Overlays and opacity
Hello everybody. First, few informations about me and my willing.
It's my third message in this forum. I'm new in using FT. I don't have CC. I'm OK with using Photoshop. I'm french and I hardly speak - and write - english.
So, it's now about two weeks i've bought FT3. For the moment I only use it with my already done game world imported as overlays, in order to be exported as images.
But, onto my imported worl images, I want to put an other overlay with transparents, half transparents and completely visible parts.
Exactly I want to put a map of earth, to compare the two planets, onto a 100% visible overlay of my game world, and I want borders of lands in black 100%, lands inside at 50% and seas at 0%.
Of course, I'm able to do such map with photo editor, but i would like to know exactly what I have to do, what colour I must fill, and how I mst get in on FT.
Following some advices, I imported as overlay an image of earth borders in black and all the rest in blue. As he told me, I said "yes" to the question about opacity of the image imported, and i'm happy to see that only borders are visible onto my world map overlay. But it's not yet what i wanna do. I wanna add lands half visible. So, I tried to fill the lands, instead of the blue that gets invisible when imported, with a "half blue" lighter than the already present blue, that I let for the seas. I tried other things such borders in white, lands in grey and seas in black ... and I got many diferent results like having the sea in blue, the lands invisible and so on except the thing I want.
So, I'm hoping for help and explanations from the community.
By the same time, i have two questions
The opacity slider
First I noticed that when you have more than one overlay visible, it doesn't work, or , more exactly, it works at 100% but, if you fix it on 99% or less, the overlay becomes totally invisible. But if you take all the other overlays off, then the slider works ok.
It took me a while to guess it. Do everybody confirm ? Are there some exceptions or other things I should know avout the slider and this impossibility playing with opacity of several layers ?
Symetric or not symetric ?
I wonder why some imported layers have to be first symetricaly "returned" with photo editor to be in the good sense when imported in FT ... and why others don't need it.
It seems a matter of files type. I believe, but i'm not sure at all, that jpg need this transformation and png and bmp don't need it. Is that true ?
Thanks you for help.
It's my third message in this forum. I'm new in using FT. I don't have CC. I'm OK with using Photoshop. I'm french and I hardly speak - and write - english.
So, it's now about two weeks i've bought FT3. For the moment I only use it with my already done game world imported as overlays, in order to be exported as images.
But, onto my imported worl images, I want to put an other overlay with transparents, half transparents and completely visible parts.
Exactly I want to put a map of earth, to compare the two planets, onto a 100% visible overlay of my game world, and I want borders of lands in black 100%, lands inside at 50% and seas at 0%.
Of course, I'm able to do such map with photo editor, but i would like to know exactly what I have to do, what colour I must fill, and how I mst get in on FT.
Following some advices, I imported as overlay an image of earth borders in black and all the rest in blue. As he told me, I said "yes" to the question about opacity of the image imported, and i'm happy to see that only borders are visible onto my world map overlay. But it's not yet what i wanna do. I wanna add lands half visible. So, I tried to fill the lands, instead of the blue that gets invisible when imported, with a "half blue" lighter than the already present blue, that I let for the seas. I tried other things such borders in white, lands in grey and seas in black ... and I got many diferent results like having the sea in blue, the lands invisible and so on except the thing I want.
So, I'm hoping for help and explanations from the community.
By the same time, i have two questions
The opacity slider
First I noticed that when you have more than one overlay visible, it doesn't work, or , more exactly, it works at 100% but, if you fix it on 99% or less, the overlay becomes totally invisible. But if you take all the other overlays off, then the slider works ok.
It took me a while to guess it. Do everybody confirm ? Are there some exceptions or other things I should know avout the slider and this impossibility playing with opacity of several layers ?
Symetric or not symetric ?
I wonder why some imported layers have to be first symetricaly "returned" with photo editor to be in the good sense when imported in FT ... and why others don't need it.
It seems a matter of files type. I believe, but i'm not sure at all, that jpg need this transformation and png and bmp don't need it. Is that true ?
Thanks you for help.
Comments
The vertical flip on image overlays for JPG files may also be occuring for GIF files and others except for BMP that are coming in through the direct Windows pathway. The history is that Windows stores BMP files inverted with regards to other file types and FT's original design only allowed BMP files for image overlays. When it was expanded to other types, the innate flip was missed.
As for what you're looking for in overlays, you're probably going to have to use an external program such as the GIMP ( http://www.gimp.org ) or Paint.NET ( http://www.getpaint.net/ ) to set your alpha levels and then import the overlay(s) into FT.
1 Is it the impossibility to use the slider when there is more than one overlay visible that is the bug I discovered ?
So, I imagine that i can hope , in a next future, that it's gonna be possible ?
2 jslayton said : "The vertical flip on image overlays for JPG files may also be occuring for GIF files and others except for BMP"
So - if I understood well - this flip is actually a matter of format files, and it has to be done ( with photo editor before importing in FT) for jpeg, gif and all formats except bmp ? Well it seems it's not necessary as well for png !! Am I right ?
3 For the work I want to do (an overlay with parts 100%, 50% and 0%) , I did it with photo editor ... but when i import on FT, the invisible parts become black ... but not exactly all the invisible parts ... it's a strange result difficult to understand. So Ralf made me the blue image I told in my last message. It has borders in black and a general blue colour for the invisible pixels and it's ok in the sense I have parts invisible (the blue pixels) and borders (in black) visible ... but I want parts at 50% ... so I tried to make them in "half blue" ... but, imported in FT, the result is not ok ... the seas (in dark blue, that should be invisible) are getting visible, and the light blue (the lands, that should be half visible) are getting invisible. The borders are ok !!
So, you suggest that i only have to do a normal png and then just import in Ft and so, that will consider the opacities I made in this png ? ... but I don't suceed in doing this. As I told you FT don't consider rightly the good opacities.
So, what did I miss to do ?
This overlay is onto an other overlay visible, that is my world game jpeg.
http://hpics.li/7c68bd5