Using the Gimp (w/help) to make LBMs

[VDS]

The Gimp is FREE at http://www.gimp.org/

For those of you who are cheap, like me, and want to make their own LBMs, you don't need Paint Shop Pro. You can load the "JASC_WINSP_PICPAL.pal" into the Gimp and go from there.

Find the file "JASC_WINSP_PICPAL.pal" in the WinSPMBT\Game Data\Design\Palettes folder and copy it to share\gimp\2.0\palettes in your gimp directory. Open the
"JASC_WINSP_PICPAL.pal" file you just moved with Wordpad, not notepad. The first three lines should read:

JASC-PAL
0100
256

Change these three lines (and these three lines only) to:

GIMP Palette
Name: WinSP
#

The name "WinSP" does not matter, you can change that to whatever you like, but keep everything else as is. Now save the file and change the extension to .gpl, so that it reads

"YOURNAME".GPL.

Fire up the Gimp. Edit/Resize your photo to the 160x80 greyscale format
1) save it as a .psd file
2) click Image-Mode-Indexed
3) Select Use Custom Palette and select the "YOURNAME.GPL" palette you converted and named earlier
4) Make sure the "Remove unused colors from final palette" box is NOT checked
5) Dithering Options should be Floyd-Steinberg(normal) with the "Enable dithering of transparency" box NOT checked
6) Click "OK" and save the file again.

Use a conversion program (like pictview, also free, http://www.pictview.com/) to convert the photo to the .lbm format.