Yeah a deep orange could work just wondering if there is enough variance to to fill all the colors though. I see that there is section to load palmod data on ESN’s editor might transfer it all over like that.
We have PSD files set up somewhere of all the stages I think - we really should share those - I’ll collate those and the portraits and host them up on a file sharing site for those that want them. It take a while to set them up but having them in batch like that to use in Photoshop is super handy.
That way we might see more background edits, which would be great!
Alien - maybe you could post a quick mini ‘how-to’ for using the backgrounds with ESNs site? It still confuses me I must admit…
^^^^
I will, no worries, I’m just very busy atm, so it could take me some time.
(I wish one of us had kept our msn exchanges when I explained it to you last time, LET…)
I’m not extra sure, but I believe reading the “How To…” written by ESN and bookmarked in the first post explains how to add a new entry, rip something new and add it to the editable database, gives you a good idea of how the whole set of programms work on ESN’s and that’s already a hint on how to edit in photoshop.
LET, it would save me some efforts if you have the PSDs already set, but I can give you a hand there if we oraganize and decide who sets which PSD.
Aside from that JED, now that I think of it, I had done an edit for oro’s stage which looked pretty much like a bright sundown… It’s still archived on ESN’s database as it keeps track of everything when you update a pal. Maybe you can pick some colours on that one (I figured the coulours were too strong and didn’t match my characters edits, so I redid Oro’s to something different)
Let me check… yup, it’s here
in the left colummn, click on “oro stage” > “entire stage” you’ll see my latest edit, then click on “HIST”, the blue tab on the left of the preview I uploaded and you’ll see my previous steps (however I hadn’t changed the preview for teh second step), save the preview on your comp and pick whatever you want.
I’m too busy to write the tuto right now, but read ESN’s already and fiddle a bit with the database and you’ll get how things work by the time I manage to put it together 
Last word, now that I think of it, LET, maybe you could post this Image you made to explain to me how you worked on Ryu’s portrait(remember the white headband that goes with my edit ?).
It’s pretty simple to start up, clear, and if you correct this ticked or unticked adjacent colours on the magic wand error and cut out the palettes previews that we used before ESN finished his set of tools, that could do it, no ?
Alright been messing around with ESN’s editor the only problem I have is just minor ones, not being able select more than one color and the values are set to 32bit, trades off to getting to see a preview of your edit. Need to work more on it, but what I got so far of a lifebar edit.
hey, I’m not sure I get exactly what you mean, but neither LET or I do use the actual edit tool on ESN’s.
Basically, what we do is save both the “matrix image” and the “original colours image” from ESN’s, then open up photoshop and do the edit there.
>>> see at the end of the post for the detailled method
Then we flatten the finished edited image and save it as .png format (as it normally is on ESN’s if memory serves) and use the “get colour code from image” function on ESN’s corresponding page (and by corresponding page I mean, if you open the EDIT (<E>) tab for Oro’s background, you’ll click “get the colour code from image” on Oro’s background EDIT page)
Then, we copy the new code (sometimes, the site is stuck and the code can’t be generated due to ESN’s internet provider’s restrictions, but there’s a bypass to it, heck is, I don’t have the link here if you happen to have the page hung while upping a modifed image to get the code) and we paste it in the corresponding field when you “create a new palette” (or is it “add a new palette” ? ) on the “modified palettes database”.
Once the palette corresponding to your edit is created, you can generate a new 51 file from this “modified palettes database” page.
>>> how to properly edit in photoshop :
As I said,
-
create a new photoshop document
-
then put the matrix image on a new layer
-
then put the original colours image on a new layer (above the matrix one).
-
now we’ll use the magic wand to select the colours that we want to change.
settings for that tool are (please correct me LET, as I won’t be able to check on my other comp for a long time) : tolerance 5 (or was that 10 ??) , untick the “contiguous pixels” box -
the last thing to understand is that you want to select all the colours controlled by one palette entry.
What I mean is that youll probably have several parts of an image that use the exact same colour, but these pixels being on very different areas of the image may not be controlled by the same palette.
This is particularly true for backgrounds because as you noticed these iamges are so big that they are controlled by many more palettes than the one we have for characters (around 50 for ryu’s stage if I reacll, over 100 for remy, around 30 for gouki/shin Gouki, ~50? for yang? …).
In order to select all the pixels that are controlled by the same palette entry, we’ll use the magic wand on the matrix image layer instead of the original colours layer.
Yet, since the original colours layer is above the matrix one and hides it, you can still see what you’re working on an be sure to select a particular colour anywhere it could exist.
Then the rest is up to you, either you copy selected areas (do the selection on the matrix and do the copy from the original colours !! ) and change their range using “Ctrl+U”, or fill a new layer with a colour and place it above the original colours in a special layer mode (like “colour” or “tint” or multiply) and fiddle with the opacity settings.
For backgrounds it’s more comfortable to split one of ESN’s image in different parts
> usually I split it in 3 :
- background 1 (sky, etc…)
- background 2 (buildings, floor, etc…)
- foreground/animated objects (I never bother placing them as they appear in game, but rather just get rid of all the pink and put them on a separate layer above the rest) (for these, I mostly end up applying the same transformations I did on the background 2 layer, say, if I added a blue layer in colour mode with an opacity of 42%, I just do the same on the objects layer, makes it fit in)
- last point, if you did split a stage in several parts, just put all the photoshopped parts back in place on ESN’s image and flatten. then save in .png format (is that it?) and you’re ready to upload it on ESN’s site as described above.
Hope I’m clear, it’s pretty tedious to explain all by text, but belive me, it’s very simple in the end. I’m out of time, if someone with a better english than I feels like ironing my mistakes there or all the poorly referenced ESN pages or objects, correct me, I’ll update.
I think you explained it pretty well Alien. I did a Gouki test image to try and illustrate but for some reason I can’t upload to ESN’s site to get a pallette code back, shame.
Anyway, here’s the image I got after 10 mins edit time in Photoshop. Nothing special, but different enough and could be quite nice if I went into more detail. I wanted to test it in game but no luck, oh well.
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii47/L___E___T/GOUKIsatsuinohadotest.png
Any ideas why it wouldn’t upload to ESN’s? I tried a BMP as well to no avail 
http://ensabahnur.free.fr/3S_Pal_Mod/3sPalMod.php?palette=438&paletteDb=0
Works fine on my computer.
I created a new entry on my site: http://ensabahnur.free.fr/ModifiedPalettesDB/index.php?page=paletteList&paletteIdPermLink=161
Probably doesn’t work online due to ISP restriction 
Thanks ESN! Though it was just a test to show how quickly you can mock something up and get it to appear in-game. I did this at my office and I think there’s something blocking uploads, I can’t even upload to photobucket anymore, sigh… Add to that my home Internet is down right now too for a few days.
Alien I think you should take contiguous off and set tolerance to 0 actually, but I’ll check.
I will do PSDs but not all stages are ripped and I can’t upload until my home Internet is back unfortunately. I have the portrait colours ripped like you mentioned and will also upload that image and a mini how-to.
However, I won’t do the same for the backgrounds because there’s just way too many colours for it to make sense and we have the matrix (red) ripped images for that use anyway.
On that note - is it possible to do matrix images for the portraits ESN? I’ve already clean ripped them all using Mame if that helps? Reason being, characters like Makoto and Ken share so many colours from their skin to their clothes and accessories, it makes them really hard to edit actually. Harder than the stages even. If it’s way too much work don’t consider it, but if it’s easy using the rips like the Oro sprite then it would be worthwhile. No animations to worry about either of course (just a shadow version like the stages).
it’s been a while but i tried to make a gouki with his sf4 #9 color. since the belt, gloves, and sandals share the same color, it’s not exact.
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/6448/akumapalmod.png
CODE: (""00002104A52084186318420C00106318420C6314631442144210420C9C5076485A6BD65AA52084186318420C0010631821086314631442144210420C52382A2056180E10563A153AB329711D1015EE0C8D081C53DC4A2E21CB18AA14880C4508FF7FF75E31468C3129250A46A839673146290525E520A314620CDF08DA081F09)
- LET
sounds like you suffer memory loss, mate !
ESN and I have ripped each and every stage in the game along with every character portraits from the select screen (plus a few other things), I also did a couple animation sheet (one for Oro and one for Twelve) that display every colour used in their palette so that we can fine tune them in photoshop after messing with them in PALMOD !
Yes, making animation sheets for other characters would be nice since it’s always quite hard to tell wether a given colour should be light or dark from the lonely PALMOD sprite.
Besides, I’m not sure PSDs would be that useful (and worth the bother), since all the neessary material is hosted on ESN’s site (matrix images AND original colour images -you can load original colours from the EDIT tab once you clicked <E> for a palette entry-)
That’s all you’ll ever need and once you’re in photoshop, you can easily disassemble and reassemble background images.
What I can do though,is post one of my PSDs for people to mess with and see how it’s organized.
I’m a bit reluctant with it since I’m a careful but messy worker and keep hundreds of layers and no so useful edit steps, so I’m afraid that would add to confusion instead of clarifying things ^^
I’ll check what I have at hand…
But posting one of your own could save me the bother 
As for the colour code from the moded background that doesn’t show up , I got it quite often with big images (namely backgrounds), the problem comes from ESN’s ISP that restricts amount of data coming through or something.
However, ESN built a workaround, I don’t have it at hand now though.
Basically it’s just a link that you click once the page has hung while trying to load the new colour code for your edit, that brings you to a new page which displays the code.
-
ESN
Hey ! could you please post here the workaround you found for this colour code that doesn’t show up ? You gave it to me months ago, it is bookmarked on my other computer but I won’t be able to get there before maybe months I think… -
Poot
glad to see you back !
Alien your PSDs are much nicer organised than mine. I don’t use channels or masks or adjust layers really.
So, I checked ESN’s site and I figure Necro’s, Ryu’s , Oro’s and Ibuki’s stages are missing (or incomplete) - do you have those stages worked into the site somewhere? If you do I’ll wrap them all up into a PSD batch and host it up soon as I can along with the character portraits.
http://ensabahnur.free.fr/ROM_51_SearchColor/updatePalette.php
LET, I checked on ESN’s site, as I thought, every stage is there, Ibuki, Ryu, etc are no exception.
*Click here then,
*Filter the word “Entire stage” (or “Shadows and black screen when SA” if it’s what you’re after… note that the matrix image is the same for both normal in game colours and superpause colours)
*then, let’s take ibuki as example, click the <(E)> on the right column, after the “update” button
*you’re now on the EDIT page, the image displayed or not should be the matrix version of the stage, save it on your comp
- now click “Load original palette” and save the new image
and you got all that you need.
Aside from that, please check if you have the latest versions for sure, I remeber we had a few hit and miss steps where we had forgotten some parts of the stage, or had incorrect addresses, I don’t remember when I sent you these files, and I think they’re good to go, but in doubt, have a quick look ^^
Ok, that said, here’s a little zip file where I stuffed together two PSD files of mine, both about Oro’s stage edit.
details and notes on the two files :
-
“oro_compil+allVersions” is just previews of various versions I did before ending up with the current one, most are ugly, some looked ok like that but didn’t match or lacked depth when I tested them in game.
Most were done at a time when we weren’t done with ripping al the stagess, so they lack some layers. -
“oro12_reboot” was my final take on that edit. It combines in different folders various versions of parts of the stage, sometimes I kept a preceding version and changed some other part, but rarely redid it from scratch.
“Calque” is just the french for “Layer”, this appears a lot as I never intented on realeasing it and you’ll find tons of unused, unnamed wip layers.
Layers are organized in folders, self explanatory, activate, deactivate folders to see previous versions, et voilà.
Notice that you’ll find at the bottom of [BLUE Sky Front] the matrix of that layer.
Actually this was a very messy edit I had to organize as it grew as this was my first try at it.
I checked my Sean edit which may have been a better example as it wouldn’t have that many layers/folders but for some reason it appeared corrupted on the version of photoshop I use here.
Hope someone finds it handy.
Once we’re sure we got enough info accross for people to do it at home, I’ll do my best on updating this thread to get all the info on the first page. Promised.
Lol, thx for reminding me the “turnaround”, i totally forgot about it :d
It’s on this page: http://ensabahnur.free.fr/3S_Pal_Mod/debug.html
So, if you launch a process via button “get palette code from image” and it crashed (white page), wait like 30 seconds and open the link above.
Anyway, i just add a simplier method on the page (under button “get palette code from image”).
As above, if process crashed, wait 30sec for process to finsish correctly, then close the page and relaunch it. Click on the little “here” link under “get palette code from image” button, it will replace content of the above textarea by the code corresponding to the uploaded image.
Unfortunately, you can’t test it yet (damn ISP), you have to create a new entry or update the old one in the other tool:
http://ensabahnur.free.fr/ModifiedPalettesDB/index.php
Once done, click on the “Edit” button of the entry, and result should be displayed!
Sorry, this explanation may not be that clear, ask here if needed!
http://i.imagehost.org/0939/contrastfighters.png
ALEX:
("a0018DF67BF5B5F57FF4EDF467F3E3F323D01F110AB044B087E29BC1CBA1813210C538B462932A92D472D06296214453DC634852C241800001F0FDD0231018800FD7BF66FF66FFD7BE44F2015DF1E7F161F06B6090E016A0005000400000000008B411720102C061C02107F1F9F1EBF1D3725B024271C1E1C74204D2006140214)
DUDLEY:
("a0000522150212F15CC10CA108808670400000000AD1C8914460C230400000000A914E72C0000713F8843C04200428035610C0000BF26DA19CB18A914460C0000FF5BFF4B9F3F3F2FDF1E7F0A3F5BBF463F2A7F097B4E3B2525042200210000000C01C704640022000000271C230C000001001E0314029D0D130D010085102308)
AKUMA:
("a000000002425A31462102108000000000204063804280308020402041B141318716F2C672425A31462102108000000000204063804280308020402040E0C0504110C0704D71974151211EF088E044A002800BF2E7F268A1C4714251023040104FF369E15390C13140D105B021B01F800EE00A900470023000000390C13140D10)
MAKOTO:
("a01001F437F22FF195F09BC007800FF109D10590C12040C04A03EC0396031A02069109C3F392BD622521AAD15290D1539B1308B209E3F671C230000000000803E10101F081C14151812181F081C141518022CDE7F396F946210521D1C161C0E18000042086314A51CE72808314A396B45CE513156735E9F6B5C57FA425732D325)
TWELVE:
("12104BF379F33DD1E98169506530250022D022C02BB187814551412140E0C0C04)
URIEN:
("Q2104FF6B5F5FFE4E5F295B1C771C52100D182808630C630C532450242B1403007D03FF6B5F5FFE4E5F295B1C771C52100D182808630C630C532450242B140300D45178633B4AF755943D51292C1DE814D451D4515F533F4B7F3A3F32FA255519)
elena:
("a0000DF4F5F3A9F19F620F618B314700C4D082C0C2908050404040100010000001104FF203F19FF0C9E009B005F1D481029142510231401040108000015040D08BC421E1BDC129A0EF501B2015001BF713F593F3C1C18F647F027CA0344021C641445123DAD346A2C4818270C03086069406A405A40395872D6695259CE48946A)
chunners:
("a0708DF7F5F675F57DF3D1F257D21161DD1186C10DF579F327E210E29A91C240CDD4E3D369D313E25DE24BC1CB71895186F1C6F104D10280808008410781484104472035E834DE348442045202210210421089A7F9C423C3E9C31FC3037200E180104DC5E9C5E5C42C424062D48358A3DCC450E4E50569262D46A1673587B997F)
ryu:
("a00000000FF4B1F4F7F4A9E369B2AF619EC101F531F5EDF5DDE755C711B69553D3F477F63FF4F3F57BF52BF3ABC2E171E2E113F579F621F62DE755D755B695641181C0E18BF423E32DC259A1D170DD5045104BF427F36D92C952C72242F140B101F0E941131118A10C6288410CD7D4D71AB6446448530630C630CFF571F4F7F4A)
I’ve been using palettes from this thread for so long, I figured I should contribute 
I’m amazed how well you guys manipulate the palettes, you’re all crazy talented. After screwing around with Palmod for a few hours, you start to realize the artists didn’t really think much about the sprites having different colours. The weird decisions they made with colour really works against you when you’re trying to make them look a certain way.
Anyway, I love the look of using contrasting hues to create shadow, so I tried going nuts with that concept (and the right side of the saturation slider)
I really like that as well - they way they did it for the new KOF sprites was really nice I thought. That Ryu and Dudley are especially nice!
ESN I’m afraid I can’t upload this to your site or test it, but I made a Ryu edit that I’m happy with. I’ll need to see if it fits in the game by testing, but I don’t know how to actually get it in game. Because the palette code takes up about 12 pages, I can’t copy and paste it in, is there another way? It’s a desaturated edit so I’d like to check the sprites don’t ‘pop’ too much. I made the foliage and the crow more contrasted to try and balance it, but again it needs a proper test - right now it’s just theory.
Anyway, here it is, let me know what your thoughts are guys it’s similar to Jed’s approach with the lighting, sorry Jed but I liked yours too much to ignore - I had to fiddle alot with the sky but I will leave it for now and see:
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii47/L___E___T/RYUeditSummerevening-1.png
My internet is back but still painfully slow while it gears up to speed. I’m collating all the backgrounds and portraits still but it’s not an overnight job. When they’re done I’ll post a link immediately. Right now I can’t upload shit.
I add your palette here: index
To build the rom from here, you just have to click on the “Patch” button on the left of the palette (above the Edit button).
A new part will be loaded below the palette, “Add palette to patch”, with a button “Add to patch”. Click on it. (Patch button should have its color changed)
You can do this for any other palette you want.
Once done for all the palettes you need, click on “Patch process” link in left menu.
Here, you can tick or untick any of the palettes you have previously selected. Then, click on the “Generate rom 51 with checked palette” button.
After a few seconds, a new page is displayed with a link to get the freshly generated ROM.
Download it, add it to your 3S test rom, zip and play!
Hope i’m clear enough!
Hey LET your edit looks really neat!
Can’t wait to try it and see how it fits in game.
What I usually do then to have an idea of what it looks like with my own edits, is open up two palmods, one with the new background rom loaded and the other with my current 51 and copy paste from one to the other.
A bit painstaking but most backgrounds are just around 50 pals to copy paste. (remy is over 100 though :/)
Someday I’ll have added all of my pals there and this should be easy to generate a new rom and avoid this.
ESN, could you add a filter on the modified palettes page to view palettes only by uploader ? No hurry but could be good in term.
Welcome Sports ! and thanks for contributing !
You colud change Twelve’s eyes maybe as they don’t fit much, and pay attention to Gouki’s left tight’s lightspot which may look too dark if you want feedback.
LET nice job! I haven’t been messing with 3s palettes for a little bit just to give heads up I’m adding my edits to the database.
Thanks for adding ESN and thanks for the encouragement guys. Editing backgrounds is tricky and it takes so long to get convincing results but it’s fun too. I’ll give it a full test when I can I also need to add my edits to the database but I’ve not had much luck with my internet lately. It’s on the list though, because rapidshare links are shit and they’ve changed their policy so all my links will die this month.
Hey, nerdish afternoon for me, at last I tested the oro spritesheet I had built for fine tunning in photoshop (e.g. adjusting all the colours that don’t appear on his PALMOD sprite, like the animation of his eyes or the normal SA2 startup move and ball) and it displays every used colour.
phew.
I did what I hadn’t done in a long while, I added my Oro palettes which are near finished but still WIP on ESN’s database (as I still haven’t fine tuned them using the said spritesheet).
Also added one older state for most of them, so that you can see before/after how I enhanced volume and stuff.
Obvious on some like the Red Oro.
enjoy