that resolution (especially if using a VGA mode driver) workbench becomes very slow in higher bit-depths.  Not to mention it eats up precious chipRAM

[motorollin]

True, that is a problem with AGA Workbenches. Makes me glad to have my Voodoo so I don't have to worry about it  :-D

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moto

[AmiKit]

What about to use FBlit? I remember it saves a lot of ChipMem on AGA machines...

[steve30]

I have a blizzard 1230 50MHz. It slows down to the speed of an A500 when I'm running in 256 colours.

Personal paint seems to do a reasnably good job of changing the colours of an image.

You mention Yorkshire scenery. Well, if it's just a field and a couple of houses and sky then it should be fine in 16 colours (joke)

Does anyone know where I could get patterns from, e.g. to use instead of photos? I;m crap at designing my own in WBPattern. :-)

[Amigaz]

Try using FBlit, FText and BlazeWCP patches..speeds up things alot and don't forget to use a utility which copies your kickstart to fast ram
Another things which speeds up things alot is filesystems like PFS and SFS and the patch SystemPatch2

All of the above makes my A1200 Blizzard 1230 fly, running OS3.9

[steve30]

OK, I will try those.

[Dagon]

search for a background pattern in google.

I found this site that has some patterns. This looks good in my wb ;-)

I bet you can convert it to an 8 colours image with Art department.