Let's Make Smilies!

[Buster's Uncle]

-Oh, for pete's sake.  "Do you," Rabbit said indignantly, "want more?"

Buster's Uncle, could you specificate a needed characteristics of smilies?
Just to have something to start from.

Oh, a tiny .jpg would probably work fine, though I've never tried.  -But since you probably want a transparent background, .png or .gif format.  If it moves, has to be .gif.

If you're really curious, check out the tutorial series in Articles...  I sense that the forum-graphics force is strong in you...

[Buster's Uncle]

 

-I also got four new avatars for the BE folder in the gallery out of this...

[Buster's Uncle]

Also?

[Geo]

Nonono!

-Oh, for petek's sake.  "Do you," Rabbit said indignantly, "want more?"

Corrected that for ya. 

[Geo]

Also, with all the work you've done:


 

[Protok St]

Of cource I want more! 

How can I live on AC2 without my little lovely pets?!
Consider to add at least two of them, please.

(click to show/hide)

[Buster's Uncle]

Added four - and made a new row for strictly SMACX smilies.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

 

[Buster's Uncle]

...I really ought to redo the SMACX leaderheads bigger and all the same size...

[Geo]

Well, the Rising Tide expansian leaders are also smaller then the first 8 BE leaders...

[Buster's Uncle]

They just cropped out that way, narrow - same height.

No refunds.

[Geo]

That's so unAmerican of u. 

[Buster's Uncle]

 



SO; because Protok might benefit from the knowledge, I'm going to describe my process on cutting out Sister Miriam - I'm going through the original seven alphabetized by faction name.  -No need for some of this w/ the xfire leaders - there's a nice set of deinterlaced large images of them from the CD in the Planetary pack.

-No refund if something can't be done w/ Photoshop; also, functions are sometimes to be found under different categories than GIMP and often have different names...-



So you start with this, of course:


Now, GIMP has a nice Deinterlace feature.  Image>Mode>RGB, then Filters>Enhance>Deinterlace.  A popup asks for Keep odd fields or Keep even fields.

Choosing odd yields this:    and choosing even, this:   -The latter definitely better than odd/dark, but not good.


So what I did was this:  opening a Layers box -Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Layers- I duplicated the original interlaced shot I cropped out of the Belivers' faction .pcx.  -Layer>Duplicate Layer.-  You can also right-click on the layers box to do that.

NOW, I deinterlaced both copies, one even and the other odd.  I made sure the upper layer was selected by clicking on it, and slid the Opacity slider up top to 50%.

Then Image>Merge Visible Layers>Clicked Clipped to image in the popup>Merge.  The result was nice w/ most of the bad details in the respective deinterlaces smoothed out/corrected, but a teeny bit dark.  So, Colors>Brightness-Contrast>upped both exactly 20% and saved the result as a .png.

[Buster's Uncle]

Now, for cutting Miriam out of her background, the point of the whole exercise, I jumped through a few extra hoops to create an art resource and never have to do this again.

First, I'd have had to do -Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel- anyway - that makes the transparent background I'll need.  Next, -Layer>Duplicate Layer- which gives me two copies in separate layers.  Checking the lower copy invisible -eye icon beside it in the Layers box- and selecting the top one -that layer darkens around the thumbnail when it's the one selected/active- I chose the Eraser Tool from the Toolbox, sized to about 50, and began working around the outside of Miriam.  Simple.  It's not a great, huge, image, and she has no jagged bits along her edges.

Now the clever bit is this: when I was done, I selected the empty space I'd freed up erasing w/ the Select by Color Tool.  Then, -Select>Grow...>(There's a popup)Grow selection by 1-.  Now, I select the lower layer, set it to visible and the upper layer to invisible -w/o undoing the select of empty I'd done and expanded on the upper layer- and hit [Delete].

Voilà!  Now I have Miriam w/o a background and the background w/o Miriam.  To preserve the layers like that w/o using the memory-hogging .xcf or .psd formats, I saved it as a .gif.  Now, I'll show you, but it treats that as a two-frame animation - if I was cruel, I'd set the timing to 5ms a frame and give Geo epilepsy...

Anyway, -Image>Mode>Indexed...(popup)>Maximum number of colors: 255.  File>Save As...(pop)>make sure whatever filename ends in .gif-.

So the result .gif w/ layers preserved for future use is here:



…Now to cut off Miriam's head - I don't want her body  -However, I'm going to use the unindexed .png copy, for the soft edges the format can do, no need for animation, and indexed reduces image size lower quality, if sharper...

[Protok St]

So you start with this, of course:

Now, GIMP has a nice Deinterlace feature.  Image>Mode>RGB, then Filters>Enhance>Deinterlace.  A popup asks for Keep odd fields or Keep even fields.

Choosing odd yields this:  and choosing even, this:  -The latter definitely better than odd/dark, but not good.

So what I did was this:  opening a Layers box -Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Layers- I duplicated the original interlaced shot I cropped out of the Belivers' faction .pcx.  -Layer>Duplicate Layer.-  You can also right-click on the layers box to do that.

NOW, I deinterlaced both copies, one even and the other odd.  I made sure the upper layer was selected by clicking on it, and slid the Opacity slider up top to 50%.

Then Image>Merge Visible Layers>Clicked Clipped to image in the popup>Merge.  The result was nice w/ most of the bad details in the respective deinterlaces smoothed out/corrected, but a teeny bit dark.  So, Colors>Brightness-Contrast>upped both exactly 20% and saved the result as a .png.

Cool job! Thanks for sharing your experience Buster's Uncle!
Have you a guide for doing opposite? Making normal graphic to interlaced as SMAC?