"NEOLoad" Neochrome <-> Bitmap image converter

[joefish]

I couldn't find an image converter that could convert both ways, from ST to PC and PC to ST, so I wrote my own.



You can get it from here:
http://railtron.com/files/atarist/NEOLoad_V1.3.zip

It only works with 320 x 200 x 16-colour .NEO files and 320 x 200 .BMP files.

To convert from ST to PC, load the .NEO image into the top panel, then save it out as a .BMP..

To convert PC to ST, first resize your image to 320 x 200 and reduce to 16 colours in another paint program, then save as a Windows compatible bitmap. My program won't do any of the scaling or recolouring for you - it will give a warning if it finds more than 16 colours.

Load the .BMP into the bottom window and it will extract the palette. You may find that some of the colours in your original image are combined into the same colour when reduced to the 512 colour palette of the ST, so the palette extracted may be less than 16 colours. You could then try an image with a larger palette, e.g. 20 or 24 colours, or you could try increasing the saturation and contrast in your original image to make the colours more distinct.

You can use the 'Swap Palette' option to re-order the colours in the palette, and 'Preview' to see what the result will look like. Then save out the .NEO version of your image. You can try loading it back into the top again, instead of the Preview.

It was written in Borland C++ Builder 4, and sources are included.

[Maartau]

That's rock !

Thanks for the sharing - it can be useful in many ways !

Edit : if NEOLoad needs :

- Borlndmm.dll,
- cp3245mt.dll,
- vcl40.bpl

Here they are...

[joefish]

Oh right, comments and bug reports welcome.
I guess it needs the Borland run-time DLLs. I forgot to look up those in the build options.
Let me take another look and see if I can link it all in one package.

[joefish]

OK, sorry, I'd built it with run-time dynamic libraries when I should have statically linked it. Stupid default build options.
Try the download link again for the v1.3 build - it should be able to run without requiring any extra DLLs now.
(Although the executable has jumped from 40K to 400K!).

Also a little tweak so that unallocated colours in the palette show up as magenta instead of black. Makes it easier to spot errors, and when you actually need a black in the palette.

[spiny]

nice one, more pixel utils are always welcome

[joefish]

OK, just noticed one minor bug. If you [Save .NEO] then [Cancel] on the file selector, you still get a write-error warning as if it's tried and failed to save.

Another bug - the [Load .BMP] file selector still has *.GIF as an option - this is a fault as the Borland native graphics components can't load Gifs. I thought for a while it could, but it turns out I'd somehow managed to save a Windows bitmap file with a .GIF file extension.

If anyone's got any more bugs or annoyances, let me know and I'll wrap them up in another release in a few days time.

[AtariZoll]

Link is dead now. Can someone post here this program ? I need to reorder some palettes ...

[joefish]

Try this:

http://railtron.com/files/atarist/NEOLoad_V1.3.zip

After DropBox dropped support for XP on the desktop I gave up on it. I should probably fix this up and put it on the webspace I bought for myself, but the PC it's on went bang and I haven't got round to scraping the drives for anything useful to transfer to the Win7 box yet.

[joefish]

I did read a piece on how to do a 'Median Cut' to reduce a palette to 8 or 16 colours, but I don't know if it's worth adding. I know I'd much prefer doing the initial reduction to 320x200x16 colours myself in a separate paint package as most automated processes don't do a very good job.

[AtariZoll]

Thanx Joefish. Works very well.
I do color reduction and other processing mostly with Paintshop Pro 9 (Latest pre-Adobe v.) . There is Optimized Median Cut and Optimized Octree for it, + some dithering options (but that's not really good for today LCD monitors). So, yes, I don't think that you need to do what is already done.

[rockyone]

I appreciate your BMP to NEO conversion program

But just like the screenshots of Steem 3.2, I wonder the utility of converting an image of 16 colors in BMP 8 bits or 24 bits (I hesitate for some time to load these images in my converter)

I did not try. Since the BMP format has a structured header, would adding 16 original colors in 8-bit and 24-bit files be embarrassing?
... ..
Personally, I prefer to convert NEO to 4-bit BMP per color for several reasons.
- the NEO format has only 16 colors
- all colors in the palette are retained.
- BMP image can be loaded by several Atari drawing programs
- The size of the BMP file is smaller.
- reverse conversion makes a file identical to the original (colors and image planes)
- There is a lot of software that converts 4 bits into 24 bits.
Try "FastStone Capture" (JPG BMP GIF PCX PNG TGA TIF PDF) and "FastStone Image Viewer" (free, with more image format)

But there is certainly a reason I did not understand

[AtariZoll]

I don't see as some bigger flaw saving in 24-bit (16M colors) of Atari screens, pictures. If it is only 16 color, conversion to 4-bit format is trivial, and 100% accurate.
Things are that 24-bit format dominates now. As I know you can not add some palette/original colors info to 24-bit BMP, because there is no palette, and original colors are present there. Can put it in header somehow, but that will be not handled by graphic SW.
In case of Steem 3.2, there is real reason to use 24-bit BMP - there may be over 1000 different colors at once on screen (STE) . Even if it is max 512 (ST), you must use 24-bit, because there is no 16-bit BMP (at least I don't see it in paint SW) .
So, I can only say that on some newer computer it matters not if file is 32KB or 200KB. Just convert it to 4-bpp before transferring to Atari.

[rockyone]

yes it is obvious with images having more than 16 colors.
I did not do SPC image capture for example

lion.jpg

[joefish]

I'm afraid I only looked up the format of the .NEO files. I didn't bother to research the .BMP format. I left that to the old Borland code library; I just call LOAD and SAVE on the image object in the display. You're right that for converting back to a .BMP it would be far more efficient to translate it into a palletised bitmap, but I don't know how (and I'd rather have a .GIF or .PNG myself). I also think it's far less common to use that conversion. This was primarily a tool for me to get graphics, screens, sprites etc. from my PC into something ST compatible, that I could then load in my ST code. Going the other way I prefer to just take a screen grab from an emulator rather than use this program!

[AtariZoll]

BMP, uncompressed is pretty much simple and straight format.
I made in C conversion from 4 bit 320x200 BMP, what is always 32118 bytes, to Atari ST PI1 format, and all it is some 40 lines of C code. Conversion to NEO format needs only different header. So, doing reverse conversion, for NEO or PI1 to BMP would be code of similar length. Actually, thats missing from my conversion and packing tool, so it may be that I will do it soon. And can give you that code part.

[rockyone]

Hello AtariZoll
A new update would be welcome.

[Mug UK]

Hello AtariZoll
A new update would be welcome.

He was banned from this forum a few months ago. You can find him on the Exxos forum now.

(And I expect to get slagged off by him on that forum just for being helpful and pointing this out too.)

[Orion_]

I made some Photoshop plugins (compatible with paint shop pro), that can read/write PI1, PC1, NEO and SPC format
if anyone is interested, that way you can load/save in atari format with your favorite picture editor
http://onorisoft.free.fr/atari/atari.htm (at the bottom of the tools section)

[rockyone]

Hello AtariZoll
A new update would be welcome.

He was banned from this forum a few months ago. You can find him on the Exxos forum now.

(And I expect to get slagged off by him on that forum just for being helpful and pointing this out too.)

I did not know !
I was waiting for it to correct an error in its NEO / BMP converter.
The first word in the BMP files is not correct!

[rockyone]

I made some Photoshop plugins (compatible with paint shop pro), that can read/write PI1, PC1, NEO and SPC format
if anyone is interested, that way you can load/save in atari format with your favorite picture editor
http://onorisoft.free.fr/atari/atari.htm (at the bottom of the tools section)

thank you Orion I will look.

In fact, I do not use NeoLoad.exe, but if I have the guts, I would do a routine to load the 24-bit format in MI-9. And NeoLod.exe, is the only application I found that makes a mistake in the BMP 24-bits header.

[Maartau]

I made some Photoshop plugins (compatible with paint shop pro), that can read/write PI1, PC1, NEO and SPC format
if anyone is interested, that way you can load/save in atari format with your favorite picture editor
http://onorisoft.free.fr/atari/atari.htm (at the bottom of the tools section)

I'm still using - Photoshop 7 - & that's works perfectly (Windows 8.1 / x64).

[joefish]

In fact, I do not use NeoLoad.exe, but if I have the guts, I would do a routine to load the 24-bit format in MI-9. And NeoLod.exe, is the only application I found that makes a mistake in the BMP 24-bits header.

Does it? What does it do wrong?I have no control over the format - the code just uses some old Borland Visual C++ library functions for loading and saving BMPs, which is why it does the rather wasteful 24-bit packing.

[rockyone]

Sorry for this bad information, this image is not in the right folder, it was St2Bmp.prg

Me too, I find it weird to convert 16-color images to 24-bit.
But I saw others, which seems to be 32 bits

[rockyone]

I just converted an image in black and white 640 * 400 in three Bmp formats
1 bit, 24 bits, and the third, 32 bits ????, size 1 024 054 bytes !!!

Skye.bmp.zip

Strange, St2bmp.exe and St2Bmp.prg no longer works on my PC.

[Orion_]

640*400*(32/8) = 1024000 bytes