Grayscale

From IPodWizard.net Wiki

This image contains the four values used by black and white iPods. Using exactly these four values for your images will give you control over the display.

Kikkoman wrote the highly useful "Definitive Grayscale Thread."

Also: Irfan-- Good free image viewer/converter
Irfan allows you, for example, take a full color image and convert it down to 16 colors, and to then map each individual color to one of the four grayscale values by editing the palette. You can't "draw" in this progam, so for any edits you'll need to use Paint or another program. Irfan also has a very nice thumbnail feature.

From Kikkoman's Post:

The Definitive Grayscale Thread: Tools to help

Introduction

The idea of this is to help people create their own grayscale graphics. This allows you to see patterns that allow shading and cascading affects. It also provides a palate with all the iPod's colors. This is designed to help!

Tools

Grayscale Test for iPod Linux (90x85):

Grayscale Test for iPodWizard (64x64, Image 67):

Each of these need to be able to go on your iPod in some way: that is why I have provided 2! The first one is for people that have iPod Linux and do not need to mod their firmware to see the image and the second one is for iPodWizard users. Just pretend the second image is your Do Not Disconnect screen.

• The first tool here is the color palate. This shows you the full color spectrum of the iPod in RGB (Red, Green, Blue). You can enter this into your custom palate on your image editing program (I prefer Paint.)

• The second tool here is a cascade pattern. This shows you a neat trick I learned from the TI-83 Plus. This allows you to do things like shading and color changes: you can see how I cascaded on the provided sample image.

• The third tool here is the sample image. This shows the cascade pattern and guides you through. You can build off of this image or make your own, I don’t mind

That’s it for the tools.

Importing an Image to Grayscale

Im going to use Adobe Photoshop for this. First, find your image and place it in Adobe Photoshop using the paste feature (Ctrl-V). Hit Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-T. Click on a corner that appears in the box around the image and hold Shift and resize the image to fit the box size for the image. Once you have done this, go to Image > Mode and click Indexed Color. Click "OK" to flatten layers and proceed to this window.

Now you need to download this palette.

Once you have done this, in the Indexed Color Menu, choose in the Palette drop down menu "custom." Now choose "Load" in this new pop up box and choose where you saved that file. Click Ok to exit out of the window and viola! Insant grayscale image. Unfortunately, It may need to be redrawn a bit to make it look better.

Tests

These tests are for you to do on your iPod. Use the images from above to complete these tests.

• The first test is to load up the image on to your iPod. Notice that white is not actually white. It is actually the background color of the iPod. This is either a cursing or a blessing to you.

• The second test you should perform is to turn on the backlight and view an image. It has changed! The color white is different. You should consider that the color white is actually transparent.

These tests are intended to teach you what images are supposed to look like and how to create your own grayscale images.

Notes

When you are entering text, most program use something called "Anti Aliasing." Simply put, Anti Aliasing is when you shade the image/text to blend into the background, create a visual effect that tricks the eye into thinking the image/text is smooth, as opposed to pixely. When imaging programs do this, the Anti Alias can cause problems because it adds colors not in your palate. There is usually a little tick to remove this feature in the text bar, or else remove it by hand.

Thanks guys! Hope this is helpful.

Using Paint

We are going to learn how to create a graphic for iPodWizard from scratch. Lets use the Do Not Disconnect graphic. The first thing we need to do is to set our image attributes. The Do Not Disconnect graphic is 64 x 64 so we need to go to Image > Attributes. Click in the size fields and change the value.

Now that we have this, we need to set our color values. Right next to black, double click on this color and click define custom colors. Change the Red Green Blue values all to 84.

Do this same thing to the next square only this time change the Red Green Blue values all to 168. Now you have the full iPod color spectrum. These include White, Black, and the two squares next to black.

Now, draw out your image. You can use the tools provided to create something grayscale.

You are ready to save! Go to File > Save As and save your picture somewhere where you can find it. I suggest using .bmp, but you can choose whatever you like, just make sure iPodWizard or Linux approves the file format.

Hope this helps!