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vidthekid — Keeping Cool EGA
#4bit #8bit #columbus #ega #gay #parade #pc #pixel #pride #computergeneratedart #retro
Published: 2015-05-27 19:03:51 +0000 UTC; Views: 453; Favourites: 2; Downloads: 0
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My photo, Keeping Cool , as it would appear on an EGA display at 640×350 with the default 16-color palette inherited from old IBM RGBI monitors. This is the result of a program I wrote to dither true-color images using arbitrary palettes in an orderly fashion. I think I've managed to produce better quality output than the GIMP for this task, though my program requires additional data about how to use the palette, which I've hand-crafted. Post-processing in Paint Shop Pro to add text, correct the aspect ratio, and achieve that classic 350p loose scanline effect.Related content
Comments: 2
Nice. I always wondered why more print techniques weren't tried in the EGA days. Seems like a no brainer to do lots of dense pixels to get new tones when viewed from afar.
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Things were different back then. For one thing, it was extremely unusual for someone to go to the trouble of digitizing a photograph in RGB. And why would you want to use a whole computer screen to display a photo? It would have been easier just to admire a print. And then anything smaller than full screen quickly loses clarity, because you really didn't have that many pixels to work with.
On top of that, the dithering algorithm I used here is one that I crafted, drawing from years of experience and knowledge of those who came before me in color science and computer graphics. In 1990, similar algorithms may have existed, but they wouldn't have been well-known. Now that I think about it, the Floyd-Steinberg Error Diffusion method probably would have been employed, with no concern for the non-linear voltage/brightness response curve typical in CRT monitors — actually, that's rarely considered today, even with that response curve standardized in the sRGB specification. That could have maybe looked about as good as my version.
On the other hand, dithering with simpler patterns was indeed quite common in computer game artwork, rather than photos. The patterns had to be simpler though, because it was usually done manually. But if you're drawing the artwork from scratch, you have a bit of freedom with color choice; you can pick colors that already exist in the system palette, or are easily obtained with simple dithering patterns.
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