Opening Bitmap files...

BMP2Koala can open a 16 or 256 colours uncompressed Windows(R) Bitmap not bigger than 320 pixels in width and 200 pixels in height, with a colour Palette matching the C64 one or not (colour values are ignored).

Showing opened Bitmap files...

Once a valid BMP file was opened, you can show/hide it by selecting the option in Tools menu. You can also select the "Correct aspect" option to see how it would appear on a 64 compatible monitor.

Koalizing Bitmap files...

To Koalize a Bitmap file means to organize Hires and Color data of the picture in a structure matching the Koala-Painter file format. This produces optimized data with a high compression ratio if packed.
It doesn't mean you are forced to save the picture as Koala-Painter: some other file formats are supported and obtained by converting Koala-Painter data.

BMP2Koala offers 3 operating methods depending on the picture's palette:

B/W 4 Grey Levels: for Koalizing Black&White pictures using black (BMP file colour index: $00) as background and the three greys for the rest (colour indexes: $0B, $0C, $0F).
That means you can avoid saving Screen and Color Maps, which comes useful when it's needed to store some uncompressed pictures in C64 RAM for animations.
Of course, this option can be used with multicolor pictures too, if they use the above mentioned colour indexed. You will have to change the proper Screen and Color Map values to correctly display picture's colors.

B/W 5 Grey Levels: for Koalizing Black&White pictures using black (BMP file colour index: $00) as background, the three greys (colour indexes: $0B, $0C, $0F) and white (colour index: $01) for the rest.

Multicolour: for Koalizing multicolor pictures. This options allows chosing the wanted background color and is capable to find out a valid one if "Background Color" option is set to AUTO.

Saving files...

BMP2Koala allows saving pictures using various native C64 multicolor formats:

Advanced Art Studio, Artist 64, Blazing Paddles, Koala-Painter.

C64 native formats have their default load address, so that files produced with BMP2Koala are saved as P00, Prg or Tap files. P00 files may be easily imported to common image files as D64, keeping their original name so that native C64 paint programs will correctly identify them. Check the Links section.

In addition, a packed formats is supported:

SP2 packing

Such packed files are saved with a fake load address ($5500). If you are going to use them with Strip Poker 2, you may be wanting to avoid its unpack flaw. It rarely occurrs but it's a well known flaw (who does remember Maria Whittaker's corrupted picture #3?).
BMP2Koala can avoid this flaw with a smart packing, so you don't need fixing Strip Poker 2 unpack routine. For doing this, select the "Correct SP2 unpack flaw" in the Tools menu.

You can specify the output file format by selecting the wanted conversion type from the "Conversion" menu.