captkidd@athena.mit.edu (Ivan Cavero Belaunde) (03/28/89)
I remember reading not too long ago that someone wanted to know how to make desktop pictures with custom CLUTs on the Mac II. Basically the problem was that DeskPict displays the picture on the background but does not set the clut to the picture's own. I finally figured out how to do it: you will need the Klutz DA, DeskPict init, and another INIT that comes with DeskPict (I believe) called RestoreClut (If you don't have it, email me and i'll send it - or maybe if there is enough interest I might post it). Oops, almost forgot: you'll need ResEdit too. Anyhow, all RestoreClut does is set the clut to its internally stored CLUT resource with ID=200. Originally I had tried simply replaceing the Finder's clut, but the ID# is 256, and Klutz saves CLUTs only with ID 200. When I found out RestoreClut expects a CLUT w/ID 200, it was a simple matter. -First, display your desired picture on screen with the right color map (use GIFFER, PixelPaint, Vision Lab, whatever you want). -Once you have your desired pic on screen with the colors looking OK, run the Klutz DA and save the clut. -Quit the graphics pgm and run ResEdit. Open the saved clut file, select the clut "ColorTable" w ID 200 (the only one) and copy it. Then open RestoreClut and paste it in. -Drop RestoreClut in your sysfolder and rename it so that it runs before DeskPict. Make sure you save the picture you want as a PICT Resource w/ID=0 (GrayView-type document), put it in the System Fodler, and call it "DeskPicture" (as per the DeskPict docs). As an aside, I heard that there is a program called ScreenMaster that allows you to display StartupScreens with custom CLUTs (and therefore set the CLUT properly for DeskPict), but it requires a PixelPaint-format StartupScreen (I guess those store cluts in a different way). Anyhow, I don't own PixelPaint and I probably won't until I get more memory (1 meg just simply don't cut it for these big pgms). Oh, another thing. If the pix you want does not have a 4:3 h-to-v aspect ratio, it will appear distorted. If you have a program like visionlab, you can select part of the picture with that aspect ratio and simply save the selection as a resource. The deskpicture I want to display was digitized at 320 by 200, so the selection was 266 by 200 to give good 4:3 ratio. I won't be using deskpict, however, since the danged pic takes 300K of RAM by itself (can you imagine 600K of RAM usage by the system?) Like I said before, 1 meg just simply doesn't seem to cut it anymore - Carmen Berg will have to wait till I can afford more memory. Happy deskpicting! And remember, friends don't let friends hack drunk. - Ivan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | "My father peddles opium, my mother's on the dole. | | My sister used to walk the streets but now she's on parole. | | My uncle pays with little girlss; my aunt, she raped a steer, | | But they won't even speak to me 'cause I'm an engineer." | | -The MIT Engineers' Drinking Song | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | ARPA: captkidd@athena.mit.edu | | DISCLAIMER: It's my spout, not MIT's (would they really say such garbage?) | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------