Hi,
my old ECS Amiga is supposed to get a new WB backdrop image that I have nicely color reduced and dithered down to 8 colors with a paint program. It is supposed to be displayed as Workbench background on an 16 color screen.

However, when displayed as Workbench (3.5) background, the system tries to dither the image again and makes a complete mess out of the previously nice looking 8 color image. All it should do is take these 8 colors out the images palette, use them as the 8 upper (unused) colors in Workbench's palette and display the picture. I do not want to take the original picture either and have it dithered by Workbench, as my own dithering looks much nicer than what Workbench will create out of it...

Is there any way to prevent Workbench from trying to color reduce / dither an already color reduced and dithered 8 color image? The setting in the "Workbench pattern" preferences do not seem to allow disabling of this feature...  

Any suggestions? (No, I won't buy a graphics board and there is now way to get more than 16 colors displayed on the ECS Amiga...)

Thanks and best regards,
Christian

try changing the dither and color quality in WBPattern Prefs and Icon quality in Workbench prefs, this might help.  Also AFAIR the pallet used is the first 4 and last 4 colours?  

I thought that ESC supported 64 colour WB screens...

ECS supports 64 coloured EHB (Extra Half Brite) screens, but I don't think that you can use them for WB - I don't have an actual ECS machine in front of me, but WB3.1 under UAE cannot.

They don't look very good, though...

Of course, who would use a 320x240(256) resolution for a wb screen, even if in 64 colors?

Varthall