Getting the best color palette

Date: Tue Nov  3 17:42:41 MST 1998
From: Michael Douma <Michael.Douma@nist.gov>
Subject: Getting the best color palette

If you have photographs or fine art that you are using full screen with a custom palette for that image, the following are my software recommendations. Using full-screen images wiuth a custom palette will use less memory, and yield better results on 8-bit systems. (All software are mac, prices are quite approximate, I have not used DeBabelizer, but suspect it will rank in the middle.)

Ranked from best to worst:

1. Adobe Imageready, PERCEPTUAL mode, $150
   (this is the best, nearly indistiguishable, plus batch processing is a breeze)
2. Photoshop Adaptive, (built in to Photoshop 5.0)
   (fairly good, not quite as excellent as ImageReady)
3. Fast Eddie, $25
   (this is also excellent, but appears a bit scattered)
4. HVS Gif Photoshop plug-in, ADAPTIVE mode, $50
   (fairly good with dithering on but colors fade
   slightly, slow, hard to batch process)
5. GraphicConverter, $25
   (appears quite dithered)
6. Standard mac/pc palette
   (always appears dithered, not recommended for fine art)

I have had excellent results making gifs with Imageready, converting them to pict and back to gif with GraphicConverter (Imageready gifs may not import palettes correctly into Director). Make sure to IMPORT the gifs, not linked externals, or it will remap to movie palette.