TonyB <ben### [at] panamaphoenixnet> wrote in message
news:37e619f6@news.povray.org...
> Have you had a look at the help files? What version are you using? Mine
> (5.5) does this (saving) just fine, and I can see the palette any time I
> want.

Thanks -- I'm using 5.0.2, and could not find any interesting new features
in their brocure to intice me to spend three figures to upgrade =again=.  I
suppose these details, which were not mentioned, comes under the general
category of "better for Web images".

So how do you view the palette?  Maybe I just missed it.

> Have you tried "exporting" it as a GIF instead of saving it as a GIF after
> color reduction?

It doesn't make any difference -- that is, it doesn't prompt me to use a
defined palette.

> You've got me there. I know of a BMP utility for making startup screens
that
> allows this, but no other program. You can also save the palette and use
it
> for other images later on.

I'm thinking it would be comparitivly simple to write a utility to modify
the palette in a PNG file, since it doesn't require decoding/reencoding the
image data at all.  Have a simple program that will find the pallette entry
with the specified RGB values, and add an Alpha to it, or otherwise change
the entry to whatever you like.  Then you can paint with special key colors
not otherwise found in the image, and then run this tool.  If POV respects
Alpha in paletted PNG's, it wouldn't matter which index it was, as the info
would be entirely contained within the image.

FWIW, I suspect that "export as GIF" in Photshop builds the palette in the
order in which it sees the colors, so the "background" color is probably
index 0.  I've not tested that in detail, though.


--John

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