Pekka Kana 2 Palette Utility


Table of contents

Features:
  • Menus & Shortcuts
  • Undo/Redo
  • Selecting palette entries:
  • Absolute & Relative

    • Questions:
  • My palette changes don't show up in the game.
  • I changed a colors Hue/Saturation/Value but it's still white/black.










    • Menus & Shortcuts:

    MenuItemShortcutFunctionality
    Image
    ↳
    		OpenCtrl+OLoads an 8 bit image file for palette editing.
    ↳
    		ConvertCtrl+Shift+OLoads an image that doesn't use a palette (PNG, JPEG) and converts it to a paletted image using the currently loaded palette.
    ↳
    		SaveCtrl+SSaves the currently loaded image with the currently loaded color palette.
    ↳
    		Save As...Ctrl+Shift+SSame as the "Save" menu, but you can select under what name the file is going to be saved as.
    Palette
    ↳
    		ExportShift+EExports the currently loaded palette as a text file containing it's RGB values.
    ↳
    		ImportShift+IImports a previously exported color palette and sets it as the current palette.
    ↳
    		Import from image...Shift+FLoads the palette from another 8 bit paletted image and sets it as the current palette.
    Selection
    ↳
    		ClearCtrl+CUnselects all previously selected colors in the palette.
    Help
    ↳
    		ManualOpens this document.
    ↳
    		AboutShows the current version and Github page of this program.

    Undo/Redo:

    The Palette Utility supports undoing and redoing changes via Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y.
    Each individual change of any of the Hue, Saturation and Value values is it's own undo/redo action.

    Selecting palette entries:

    To select more than one palette entry hold down Ctrl while holding down the left mouse button and dragging the mouse.
    To deselect one or more palette entries hold down Ctrl while holding down the right mouse button and dragging the mouse.

    To deselect all selected entries either use the menu Selection -> Clear or use it's shortcut Ctrl + C.

    Absolute & Relative:

    Next to the Hue, Saturation and Value selection bar is a button that either says "Absolute" or "Relative".
    These options are only relevant when you have more than 1 color selected.
    The color chooser shows the color in the middle of the selection and bases changes of that colors HSV values.

    Absolute:
    In this mode each selected color will get the same changed HSV value (Hue, Saturation, Value).

    Example:
    You have selected 3 colors with the following Hues:
    40, 45, 60

    Now you select a Hue value of 80. Now each selected color will have it's Hue set to this new value of 80.
    The Hue values of the 3 selected colors will now look like this:
    80, 80, 80

    This mode can be helpful if you want all selected colors to have the same Hue/Saturation/value.
    One scenario where you might want to do this would be when you change all the darkest values in the palette or to quickly change all Hues in a row. Although, you should probably do finer adjustments, and add small differences, afterwards to make your palette more interesting.

    Relative:
    In this mode the new HSV value (Hue, Saturation, Value) is added to each selected colors previous HSV value.

    Example:
    You have selected 3 colors with the following Saturation:
    100, 130, 160

    Now you change the Saturation to be 138.
    The Saturation of the median color in your selection is 130. The program now calculates the difference between the median colors Saturation and the new Saturation value. Which would be 8 in this case.

    Now each Saturation gets added a value of 8 to it and will then have the following Saturation values:
    108, 138, 168

    The Relative mode might be most useful when changing the colors HSV Value value.

    My palette changes don't show up in the game.

    The game only uses the color palette from the background image. If you change a tilesets color palette you have to export it (Palette -> Export or Shift+E) and then load the background image (Image -> Open or Ctrl+O) and import your custom palette (Palette -> Import or Shift+I).
    Alternatively you can also load the background image and then import the tileset's palette via the Palette -> Import from image menu.

    I changed a colors Hue/Saturation/Value but it's still white/black.

    Make sure that your colors Saturation or Value values are not 0 or 255.