The Answer Thread

[Keaton]

Have graphics questions?  Ask them here-- but keep them serious.  Any 'stupid' questions will be ignored or deleted.

And I'm not the only one to answer here.  If you know the answer, or feel like you can help, feel free to pitch in, but be sure to show the quotes for what you're answering.  Otherwise, it makes no sense.

[darkphantomime]

Dear TacheonBlack,

WHY IS THERE NO GIMP TUTORIAL?!

*cough*

Anyway, real question - Sometimes I see an image, but I want to 'cut' some parts out, maybe it's a vertical or horizontial area... so I can 'change' the resolution without having the image be distorted by stretching. Is there any way I can do this in GIMP?

[Keaton]

Dear JQ, use the 'crop' tool/setting on photoshop, or resize the image by hand.  The image is usually rasterized by GIMP's internal processing, and therefore doesn't usually pixellate the image.

Thanks for asking.

[darkphantomime]

Okay... How about if I want to hmm... 'cut out' a section, or seperate a single image into two images (like dividing it down the middle)?

[Keaton]

That depends on if you want to leave those two separate images in the same picture, or if you want to use them independently of each other.

The easiest (and my) way of doing things if this:  Take your rectangle or 'marquee' tool, and make a little vertical line between the two images a few pixels wide.  This should make it so that a little white... or whatever your foreground color is... rectangle pops up between the two images.  Make sure this is on the same layer.  Then, make sure that that little rectangle is selected (or has the little moving lines around it, it usually is selected after being made by default), and go to Edit>Clear or, I believe, Ctrl+k.

I hope this helps.

It should leave a little checkered space between the two images.  Make this as wide as you need it to be.



Another, alternative method would be to just use that rectangular tool to select something that you want to cut out.  Then, copy the selected object (Ctrl+C), and go to File>New.  The file size should, if you have GIMP 2.2 or better, automatically adjust to the selected image's size.  Then, you can just paste it on.


Hoping this made sense, and that you are well,
Tacheon Alexander Black
~Graphic Artist~

[alical]

I was wondering, do you make the backgrounds/textures for your images yourself, or download them??

and also, is there any clean easy way to cut something out of an image? E.g. a person/character from a screenshot.

[Keaton]

I mostly deal in Photoshop now, so I sort of forgot most of the GIMP tutorials.  I download almost everything in terms of brushes, textures, fonts, renders, etc., but the real key is using what you have readily available.

There is no easy way to cut something out.  It takes a lot of time and skill.

[BaconWarrior]

Anybody know where I can download new brushes for Gimp?

[DW]

Are there any special techniques you can use to make realistic looking images on paint? I'm in charge of making a bunch of item sprites for HA2, and I'm not sure how well I'm doing.

This is one that we already had on HA2 from a ways back:

This is one that I made: The blade is supposed to be made of wood

This is one of the atrocius pics that I want to improve and make look decent:Any tips on how?

Basically, I'm just wondering the best way to do the shadowing and such, realistic ways of blending shades, the works.

[Keaton]

First of all, it helps the blade look wooden if there aren't metallic colors on the hilt.

Also, the only effective way to make shadowing and textures on something as simple as Microsoft Paint is to use the full array of Grayscaling, making sure that you put the darker shadowing closer to the object...

[DW]

full array of grayscaling...?

[Keaton]

You know, all the shades of gray and black.

[DW]

I can't find very many shades, is there some special option I can select that will show me an all gray/black palette?

[Keaton]

No.  I meant gray, silver, not-quite-black, and black.

Funny how hard it is to make things when you don't PIARTE (it's a word jumble, kids!) things.

[DW]

I actually do, but I have to recolor them to make the different levels of items. Deku, bronze, iron, etc.