Update on my Symbols project - Oh BROTHER, This Is WORK!!!

Ok, I have been drawing to the point where my fingertips are wearing down to nubs. The collection is growing - but I haven't made any of my images transparent yet. One of my regrets is that I was reading the CC3 manual tonight in an effort to learn more about creating symbols and libraries and such - and the symbols in there have that really cool "varicolor" feature. I have been jostling around in my noggin the idea of doing mountains and trees and stuff -basically because I want some nice scenery so that my "Treants" symbols will look good in it - and I WISH that I could make those "varicolor".

Oh well. Scaling is still an issue to me - although I read in the CC3 manual that once that you define an image as a symbol within CC3, then you can basically size it up any way that you want it. I really like how the symbol images are turning out. Anyway - if nothing else - it's gonna turn out to be a pretty sizeable clip art compilation.

Any suggestions or input is welcome. I'm going to keep working on this and see where it goes. I just can't get the image sizes issue out of my head though. Some of these are 1000+ wide, and some are only 100+ wide. I believe that it was Remy Monsen that told me earlier that the default "Apple" symbol was 300 wide, now if I could scale the images to where they all fall under a specific common size parameter, like some thumbnail generation apps do, then that would be great. I'll figure it out eventually - it's just really baking my noodle as to how to do that in a quicker way - to where my image qaulity won't go bad like day old cheese? I'm going to have to go back to reading the CC3 manual and review that part again to see if it can really sink in, and if I can find my "eureka" moment - where I can actually understand what's going on here.

Comments

  • Irfanview has the ability to resize easily.

    ctrl-r, and either use a new pixel size, or a percentage of the current size.
  • edited August 2011
    Thanks Jim. I was thinking more along the lines of a batch processor - something that can fix all of the images at the same time size wise - and maybe shove them off into a folder somewhere. I can rescale them one at a time with the Gimp - but I would have to compare each images pixel sizes to get images consigned to specific groups to sqaure up to being roughly the same size. If I could get them all to be roughly uniform the way that they look in the Windows thumbnail previews when I call up the project folder - that would be awsome.
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    In the unlikely event that you have a copy of Photoshop running around, it has a batch processor that will (among other things) resize all of the images in a directory. The command should be File>>Automate>>Batch.

    Image Magick ( http://www.imagemagick.org/ ) is a set of tools that can also do batch processing of lots of files. http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php is the relevant command. It's command-line based, so you'll need to deal with that.
  • edited August 2011
    Well Mr. Slayton - thank you for your kind assistance sir. the "unlikely" event - is "unlikely" - primarily because I do not have the disposable income to pay big bucks for a photo editor, hence, I must use The Gimp - however, on the other hand (by a more positive note), one might ascertain for the sake of theoretical consideration - that to pay big bucks for something that can be accomplished for free, is, well - less than frugal at best anyway. However - since I can't recall the Gimp having a batch processing capability that I am aware of - Photoshop would have been very useful in that regard.
    but I digress...

    I shall investigate ImageMagick sir - and although command line prompting is somewhat primitive and archaic, I shall nonetheless perservere to "deal with it" satisfactorily - should the application prove useful enough to me to warrant the apparant drudgery...Thank you.

    Also to Jay_NOLA, thank you Jay, I will certainly look into fotosizer, thank you my friend.

    Gentlemen - please excuse me for my somewhat terse wordiness - but I seem to be, at this time, grumpy and somewhat cranky due to lack of sleep - and the unfortunate side effects of the apparant onset of "Manipause", lol. :)
  • Simon RogersSimon Rogers Administrator, ProFantasy Traveler
    I used PSP to resize the original CC3 versions. It is better to try to get the PNGs relatively scaled outside CC3, but you certainly can do it in CC3. If this is what you'd prefer to do, please let me know and I'll offer some suggestions.
  • Mr. Rogers I would certainly welcome any assistance that you might offer. As I have explained before - some of the symbols are huge (1000+ wide), and some are "smallish" (100+ wide).The smaller ones are mostly number and letter marker sets.

    I don't have PSP - I have the gimp and I have also downlowded fotosizer and irfanview, although I have not installed them yet. I was thinking about doing mountains and such but I don't know how I could make those "Varicolor"? Anyway - it's going to be a MASSIVE art package. I am in the process of both drawing and colorizing them - and "reprocessing" older clip art that I've done from my morgue files. Faster scaling solutions would be welcomed. Ironically - I like the the process whereby Windows automatically batch scales the whole lot for preview thumbs when I open the project folder, if I could find a way to batch rescale them so that they are restricted to a common base scale parameter like that - I'de be happy.

    Another question is that if I make them transparent BEFORE rescaling then - how would that affect image qaulity? I have retouched images so that there is a distinct color difference between the image and the background - and yet - after rescaling - "poks" of white background could be found here and there all over the opaque color zones.
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