Here you´ll learn how to convert images from 16 million colors 24bit to a 16 colors image 4bit, this images are to make bootscreens.

I must say, This is hard. Hope you understand.

Working with ResHack is a little complicated because you need to edit the original bootscreen, here learn to begin from a 16 million colors image.

Here we go!

You will need a tool named Paint Shop Pro, I use Paint Shop Pro 8, but it can be done also with 7.

1) Open Paint Shop. Now open the image which you´ll use to make the bootscreen. It will be of course in 16 million colors.

2) Resize the image to 640x480 resolution, this is the resolution for all bootscreens. Click Image/Resize.

3) After the image is resized click on the top of the windows in the menu Image/Decrease color depth/X Colors. You must select a number between 24 and 96, 32 is always a good number but you can experiment with lower or higher while you keep in mind between 24 and 96. Select Method Optimized Median Cut/Error Diffusion/Reduce Color Bleeding and click ok.

Important: You must never decrease the colors directly to 16, or it will cause the image looks terrible. First to X and then to 16.

4) Click Image/Decrease Color depth/16 colors and select method Optimized Octree/Error Diffusion/Reduce Color Bleeding and click ok.

If the image looks a little bit bad, (obviously it must look a little bit bad because it is 16 colors) just undo operations and try another number when you are decreasing to X.

Sometimes I try more than 10 times when the image quality is bad.

5) We have now a color palette, located at the upper right corner of the program window. It must show 16 colors exactly. The colors in the palette are counted from left to right.

Some colors in the palette are always disorganized, you must resort them.
This first color in the palette must be the same color of your image background, most of the time black and white, if the background is kinda white and the first color in the palette is kinda black it will boot horrible, to avoid that edit the color palette. Go to Image/Palette/Save Palette and give a name for it in a safe place for later use.

To change the colors in the palette open NOTEPAD and open your palette, it will show something like this:



In this case the first color is white, if your image showes white and the background is black change it like this:



The Second Color in the palette must be always BLACK
for example:


The palette you have of course will look different, the only thing that is the same is the Second color, and the first color, according to your background color.

Save the palette as a .pal file and close NotePad.

6) Now back in our image in Paint Shop we have the disorganized color palette, remember?. Lets take this chance to make the frame for the progress bar, the rectangle where the progress bar moves. To do it just make a rectangle 126x15 resolution, or if you want to win time, just colorize the original bootscreen´s frame with one of the colors of the disorganized color palette, when you colorize it, cut it and paste it in your image, it will automatically increase the colors again to 16 million, but there´s a solution for that. Flatten the image.

7) Now we must load again the color palette we sorted before in NotePad, for that click Image/palette/Load palette and open the folder where you saved it, be sure to select method Nearest Color Matching, you´ll see a very little change in your image, that happens because you loaded a sorted color palette!.

8) You have now your Main image, save it as .bmp and close it, now with paint shop open the progress bar bitmap, the default blue progress bar, click Image/Palette/Load palette and load the palette we sorted in NotePad, be sure to indicate Mantein indexes and load it. You´ll see now the progress bar in another color, you can edit it, choose a brush and a color of the palette and experiment . When you´re done save it as .bmp.

NOTE: The Main bitmap and the progress bar bitmap must have the same color palette or they won´t look like you think they will, that´s why we loaded it in step 8.

NOW YOU´RE DONE WITH YOUR IMAGES DUDE!!

I take about 15 or 20 minutes to make one, I´m used to it, its very easy. This is the best I can explain.

Now that you have your images you can continue with the BootEditor Tutorial!

Good Luck!