BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Miniatures and Terrain => BattleTech Miniatures => Topic started by: foxbat on 04 January 2012, 05:10:56
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In posting pictures of your miniatures, size does matter. If too small a picture will prevent people from enjoying the fine details of your work, one too big will mercilessly expose the unavaidable flaws decorating such small objects entails. It also takes up a lot of bandwidth, and loads up slowly. In the end, it's all a matter of compromise.
I will make a mere suggestion, which you are free to follow. Camospecs Online (http://www.camospecs.com) has opted for a maximum 450 x 450 pixels size. It allows to display your work well enough. For instance, this Kurita Catapult's photograph has been reduced to that size :
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/foxbat19/Battletech/Miniatures/Catapult%20Kurita/KuritaPPCCatapult.jpg).
I have resized it with a very basic software, Irfanview, which can be found for free from here (http://www.irfanview.com/).
Open irfanview, and select the picture you want to work on from your hard drive :
1/ press the keys Ctrl & R simultaneously, you'll open the resizing window :
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/foxbat19/Irfanview%20Tutorial/Irfanview1.png)
2/ type the size reduction you want in either box, the other one will update automatically.
3/Press keys Shift and C. You'll get the custom selection window :
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/foxbat19/Irfanview%20Tutorial/Irfanview2.png)
* Make sure you have selected pixels (green arrow).
* Set the size to 450 x 450 pixels (red circles).
* Fiddle with the location (blue circles) to position it right. You can move the selection frame with the mouse right button.
4/ copy the selection (keys Ctrl & C) and create a new image by pressing the keys Shift & N.
5/ Paste the selection in this new image (Ctrl & V), and save it to the adequate file (Ctrl & S)
6/ If your pic is too blurry, you can use the sharpener by pressing the keys Shift & S. Attention, there is a number of times a picture can be sharpened. 1st pic is not sharpened, 2nd pic is sharpened once, last pic is sharpened 4 times.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/foxbat19/Battletech/Miniatures/Catapult%20Kurita/Flou.jpg)
Unsharpened picture
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/foxbat19/Battletech/Miniatures/Catapult%20Kurita/Corrig1fois.jpg)
Picture has been sharpened once
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/foxbat19/Battletech/Miniatures/Catapult%20Kurita/Corrig4fois.jpg)
Picture has been sharpened 4 times. As you can see, the over correction has caused some pixelisation.
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Ooooo! Thank you, FoxBat! This is useful!
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Very nice guide, I have been using an idiot proof online editor here: http://www.picmonkey.com/
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For just cropping and resizing, you can use MS paint that comes with every version of windows.
1) click on select
2) Click in what you want to be you pic's corner and drag to what will be the opposite corner.
3) If the marked section is good, click Crop (right next to the select tool)
4) save.
To resize, click on resize (under crop) and enter the percentage of size change you want.
The best way to fix blur is to avoid it all together. Steady your hand/arm/camera on something when you take pictures, and don't take just one. Take several. Unless you're doing something wrong, they won't all be blurry.
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+1 for "Paint" (Windows only)
The best way to fix blur is to avoid it all together. Steady your hand/arm/camera on something when you take pictures, and don't take just one. Take several. Unless you're doing something wrong, they won't all be blurry.
Or use a tripod.
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If you're using a macro lens, setting the F-stop as high as it will go (f/22 for many lenses) will increase the Depth of Field (DOF), and improve the focus of the picture. When shooting close up, the DOF is going to be very narrow anyway, so anything to increase it will help. You'll probably need a flash (or flashes), too. Tripods or monopods are also helpful.
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Tripods are great, and if you can, I recommend a remote. not touching the camera at all means you can not cause it to bump and blur
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I advocate backing up and zooming in. Shooting from a greater distance increases the DOF and makes it easier to get the entire mech in focus. Many cameras have tons of megapixels, so even if your mech does not fill the frame, cropping it will (in effect) zoom in closer too.
I also use a shutter-release cable (remote). For those without tripods, use the self-timer instead.
JB
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I advocate backing up and zooming in. Shooting from a greater distance increases the DOF and makes it easier to get the entire mech in focus. Many cameras have tons of megapixels, so even if your mech does not fill the frame, cropping it will (in effect) zoom in closer too.
I also use a shutter-release cable (remote). For those without tripods, use the self-timer instead.
JB
Yes, although it also flattens the image (probably not an issue for most people). Shutter releases can be very helpful, especially if your shutter speed is under 1/60s, which is where camera jitter starts to really have an effect. Bright lights and a flash can also really help reduce jitter.
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Can I ask a stupid question? As someone with very little technical know-how, in either computers of camera-work, will this reduce the size of the photo file? I find myself frustrated by the 300KB attachment upload limit. It means I usually have to post several times if I want to show two or three photos. I don't understand how others are able to post perhaps a dozen photographs.
Should I be using the 'insert photo' option, rather than uploading it as an attachment?
Thanks for the help!
D
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Cropping and shrinking will both reduce the size of the file. You can also get around the forum's restrictions by hosting your pictures on another site like Photobucket.com
Even if you host on another site, you should still at least crop. It's just silly to have an 8x11 picture with a 2x1 mech in the middle of it and really annoying for people viewing on smaller screens.
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Imgur Image Hosting
http://imgur.com/
For quite a while I've been using imgur to host my images. Not only are they fast and easy (and have a mobile app), they also have the least amount of headache when getting to the actual image. I've disliked other image hosting sites with their cumbersome UIs. When you hover over an image with a desktop/laptop mouse cursor, you'll get an array of links to copy, including direct URL and BBCode.
But the nice advantage of imgur is their auto saving of thumbnails for each image you upload.
For example, here's a photo at a large resolution. It's not mine, just an example I found on imgur (credit to Kilroy (http://tinyurl.com/jff9jcq)): http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxf.jpg
As you can see it's quite large when you click on the link above. So you just add one of the available thumbnail letters to the end of the image name, before the extension, and you get it in a pre-sized thumbnail. It will scale it to the largest dimension. For example, if you want to scale this large 5120 × 2857 pixel image down to a 640 pixel sized thumb, it will scale the image proportionally to 640 pixels wide (taking the width as largest dimension) by 357 pixels high, and you'd use the letter "l" at the end for "large".
Add t for small thumb (160x160). Example: http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxft.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxft.jpg)
Add m for medium thumb (320x320). Example: http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfm.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfm.jpg)
Add l for large thumb (640x640). Example: http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfl.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfl.jpg)
Add h for huge thumb (1024x1024). Example: http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfh.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfh.jpg)
And cropped (right side cropped), square image thumbs...
Add s for small square thumb (90x90). Example: http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfs.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfs.jpg)
Add b for big square thumb (160x160). Example: http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfb.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfb.jpg)
Source: https://api.imgur.com/models/image (https://api.imgur.com/models/image#thumbs)
How to Use This on the Forums
You'll want to link to your high-resolution image (the original size) but show only a thumbnail. I'd recommend the "large" thumbnail size of 640 pixels max for the largest dimension on most forums.
So if your direct image link is http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxf.jpg then you'd want to use it in a url tag. And then add the appropriate thumbnail letter to the end when using it in the img tag, and this example that would be http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfl.jpg.
Written out, with the img tag wrapped by the url tag...
[url=http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxf.jpg][img]http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfl.jpg[/img][/url]
And what the final product looks like...
(http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxfl.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/IaKzUxf.jpg)
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So how to make the pixels of the image still clear when zoomed in?