Proof that the Commodre 64 palette is far superior to the Amstrad CPC.

[SuTeKH/Epyteor]

A couple of "not-really" random examples of C64 graphics converted to the CPC palette (recoloured, as the popular expression goes).
Proof that the dull, washed-out, saturated-brown/grey colours of the Commodore machine are far superior to the bright, lively, comic-esque colours of the Amstrad CPC range of machines.

( apologies, as always, to the original authors. All images downloaded from Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery )

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[SuTeKH/Epyteor]

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[SuTeKH/Epyteor]

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[SuTeKH/Epyteor]

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[SuTeKH/Epyteor]

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[SuTeKH/Epyteor]

SET 6 of 6

[reidrac]

Some of those screens are really good, thanks for the post.

I don't know much about the C64, but I suspect some of the comments about its palette are undeserved; like some comments about the CPC are total rubbish (I guess it happens with all systems).

I read somewhere that the C64 is good for organic shapes (I can see it in some of the pictures, where the CPC looks perhaps a little too saturated), but I wouldn't go that far as to say is "superior".

The C64 is not currently in may list, but you never know

[HAL 6128]

Those pictures are great. I like them (independent from which computer it came from).

The C64 has advantages when images shows a true environment. I can see more (smoother) gradients (e.g. grey). But superior, no! Just different tastes.

The CPC has definitly a higher saturation or color brightness. It's clearly visible in the comparison (thanks for it). But the more fantastic or imaginary the picture is the more I like the CPC colors.

[ukmarkh]

Yep, I think the C64 suffered when compared to the CPC in the colour department. We had both as kids growing up, and would always buy the same game to compare, crazy I know, but more often than not, the C64 had the better game or conversion, but when the Amstrad was programmed properly, using Mode0 and to its full strength, we were all in agreement that the CPC was just as capable as any other 8bit, including the C64. 

[1024MAK]

This is so, so much a matter of taste and what the viewer prefers.

Some look better on the C64. Some look better on the CPC.

WITH BOTH machines, an improved colour palette would have been nice. But we are where we are.

Note that machines designed to output only composite video (and S-Video) will nearly always have a lower saturated colour range compared to machines that output RGB. This is due to the restrictions and limitations of the way the video signal is generated and processed. Also, note that composite and S-Video signals can be (and are) subject to the colour, brightness and contrast settings on the TV / VDU.

Mark

[Morri]

First of all, these pictures are amazing and a real credit to the original artists and to your conversion skills.

Second, it really is horses for courses with these pictures. I judged each picture while trying to be as unbiased as possible. In all honesty it was an even split right down the middle at 25-25. I chose the C64 when the picture was gritty, moody or featured people. I chose the CPC when the pictures were cartoony, during the day or just required that extra shot of colour.

Overall I still prefer the CPC's palette because I have always loved cartoons and imaginary settings and that suits the CPC perfectly.

EDIT: Oops, I missed the last set and after having a quick look, the C64 took it out 33-27 because the pictures suited it's palette a bit more. But what I said originally still stands about the horses thing, each machine had it's strengths depending on what was required.

Lastly, any chance these pictures could be put onto dsk as a slideshow?

[Executioner]

I'd prefer my F40 in the red over the brown any day!

[ivarf]

How can you prove anything by converting screens from the C64. Are you proving that the CPC palette his so good that the screens still look good? Some of the faces/flesh tones looks better on the C64 as well as the money

[ivarf]

I'd prefer my F40 in the red over the brown any day!

Why didn't the artist choose a red Ferrari on the C64? Something to do with shading?

[Zoe Robinson]

I like the 2000AD images, that bit was cool. As for which colour scheme is "superior", the truth is neither are. A good artist will make good art regardless of the colours available, and a bad artist will make bad art. It's that simple. If you want to see this in action, visit drunkduck and see what people are crapping out when they have all the colours in the universe available.


Colours don't matter, talent does.

[||C|-|E||]

I think that all the pictures, CPC or C64, look just great. About the color palette in general, I like the cartoony and cheery colors of the CPC more but this is probably because I had the computer when I still was a little kid and, back in time, I was loving everything that popped out in terms of colors. Looking at the CPC screen makes me travel on time, however, the others do not have the same charm for me. This is, obviously, because I grew with the CPC :-).

P.D: I was showing the pictures to my GF, that was never in contact with 8 bit computers, and in fact she does not like the images on the right (except in a few cases) because she thinks that the colors are just too bright  .

[andycadley]

Why didn't the artist choose a red Ferrari on the C64? Something to do with shading?

He did. That's what "red" on the C64 look like.

In general I'd say it's a split which is better, certainly some of the C64 colours fit better (particularly flesh tones) but in a lot of cases really do look quite washed out. If anything it shows that the very limited colour selections of 8-bit machines didn't always give an ideal range of colours. It wasn't until the 16-bits (and late generation 8-bits like the CPC+ and SAM Coupe) that artists had a more ideal selection of colours to work with that gave them choices to better suit different situations.

[ZbyniuR]

All of these images are beautiful. You made great job. Most of them I like the same in both palettes. But games I prefer in candy CPC palette, and pictures of naked ladies in C64. Whatever saying beige is beige. But I think that as you convert to C64 images originally made on CPC, is also going to have feeling that lost some charm.

Try in free time some pictures from Atari XE. There will be more difficult because many of them have 30 colors on screen at once, with a range of 256 and overscan.
G2F

I tried with some using fast blinking palette of 125 colors. I mean normal minimum light is 0, maximum 2 so 3x3x3=27, but instead this combining two colors gave minimum 0, maximum 4 so 5x5x5=125. And the same method can display images from CPC+, or from C64 with colors closer to C64.

Here you are DSK with few blinking pictures, first  run"0
DICE-OFF, MONSTERS and NEPTUNKA are from Atari scene convert into PLUS palete and show as 125 palette blinking colors (16 at once normal MODE 0)

GRANMA and SIDILUST from C64 as 125 palette
CHRONOS and MIRA2 (I don't remember from where) 125 blinking
and FRED, LISKI and SIC! from ATARI in normal CPC palette.
And DOM.BAS overscan from ATARI in normal palette or DOM2.BAS the same with blinking.

Please let me know what you think about this method showing pictures from other platform.

[dodogildo]

I love C64 palette. It has a very strong and unique personality. As a graphic artist for more than 20 years, I never understood why our community praised CPC's oversaturated palette that much (but I have a theory) . Bright colors have nothing to do with good (or bad) graphics. They're just colors. They have to get combined in a certain way in order to be meaningful.

IMHO what make computer graphics unique are the animation and the interaction. To tell the truth, C64, sadly, dominated those areas and we CPC owners got bullied a lot back in those days.

May be that's why we are still trying to hit them back with that nonsense palette issue.

[MacDeath]

Proof that the Commodre 64 palette is far superior to the Amstrad CPC.

I don't know, I have a PLUS...
 

Also you cannot simply put a palette swap and simply compare... if palettes are different and le lightings and gradiants, so the pixels have to be done differently.

You would not get to the same exact composition if you have different colours or limitations to work with.
You wouldn't treat the surfaces, shadows and lightings, or even shapes the same way either.

C64 is based on Grey and Brown... CPC is not... at all.

And while C64 has some limitations of 4 inks in each charcaters (in big pixels 160x200) the CPC can put more inks into those small squares...


exemples :

Spock and kirk :
the C64 lighter hues for the skin is a light grey, while on CPC it is White... you wouldn't apply the same quantity of this and on CPC you would use more black to underline and shadow.

Also remember that on a real CRT you clearly don't have such a clean thing as on those done for PC mockups/theoric display.


Also all the cartoonish ones are clearly better on CPC...

number 13 : CPC version could get better hue shifts and colour ramps... you went for the most straightforward colour ramps while many others could have been choosen.



on this one, while the flesh is a bit less realistic on CPC (not too bad anyway) you can put more difference in the jewelry or golden bikini while the C64 ones are melted to the brown of the flesh.
can also put more details on the sword's hilt... I added a bright red gem, such fine detail can catch the eyes (or the boobs do already) so you may not notice other lest detailed parts.
Same with birght red lips....



[attachimg=1]
This one has to be different on both systems... here I tried some slight hue shift... the red goes a bit magenta, the green goes a bit cyan (not the ebst one to be honest, was jsut trying) and the blue goes slightly purple/magenta as well.

[andycadley]

I think a lot of artists like the C64 palette because the colours blend better, making it easier to add highlights/lowlights to things and give them a more "real" feel. The downside of that is that the colours blend better, making it more difficult get sharp, distinct graphics. So whilst it's great for static images, it all feels a bit smeary when you're playing a game - the low resolution and colour bleed really don't help there either.

[MacDeath]

Also as all the "colours" are mixed with some sort of grey... you get the proper light and shade, but not always the proper hues.



Also some spaces can be filled up with ditherings on CPC.

[attachimg=1]
some details would need to be redone a bit. I redesigned a bit the lips in order to respect the original artwork.
https://ullizee.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/alan-moore-halo-jones.jpg
she is suposed to have big red lips, the c64 version somewhate screwed those .
removed the medium RED (saturated) from the skin... she is not suppsoed to be sunburnt...


[attachimg=2]
More contrast here, removed the "dark yellow" because it doesn't goes with a skin and give a greenish feeling.... the eyes could get better pixelisation and colours on CPC... I removed the dark Red from them...
Dark Cyan and Grey (medium white) are too close to get contrast, never use them together in the same gradiant because dark Cyan is not a darker grey... it is jsut a medium blueish grey... (same with dark yellow, it is just a medium golden/bronze grey)
You used dark Magenta (purple?) to highlight the Dark blue.
I used the more rounded and blueish Mauve (mix between Blue and Magenta/purple/violet)

[attachimg=3]
Same with the fish, the dark magenta is too saturated... should use Mauve instead.
used medium blue for the water around... basically such piece should actually use many more colours on CPC because CPC can...
But this means it would consume lots of time to redo the ditherings, especially on the water.

[attachimg=4]
DarkRed with green  ? nope... use dark blue with the green, really goes better in this case.
Also face skin is now brighter but also more realistic (somewhat) even if quite different from the c64 version.

Well, all those are matters of opinion of course.

[Bryce]

A couple of "not-really" random examples of C64 graphics converted to the CPC palette (recoloured, as the popular expression goes).
Proof that the dull, washed-out, saturated-brown/grey colours of the Commodore machine are far superior to the bright, lively, comic-esque colours of the Amstrad CPC range of machines.

( apologies, as always, to the original authors. All images downloaded from Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery )

- SET 1 of 6

You've mis-spelt the word inferior, it doesn't start with an "s"

Bryce.

[MacDeath]

I don't think C64 would perform well to render some Pony action...

except for perhaps only AppleJack's hat...



Clearly a machine unfit to render Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash may not be qualified as a serious graphic station.
And we all know Amstrad is a serious Cartoon rendering station.


[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]


BTW CPC was often critisezed because it simply couldn't use C64 graphics with a simple convenient palette swap.

You reallly had to redo so many way to put colours and it was basically not compatible.




also the limitations were very different.

C64 would not use an additional blue because it couldn't, but would use a grey. So they wouldn't try to use more blues...

[attachimg=4]
look here, on the CPC the planet could have been done dto actually include far more blues, this would then get a totally different way to put the pixels... But C64 could only put 2 blues, +blackandWhite... and a limitation of 4 colours per characters, while CPC could do it with no such limitations.
But yeah, it is ported from C64.
the grey vessel : obviously not possible on CPC.
As I said, to mix Grey + DarkCyan or Dark yellow on CPC doesn't goes well...
Like Pink (pastel red) and Orange are too close colours...
Here I tried a shifted Cyan gradiant :
Dark Cyan - sea green (green+cyan) and Pastel Cyan.
the light hue shift from the sea green gets some slight extra contrast the plain medium cyan and pastel cyan won't have.
But yeah, it is not grey as in the original one and not as well contrasted. should also get some slight highlights of white.
same with the planet, should add perhaps 2-3 extra "layers" in the gradiant/hue. from darkBlue to white.

LEt's do it the other way :


 

[MacDeath]

[attachimg=1]

@SuTeKH/Epyteor
ok I will soon go to bed but would like to do some comments on the way you ported some of those graphics.

First I like the way you come HERE to start such a topic with such a title.


as many said, some of them are actually best looking on CPC, other not.

the use of green :
clearly CPC and c64 have a radically different way to use greens.
On CPC you mustn't use as many hues in green, and compensate with a slight hue shift (from green to pastel yellow, per example).
You can't just put dark red- dark green-flashy green and even more brightly flashy greens... lol
C64 : use some brown then go to green... not possible at all on CPC.
So on CPC you have to use one of the variant of "bright green" then swith to pastel yellow or cyan...

Same with Cyan and Yellow : medium and pastel are very close, the medium pure one being saturated, the pastel being more "neutral", but some hybrid hues like sea green or lime can be used as real medium hue/shade...

Ditherings :
Basically compaired to C64, somethimes you may have to replace C64 ditherings by a CPC colour and C64 colours by CPC dithering zone.
on CPC the more you have nice dithered zones, the more you remove colour saturation.

dithering is what get you from here :

to there :


Blue : you would too often use the simple Blue-sky blue-cyan... really there are many more variations on the matter.
And basically you may replace some dithering zones on C64 into new extra blues on CPC.

Primary colours :
in order to not get saturation : use mostly dark and pastel variants, the primary/secondary (medium ones) are to be used only if really needed, so for object that are supposed to have such hue (flowers, blood, and so on).
Skin is not red, so you don't put pure flashy primary red on skin please... basically "white" skin would be Black-darkred-pink/orange (never both)- pastel yellow.. the "main zone" being ideally dithered Pink (pastelRed) and pastel yellow...

So yeah, if you only swap inks, you cannot get good result unless cartoonish or specific cases.
You really have to re-do pixels and shade zones, swap pure colours and ditherings and sometimes get some elements into a different hue.


Many Many more things to say, I hope this thread is not finished yet...

[attachimg=2]