Palettes

Abstract

A Windows 98 palette is used to hold colour information. However, a palette is typically only required whenever the range of available colours is limited — with enough bits per pixel a computer image can encode its colour information directly into the image bits and no palette is required. Nowadays computer displays provide a variety of colour modes, some that work with a palette and some that do not — to achieve the best performance a graphics application should match the colour format of its bitmaps to that of the display. The following palette-related topics are discussed here:

• computer display modes and colour formats

• logical and system palettes

• handling Windows 98 palette messages

• the PALETTE class

• associating a palette with a bitmap