what colors = 16 bit in MMF2? :)

[Aloan]

Arcade's golden age Neo Geo quality color, etc...

What color option in MMF2 equals the 16 bit depth?
is it 65 k, 32k or ?

[DistantJ]

Generally on the 16 bit consoles a 9 bit colour palette was used, which totals 512 colours. When I do a 16 bit look I tend to use 256 colours and import a palette from the Mega Drive or SNES, and say "close enough", it you could always set it to the next one up from 256 and just try to stick to the palette colours.

[Aloan]

I see... is it safe to use the snes or mega drive palette shown on wikipedia? or where can I get it? I use Paint.net. Btw, I was actually looking for a step above the SNES and Genesis, like more on screen colors such as the Neo Geo or the Arcades of the middle to late 90s, so I was wondering between the difference in the 65536 to 32768 and what do these cater for in regards to such choice! It seems to me that both are 16 bit flavored? and you can get that look with either one, say if I'm converting a digitized picture to one of these formats. Like we see in After Burner 2 from SEGA when it switches to the cut scene showing the pilots and the planes. I guess 4 shades of each color used where the norm?!

[DistantJ]

You can import a palette in the properties, but you can only have 256 colours per palette, the rest are done on the mixer. You gotta make sure the file you import as a palette is a 256 colour GIF file. The colours may be out of order as well, I always have trouble with this, apparently with the right graphic software you can re-order the colours of an image's palette but I haven't managed this yet.

[Aasland]

A 16 bit palette would be a step up from snes, which (i think) use a 15 bit palette.

2^15=32768 colors (snes)
2^16=65536 colors

[Aloan]

thanks for the info, Distan J and thank you Aasland. You got the answer I needed short and simple. I also just came from looking at the wikipedia article on the Neo Geo and on the display specs it says 65536 as well. I understand that while we have that choice, we should keep a maximum of 4096 on screen at one time. of course I am only looking for 4-8 shades in any given color. Playing with Paint.net I use Posterize 16 (guess that's 16 shades) so I play between 16 and 12 and 10, since 8 looks kind of 8bit already!

[Jacob]

8 bit just means that you have 8 bits to work with. Since each bit is either 0 or 1 (2 possible values) there are 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 or 2^8 = 256 possible values.

Which means that even HD anti-aliased photography is 8 bit if it's in greyscale.

[Storsorgen]

I might be wrong on this, but doesn't the term "16-bit" refer to the processors used in the consoles, and not the colors?

[DistantJ]

Yes, but they have different bits for the colour palette, Mega Drive has a 9-bit colour palette, SNES has 15 etc.