Change Color Format

The number of colors may be increased or decreased: use the radio buttons to select the new color format for the cursor frames.

AniTuner displays both the original first frame and the result of the color operation, so you can compare them.

When you press OK, all frames inside the animated cursor are automatically converted to the new color format.

About the options:

Add a semi-transparent XP shadow: this option is only available if you convert the animated cursor to the 32-bit format (24-bit + 8-bit for the alpha channel) supportig partial transparency. Animated cursors in this format are only handled by Windows 2000/XP, though AniTuner draws 32-bit cursors correctly even if you are running it under Windows 9x/ME/NT.

Example: we converted a 256-color cursor to a 32-bit cursor and enabled the "XP shadow" option:

8-bit:
32-bit:

Did you note the small gray shadow? This can be done thanks to the alpha channel available with 32-bit animated cursors.

Try to keep background transparency (advanced users):

In case of a color reduction, the transparent color may be changed too and some pixels that were previously considered as transparent may become non-transparent after the reduction. If you enable the "Keep background transparency" option, AniTuner will then replace the color of all transparent pixels with the new transparent one, and the problem should be solved.

When decreasing colors, you will generally lose quality although AniTuner tries to find the best colors that suit each frame. Decreasing colors is not recommended as you will probably have to touch up all frames manually to get a better result.