3.14 Freestyle mode tutorial
It can be confusing working out what's going on in freestyle mode so
here's a quick walk through...
Freestyle palette editing is intended to be a way of colouring an image
in an intuitive fashion with the minimum of keyboard usage. In fact
everything is controllable with the mouse, as the following shows:
To start with, generate a plasma type fractal as it has all 256 colours
on screen at once. Now bring up the palette editor and press 'w' to set
up a greyscale palette as a blank canvas on which to splash some colour.
Pressing 'f' puts us in freestyle mode... crosshairs appear on the
screen and a colour band is applied, centred on the cursor. Although, at
the moment, the colour of this band is grey and you won't see much!
In order to change the colour of the band, hold down the left mouse
button and drag up and down. This changes the amount of red in the
band. You'll see the values change in the status box above the palette
grid. Double clicking the right mouse button changes the colour
component that's varied in an r-g-b-r-cycle.... try it out and conjure
up any shade you like!
To vary the width of the band, drag up and down with the right button
held down. Slower machines may show some 'lag' during this operation,
especially if they have no math co-processor, so watch out as the mouse
movements get buffered.
Once you've got the band in a satisfactory position then double click
the left button to fix it in place. Continue like this for as long as
you like, adding different colours to the grey palette. You'll notice
how the band relates to the existing colour, the RGB values give the
middle colour which are then smoothly shaded out to the colours at the
ends of the band. This can lead to some sudden jumps in the shading as
the band is moved about the screen and the edges come to overlap
different areas of colour.
For really violent jumps in shading try starting with an image that has
areas that change chaotically, such as a Mandlbrot set. You'll see what
I mean when you move the cross hairs into an area close to the 'lake'
where the change in value from one pixel to the next is sudden, chaotic
and large. Watch out! the strobing effect can be somewhat disturbing.
This is nothing to worry about but just a consequence of the
manipulation of the palette and the way in which the colour bands are
calculated.
I hope that you'll find this a useful tool in colouring an image.
Remember that the 'h' key can be used to hide the palette box and expose
the whole image.