DOS Colors - Thanks

[Kim Keegan <keegan -at- EXPLORERS -dot- COM>]

[cross-posted to techcomm and techwr-l]

Thanks to all who responded to my request for help with DOS colors.  Most of what I
received I already knew, but thanks anyway.

The problem is that there is a preset group of 16 colors called the "Standard DOS
Palette". The numbers used to define these 16 colors don't match anything we are used
to seeing, such as RGB, Hex, CMYK....

We were using Windows to develop some simple bitmaps to be used in a DOS application
(yes - we still do DOS work). The utility my programmers use to create the screens is
called Hi Screen, and the documentation says that the only colors that can be used are
those of the standard DOS palette. Some DOS manuals I checked also refer to this
standard palette, but I can find no reference material that maps DOS colors to RGB,
Hex, anything. Softway, the company that produces the HiScreen product, doesn't even
make mention of it in their web site.

What I ended up doing was to use a DOS screen capture utility (from JASC) to capture
16 different DOS screens (one for each color), then load those 16 PCX files into
Photoshop to use the "Info Palette" to determine the RGB of the background color.

This was the best method I could think of. Thanks again to all who responded.
--
Kim Keegan | keegan -at- explorers -dot- com
http://www2.explorers.com/~keegan/
"Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's true." - R.E.M., "I Believe"

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