[thelist] Creating images with 16-bit color depth

[Jason Handby]

Hi Marcus,


> Background: I'm producing an application for a digital tv 
> set-top-box (STB). The STB has a color depth of 16 bits.
> 
> Problem: I need to produce graphics for this platform where 
> the designer can work as normal as possible (ie 
> using Flash Studio in this case and producing true color 
> images) and then have some tool that takes an image 
> (that we extract from the flash movie automatically, we 
> (almost) already have a solution for this part) with 
> true color (png or jpg) and converts it to 16 bits (with some 
> loss of course). Do such a tool exist? If not, 
> is there any editor that fulfills the requirements? I've done 
> some testing with Photoshop, but I'm not an 
> expert, rather the opposite, so I haven't come up with a 
> solution there.

In the past I've used Image Alchemy to do batch conversion of images. It's a
little bit "command-liney" (which might appeal to you as a programmer), but
it's pretty quick and easy once you figure out the right command-line
parameters. And it's got sooooo many options for doing this kind of job that
it's bound to do what you want.

  http://www.handmadesw.com/Products/Image_Alchemy.htm

In your case I guess you'd put all your true colour images in a folder, then
get Image Alchemy to convert every image in that folder to 16-bit colour
depth and put the resulting images in another folder.



HTH




Jason