BG colors look washed out after import

[pslim]

This has been driving me crazy for a while--I tweak the colors in my bg very carefully in photoshop, flatten it down and save it as a .pcx or a .bmp and when I import it into the editor it looks fine, although usually slightly darker than it looks in photoshop... then when I go to test the game, everything looks light and washed out, and minute color variations that weren't apparent in photoshop suddenly jump out and look awful.

I've tried 16-bit and 32-bit color, and I've tried pcx and bmp files, and none of the combinations seemed markedly different from one another. I also tried slashing the brightness of the pcx or bmp before importing it, and there was no real improvement when I opened the exe or used the test feature in the editor.

I'm thinking there must be a simple answer and I just haven't come across it in the FAQ or by searching this forum.Ã, 

I hope.

[Gilbert]

It's probably due to your monitor's setting, since usually when you run the game in fullscreen it's in a different mode from your desktop (even if it's the same res. and same colour depth, refresh rate can also make a difference, may not apply to LCD monitors though) and it may look different from when you're working with the graphics using the windows desktop (since most monitor can have independent settings for different modes, you may try tweaking the controls when you're running a game fullscreen).
Try testing the game in windowed mode to confirm if there're any difference in the graphics.

[pslim]

You were right; it all looks great in windowed mode. Thanks! At least now I know that for others it looks the way I drew it.

Now I just have to figure out how to make it look right for me when I'm testing it. :/