CharPad 2.6 User Manual - Subchrist Software, 2020.
The Project Palette Form.
The Project Palette form allows you to adjust various project options as well as define the project's colour scheme and select a current pen.
Pens...
• Transparent : Background (screen) colour, choose from all 16 colours.Materials...
Use the left mouse button to set a material value (hex, 0-f) for the selected character(s).Char multi-colour mode...
• Enabled : Any character using a char colour greater than 7 (yellow) will appear in multi-colour (4 colour) format.Colouring method...
• Global : All characters are rendered using the same colour.Tile system...
• Enabled : The project can make use of a tile set, the map data refers to tiles.Notes...
If character multi-colour mode is enabled, the character set may use up to four colours in any character that uses a char colour greater than 7 (yellow) in the colour palette with the restriction that the character's horizontal resolution is halved and the actual char colour can only be one of the first 8 colours.
If multi-colour mode is disabled, characters can only use two colours, the transparent colour and the char colour which can be any of the possible 16.
On the Commodore 64, colour is not a property of character images, it is a property of the screen matrix cells in colour RAM and so a character's colour (and multi-colour status) will depend on the value assigned to the screen position (in colour RAM) the character is displayed in.