Problem with Bootskin

from WinCustomize Forums
Hi there! I've created a Bootskin to match the "Gant" stuff out there. The Problem is that the preview looks good, but the colours are not the same when windows is booting. So what did i do wrong? Here's the bootscreen.ini:

[BootSkin]

Type=0

Name = "Gant1"

Author = "Chris"

Description = "Based on stuff by Mattahan"

ProgressBar=Progress1.bmp

Screen=Gant1.bmp

ProgressBarX = 58

ProgressBarY = 46

ProgressBarWidth = 125

Here's the preview: http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/59/capture18nb.jpg

And the weird result: http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/8050/boot4jq.jpg

2,150 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
I may not be the best guy to help you, but I'll take a stab at it.

I believe that bootskins must be done from a 16 color palette, which I think translates to 4-bit color depth. I don't know if those are 16 specific colors (hex values) or "any" 16, but I think it is the former. It may be that you've saved the image at 16-bit & the specific colors in your preview are supported by your video display but are not in the 16-color palette and the system is substituting the closest ones when applying the bootskin.

Hope this gives you a clue to work on. There is also a bootskin tutorial on either the Stardock site or WinCustomize.

Cheers,
Daiwa
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hello......Gant1.bmp and Progress1.bmp must be saved as 4-bit index color .Bmp. What graphic progam are you using?
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks!

Fixed the problem with the color depth. Working fine now.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The most common cause of this is prog bar colors. It must use colors from the 16 color palette of the screen image.
Also looking at your preview pic, using dithering when reducing to 16 colors will look better for most images. A good free app for decreasing color is IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com
I do the prog bar and border after decreasing to 16 color, I use good old MSPaint. This way by picking colors from the screen image you can't go wrong. When you have it the way you want rect. select the 22x9 prog. bar, click edit in menu bar then copy to, put it in folder with screen image and .ini. You can then paint out the prog bar, don't need it on screen image then save the screen image.
Using IrfanView and MSPaint they both save as 16 color 4 bit bitmaps so you don't even have too think about that part of it. Gimp 2.2 is another free app that does a pretty good job decreasing colors, it also by default creates 4 bit bitmaps.