Hi Ivan
When we bought this PC, it came with a 15" CRT monitor. Probably to prolong the life of the screen, Compaq (now absorbed by Hewlett-Packard) had very dark settings. Being our first PC, we simply left it at its original settings. Internet sites were looking all gloomy and ugly but, knowing no better, we coped with it.
Then, I bought CFS1. Some missions where simply "mission impossible". The
Breadstick Convoy mission, for example, had Ju-87 going under my Hurricane unnoticed; you can't shoot what you can't see. So, out of exasperation I guess, I started to tweak properties to boost Gamma, but
only for the game; my wife was afraid that it would "burn-out" the screen (she was right BTW).
To make a long story short, my "CFS1-only" Gamma settings became so popular with the rest of the family, especially when they were browsing the WEB, that the factory settings were practically dropped. The heck with screen burning...
But boosting Gamma is only an expedient. It does make darker zones lighter while keeping lighter zones pretty much the same, narrowing the overall brightness palette. When I was following courses at Joint Ops, I had to tell the instructor to not use dark red lettering on a black background if he wanted me to be able to read what he was writing. AAC Ripe was built under such conditions incidentally, and smilo could tell you how "funny" some of my buildings were looking, particularly the camouflage of my quonset huts; to him, they were "lollipop fluorescent" while I was seeing them dark to medium green. To adjust all that, I had to borrow my daughter's XP machine (that PC went belly-up six months ago BTW...).
The actual 22" panoramic ACER LCD monitor I bought as a replacement was money well spend. All that to say that monitors
DO make a lot of difference in what anyone perceives. Unfortunately, SOH attachment system reduces large images, which impairs legibility and colors' recognition. I had hoped that it was still large enough but, obviously, it was not, at least for you Ivan.
This one, coming from my ImageShack account, should help;
To help further, I have included the RGB of each pairs of Browns and Greens. Only the upper wings are repainted, and only one RGB was used for each color. The original textures were put to full 256x256x256 standard supported by CFS1. My past experience with a crummy monitor had at least one advantage; I
never take what I see on the screen for granted. I have the highest opinion of
Saint Paint, especially when it comes to palette management. I can take pretty much any "true colors" photo and let the program turn it into a 256 colors picture with practically no loss in quality. But since a picture is worth a thousand words...
I found this image with Google ImageSearch. I choose it simply because of its colors. These are tulips' fields btw.
This is a screen capture of the original picture
(A) followed by three 256 colors palette renditions;
(B) is a "4 Value (Floyd-Steinberg)" method,
(C) is using "2 Value Dither" and
(D) does a "Best colour match (no dither)".
The last method is the one I use when I'm trying to get the "essence" of a color. When my own eyes are in agreement with
Saint Paint logarithms, I'm pretty confident that WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).
Now, returning to the first picture, I will try to answer your last post.
I actually don't see much of a difference between my DuPont scheme and MAP scheme. (...) Now that we sort of agree, I just have to figure out WHICH screenshots are MY MAP and DuPont schemes.... (...)
The "Ivan DuPont scheme" is the bottom one while the "Ivan MAP scheme" is the second from the bottom. They are based on the attachment you made in post #424;
Surprisingly, the MAP scheme looked, overall, like a tone-downed version of my own scheme. I say "surprisingly" because, when comparing the samples, it was the other way around. That is what I would call "putting things in context". I suppose that CFS1 rendering has something to do with it.
Rato Marczak has done, IMHO, a very fine job. His scheme (second from the top) is "close enough" to the British Temperate Land Scheme, as all expert agree upon, while being a bit different. My own scheme is a "weathered-down" rendition and your MAP scheme is even more subdued, making the demarcation less "distinct" as you say. Terrell Clemens scheme is based on a site
HERE where FS values are attributed. My main problem with it is the brown which looks more like pink salmon. The Ivan/DuPont scheme is simply too dark and doesn't match photographic evidence. All this, BTW, would have been worthy of a thread of its own, don't you think?
:ernae:
