noseart dilema

[Rak187]

I have been trying to create noseart for my squad "Die Kriegsherren" and have had some difficulty making it the correct 64x64 bitmap size.  I am hoping that someone can help me out.  I have been using normal paint on windows xp if that will help any.

Thanks,  Rak187

[Krusty]

Don't use MS Paint. Use something else. Make it larger. Then scale it down when you're done to 64x64 (which, if ya ask me, is really kinda small, but oh well).

[Rak187]

Thanks Krusty...but im still oblivious as to how I make the picture the correct 64x64 bitmap size.

[Krusty]

Well it depends on the program. In MS Paint for example you'd go to Attributes (CTRL E I think) and set width/height. That might just crop (not resize) so do it before hand.

In photoshop it's image > image size...

Most that allow such operations have a menu option for it. Look through the menus until you find it.

[Easyscor]

Make sure it's 256 bit color.

[Rak187]

thanks for the info, ill give it a try.

Rak187

[TequilaChaser]

it's been along time since I have played around with it, but doesn't the server limit you to picture file size, like 6K or 8K or something of the sort, as well? Same thing goes for Avatars on the AH messageboards if I am not mistaken!

[Spatula]

Originally posted by Krusty
Don't use MS Paint. Use something else. Make it larger. Then scale it down when you're done to 64x64 (which, if ya ask me, is really kinda small, but oh well).

Funny, i ended up doing the opposite to what you've just done.

I started with a big picture and scaled it down to 64x64 by resampling - but it looks totally crap with all the edges anti-aliased and dithered etc and funny intermediate colors magically appearing.

So i gave up after many attempts and went to paint, and started with a 64x64 blank canvas and drew pixel by pixel and using some basic shapes untill i was happy.

Something so small as (64x64 pixels) needs to be clean, simple, and bold otherwise it looks like *****.

[Krusty]

That doesn't work so well. Makes things look like crap most o' the time

The trick with down-sizing the images is this: work in a decent program. I use Photoshop. Things like MS Paint don't resize very well at all, and it looks bad. More advanced programs make it look much better. You want it to look good when you downsize, you want it to anti alias everything, because you only have 64x64 to work with when all is said and done. The trick is to find an image/make an image that, once downsized, looks good. You have to set the image up so that it is framed properly and is the right proportions. Don't forget that you can use an alpha channel, too (as far as I remember). That's a simple black and white bitmap, with the same name as the squad art, but with an "_a" or something after it.

[Spatula]

I was using photoshop 5. Still all the solid black lines turn a discusting weak grey and i get all these weird colours due to the resampling algorhythm.

Whats an alpha channel and how do i use it?

My new nose art graphic looks great - much, much, much better than a down-sized version. When you say it can look crap, do you mean in the game?

[Rak187]

Thanks for all your help, I was finaly able to create my noseart.  I didn't have a program that would create the proper dimensions, but I noticed that one at my school did (Paint pro V).  So i downloaded the trial version at home and everything worked out great.  

Again, thanks for all the great help and ideas,

Rak187

[Krusty]

spatula: yes. It depends, of course, and I'm thinking of past game experience, as well.

When black lines turn grey, they were too thin. They were thin enough at default, and when you shrunk them they were less than a pixel. Seeing that a pixel is as small as you get, they "grey out" instead.

A way around this is to look at the image you want to shrink. Think about what will (and will not) reduce properly, then enhance certain things... If you have, say, a black ring around the image, you can make that black thicker before you shrink it (and it will look better when smaller). Or shrink it then touch it up on the small version, using that as a template.

I'm just thinking off the top of my head here.