That isnt the issue actually, I want to be able to use the palette 
modification functions in pygame in 8-bit colour mode to alter colours 
on surfaces, my workaround seems to work fine, I can even blit any 
surface now, if I convert a blank surface and blit the unconverted 
palette-swapped .gif onto it.
On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Lenard Lindstrom <len-l@xxxxxxxxx 
<mailto:len-l@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
    Palette surfaces blit to 24 bit or 32 bit surfaces without any
    color changes. So unless the screen is set to 16 bit colors, there
    will be no problem.
    Lenard Lindstrom
    On 16/08/10 04:36 PM, John Anderson wrote:
        Okay, I think I have a workaround, if I don't .convert() any
        images, and modify the palettes from the surface itself, it
        seems to work fine, hopefully I can get unconverted surfaces
        to blit properly though, it seems that sprites have no issues
        blitting, its just plain surfaces which wont blit.