xmoonglowx replied to your post: need something? here’s a post for you to reply to...
I do need a bit of help however on Photoscape. For large scenes such as this sailormooncrystalscreen… Is there anyway to shrink the image down?
Hey there @xmoonglowx, let me see if I can help you out a little! I’m not sure if you want to resize the image to make it smaller, or to crop it and resize it to icon quality so I will show you how to do both!
To resize a large image on Photoscape:
Step 001: drag your image or copy/paste your image onto Photoscape’s editor mode.
Step 002: Underneath the heading of home you will see your different drop down menu options. Click on the arrow that points down beside “resize” as you can see in the above picture.
You will see many different options here - for example, “reduce the longer length: 600px”. You can experiment with these until you find a size that is perfect for what you’re looking for. Here is an example outcome:
To crop a large image into an icon:
Step 001: drag your image or copy/paste your image onto Photoscape’s editor mode.
Step 002: Click the heading Crop which is above above the “No frame”, and next to “Home,” | “Object” | “Tools”. Click the option ‘Assign ratio/size’ and set it to 100 width/100 Height as seen in my previous tutorial. Then move the cursor till you have the icon you desire.
Step 003: Hit enter, or press crop.
Step 004: Underneath the heading of home you will see your different drop down menu options. Click on the arrow that points down beside “resize” as you can see in the above picture.You will see many different options here, the one you’re looking for the standard icon size is “reduce the longer length: 100px”.
Step 005: Select this option and then you can save/save as.
This is Bubbles-mod here with your second tutorial! Like Jerry-mod, I’ll also be going from start to finish on how I crop and edit icons on the wonderful program known as GIMP. GIMP is a lovely alternative for anyone that’s seeking Photoshop and cannot afford it because -- guess what? It’s free! It’s also able to run on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux which makes it very versatile. Whether you’re an old timer with GIMP like myself, or a newbie, I’ll guide you through the many steps on how to complete this. And if you don’t have GIMP and wish to learn with this tutorial you can grab it from here!
That being said there is a few things you might need while working with this tutorial.
Important things to have
Of course having a method of downloading your video is a must. So there’s many sources you can get videos from, youtubemp4s converters and also Kissanime/Kisscartoon (the latter once they get the site back up and running).
Next you’ll need your trusty GIMP program.
Then we’ll need my favorite plugin: BIMP -- the Batch Image Manipulation Plugin which you can also get from here. Now if you’re not familiar installing Plugins, I recommend following the instructions they have there as this won’t be the main focus of my tutorial.
Finally, you’ll want a frame ripper. The one I tend to use DVDVideoSoft’s Video to JPG
One other script that can be added is the ExportAll script. This just allows you save all the images you have opened at one time to a location. This comes in handy if you don’t want to save images one by one later on while cropping. It is not necessary needed. Remember to add it to GIMP like you would any other script/plugin.
Now, this is going to get a bit image heavy so I’m going to be putting everything under a cut from this point on. Good luck and happy iconing everyone!
Step 1: Making your Frames
So upon opening DVDVideoSoft’s convertor, you’ll receive a screen very similar to this:
Most of the buttons are pretty self explanatory with adding your video file and the output location. The one thing I want you to pay attention to is that the setting I have at the far left for frames. I always go with every 10 frames no matter what project I’m working on. It does offer other options, but this gives me the most frames to work with -- minus the option for every second but that’s a bit too much. Once you have everything in order, go ahead and click that convert button and let it do its thing!
I will forewarn, depending on how long the video is and how fast your computer is, the time can vary. If you don’t believe your video is powerful enough then play around with some of the setting until you find one that works for you!
Step 2: Pick your Frames
There isn’t much to add for this section here. Like Jerry-mod mentioned, I too can agree this the worst part. You’ll have to scroll through the frames you have to select the ones you wish to keep for iconing. I recommend either deleting the frames you don’t want as you go OR set up a folder to stash the frames you wish to keep and then delete the folder containing the miscellaneous once you’re done. I tend to flip back and forth, usually going with the latter if I plan on cropping more than one character from a video.
So let’s move onto the next step once you’re finished!
Step 3: Loading & Cropping
Okie dokie! Now that we’ve selected all the screencaps we wish to use, let’s go ahead and open up GIMP. Once it’s open, make sure that you have it in Single Window mode. You can check this by going to Windows and clicking Single Window -- or if it has a check by it then you’re good! Next, let’s go back to the folder that contains all the lovely caps you’re going to be using today.
Since I’m using a windows computer, I’m afraid I only know this command, but what we’re going to do is select the very first image in your folder. Once that’s done, press the Shift key on your keyboard. Then, if you have arrow keys, move down until you’ve selected 25 images. If you don’t have arrow keys, your mouse can suffice. You’re more than welcome to do more or less than 25 images, but I like working with this multiple.
Now that they’ve all be selected, we’re going to drag them over to our GIMP window where GIMP will now help us out and load all 25 images into separate tabs.
Pretty handy eh?
Now it’s time to set up a few things before we start cropping. If you’re unfamiliar with the GIMP tools it’s this guy:
And these are the settings we’ll wish to make for it in the dialog box:
That way while cropping, your images will keep to the size of a square. You can navigate to the different images just by clicking them and the arrows on the left and right side so you can pan through more tabs if your screen resolution isn’t big enough to have them all on one line. Once that’s completed, it’s time to save these bad boys.
Step 4: Saving the images
If you didn’t bother saving my ExportAll script, then you can save/export these images as you normally would in GIMP under the File > Overwrite [filename]. However, if you did use my script, then I’ll show you how to use it real quick. Like you would with saving a regular image, you’d click File but now you’ll go to a new option I’ve given you called Save All:
Selecting it will give us a new dialog box that we’ll have to work with. In it you’ll select the folder that your screencaps are located and you can leave the rest of the information alone.
Now go ahead and click okay and let the script run so we can move onto your next set. Just don’t forget to close all these lovely images as you move through each set. Close All can also be found under File as well. Once you’ve completed all of your cropping it’s time to move onto the next phase.
Step 5: Make the Border
I know what you’re thinking. Bubbles-mod, why would I make my border now when my images are still so gigantic? Don’t worry there silly, we’ll worry about that in a few. The reason I like to create a border if I want to use them on an icon is because batching allows us to color them, resize, reshape and add a border all at the same time! It’s pretty snazzy. But if you already have a border in mind, then go ahead and skip this step.
So before we move onto that, likes go ahead and make an image the size that you’re going to make your icons. For simplicity, I’m going to make a canvas of 100 x 100. You can do this from File > New
Now if we’re sticking to square icons then this will be a piece of cake! Let’s go ahead and select the color we want our border to be. As you can see from above I’m going with a dashing fluorescent purple to meet Lady Wifi’s needs. Next, we’re just going to fill the box with the paint bucket tool. Then, select the Square Select tool from your tool box. It sort of looks like a rectangle:
Fix up it’s settings like we did before with cropping so it can have an aspect ratio before we start our selection on the square. Now how much you select is up to you. Keep in mind, we will be deleting the content of the square we’re selecting so if you want a really big border then make it a smaller selection. Otherwise, making a very huge selection if you want a thin one. Once it’s done hit the delete key.
Now you’re probably wondering if this happens so to you, what to do about this white background? Not to worry! Just go and right click on your background layer so we can add an Alpha Channel:
And then we’ll happily hit the delete key again and now we have our square border!
Now if you’re going for a circle icon border, the steps are pretty much similar. Just instead of the Square/Rectangle select tool, you’re going to want to use the circle one:
Like before fill in your canvas, select the tool, change the aspect ratio and create your circle size. Now with Circle, you’re going to want to do something instead of deleting your selection. I want you to copy it. You can do this with Ctrll+C and then make a new layer with Shift+Ctrl+N or selecting Layers > New from the top bar. Now paste that circle you copied into the new layer.
At first you may not see anything different, but that’s because we have to delete our bottom layer. So we’ll need to right click and select Delete Layer:
Now you should see the circle you were looking for! Now we’re back to our old steps with the rectangle, we just need to select the Circle tool again to make the selection of the Circle that we’ll be deleting this time. Like before this is also your call for the size border that you want.
Once you’re done remember to save the border so we can move onto our next phase: Batching!
Step 6: Batch to Resize Images
Now we’re at one of my favorite parts in the entire tutorial. Batching!! Now I hope you already downloaded the Batch Pluggin before starting and set it up, otherwise you’ll have to close GIMP out first so it can reload with it properly added. Great! So we’re going to open up the Batch by selecting it from the File Menu and you should see its entire name:
Go ahead and selection and you’ll get Batch Manipulation to open!
Since we finally have it open, let’s do the easy stuff like add in the images we’re going to use and also select their output folder. I suggest making a new folder so you don’t accidentally overwrite your old ones. Once you’ve completed that I want you to click on the giant plus sign with add below it.
These options will allow you to complete different services for your icons! Most of them are pretty self explanatory but the one I want you to focus on first is change format. I love my icons always in the .png file so if you like that as well, go ahead and select it so that will be the first task it will complete. After you’ve made the option, you will notice the BIMP is allowing you to add another option. This is when we’ll do our resizing by clicking Resize.
In Resizing, I always select the radio button for “Set Exact size in pixel” so we can set the complete size of our image. The width and height boxes is where you can finally select to make our icons go to the size of 100 x 100.
Go ahead and click okay so we can add our next step.
********** (only for circle icons): **********
Now if you want to make circle icons, we have to resize all of our icons to this perfect shape. BIMP can allow us to do that as well. So when clicking the plus/add button, select “Other GIMP Procedure”. A search box will appear along with many other options that GIMP can complete. In the search box the term we’re going to look for is “round” and you’ll see a few return results. The one we wish to go with is the “script-fu-round-corners” so click it.
On the right side you’ll see a few other options appear on the right side of the box like above. The only thing we’re worried about here for now is the Edge Radius. Change the value to 50 so you can get a complete circle. I’ll leave it to you to play around with this later to find out what other values and the drop-shadow can do. After changing the 0.0 to 50.0 let’s click OK so we can move onto our next step: our border.
********** (end of only for circle icons): **********
In the add options, you want to select “Add a Watermark”. This allows you to make watermarks in a text or image, we want to go with the image option. From the dropdown, navigate to your border image and open it. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings of the box there so yours should look like this:
You’re free to hit OK from here. The final step is renaming the images. That’s because DVDVideoSoft gives files really long names. If you have no problem with this, you can skip this last add on. Otherwise, hit the plus add again and pick “Rename with a pattern”. It has a few options to pick from but for simplicity, go with the option to rename them increasing numbers or the ## as they suggest:
Now you can hit okay once again so it can return you to the BIMP main console. We’ve finished making all of our selections so the final step is to hit Apply to allow it to run. Depending on how many files it is the time length can vary but once everything is complete you’ll get the solid green bar, notifying you the process has finished and whether or not any errors occurred. If you’ve finished with zero errors, you’re in business! Go ahead and close out BIMP and GIMP and navigate to your output folder to see your final results:
I took a while to get my tutorial out compared to my fellow Mods, but being in the stone age sadly accidents with concrete happen... (quite literally, a concrete slab split my big toe in two and I’ve been recuperating! This is why we need to invent shoes.)
I am going to be giving you a tutorial on how to make icons much like the GFI icon with using the freeware Photoscape. These are what we will be making:
First of all I will direct you to Bubbles’ ‘Cropping and Editing Icons in GIMP’ Tutorial. Why? Because the first few steps on how to make your frames is exactly the same as to how I do it!
P.S. I apologise if this tutorial is hard to follow because it is simply in bullet points but I did try and do detailed paragraphs but even I found them difficult to follow. Hopefully the simple program of Photoscape and the screenshots I have provided will assist you.
First we crop our frame.
Choose your first frame. This is the one that I have chosen.
Now Open Up Photoscape.
Select EDITOR from the taskbar.
Drag and drop your chosen frame.
Select the Crop option from the task-bar above ‘No Frame’.
Select the drop down menu > assign ratio/size.
Check size setting.
Change width/height to 100.
Click ok.
Highlight your crop area on the image by adjusting the squares.
Hit enter or select crop.
On the task-bar choose Home.
Select Resize.
Select Preserve Aspect Ratio and type 100.
Hit enter or select OK.
Select Save As, save your icon. Congrats you have made your BASE.
It will look like this:
Now we move onto EDITING our icon.
Select BATCH EDITOR from the taskbar.
From your windows folder drag and drop into Photoscape.
Resize > Crop > Width/Height: 90.
Check: Apply Margin & Round > Modify.
Background Colour: White.
Round (Pixel): 0
Check Assign same margins > Margin: 5
Click OK.
Select Object from the Task-bar.
Photo 1 > ... > Photo...
Select the border you wish to use. Here is a selection of different colours that you can download here.
Open.
YOU CAN HIT CONVERT NOW, OR, YOU CAN ADD A FILTER/EDIT THE ICON.
To edit the icon, select Filter.
Mess around with the different options until you are happy. You can see what I chose in the provided example below:
Now we select convert ; or convert all. And our icon will save like this:
jerry-mod here with your first tutorial! we’re going to go all the way from start to finish, so depending on how much you know, you’ll probably be able to skip some of this. i, however, am leaving no stone unturned. so before we dive in, let’s gather our materials!
first of all you’re gonna make sure you’re using a macOS. duh right? it’s in the title.
if you have a mac, you have Quicktime, but you know i figured i’d mention it.
this tutorial will use Photoshop CC6, however i have used this method on CS5 as well. (really, as long as you can use timeline, you SHOULD be good. the positioning may be a little different though.)
you’ll want a frame ripper for this method... unless you’re using pre-made frames or print-screening. i personally use SnapMotion but i’m sure there are more comprehensive ones.
Photoscape is a bonus feature for this tutorial. i’ll show you how to mass edit file names with and without it.
okay! this tutorial WILL be image-heavy so if you’re ready, click the cut!
step one: clipping your media
now if you’re lucky, you may not have to do this. but in my experience, my computer likes me a LOT more when i don’t try to run an entire 11-22 minute video through a frame ripper. (read: my laptop crashed once; would not recommend.)
so first we’re going to open our video with quicktime. i work with .mp4s or bust, because photoshop really only likes to import .mp4s and .movs in my experience. they can be a pain to find if you’re not ripping from a dvd but kissanime/kisscartoon has treated myself and bubbles-mod very well.
next we trim. i don’t suggest any more than one minute segments. you can open the trim tool with command+t in quicktime to save you some seconds. if you want to be precise and just cut out the character you need, i’d suggest pressing and holding the yellow bar until you see the frame preview stretch like so:
trimming is otherwise self-explanatory. you drag both ends to the place you want it to be and that’s your section. but, a tip for remembering where you left off:
this number on the right end is going to be your starting point if you’re going minute by minute.
step two: ripping your frames
this is where your frame ripper will come in. now snapmotion is a pretty simple program. you click. you drag.
click that auto button to switch it to well... auto. (i find that the settings it comes with are usually fine, but if you’re clipping something that’s very SHORT maybe change it from .100 to .050 or even .025 depending on how short we’re talking.)
once you’re here, click the red button to rip those frames. it will bring you to a file screen so you can choose where to save it. (i suggest a new folder EVERY time.) oh and don’t try pressing enter. you HAVE to push that red button. enter just plays the video in this program. annoying, i know.
and there you go! all the frames are there! on to the next section-- which is really only a sentence...
step three: picking your frames
pretty sure all three of us mods can agree this is the worst part but... literally just scroll through and pick out which frames you’re keeping and which you’re tossing. here’s how i set it up for the most part:
first i preview using the space bar. (you can scroll through images this way too hella convenient.)
then i drag it over to a fresh folder titled so i know i’m keeping the frames.
rinse repeat tbh.
step four: cropping & resizing
you’re probably like: why do we even need explanation here? well you probably DON’T but a nifty little trick photoshop offers you is the ratio tool. so once you have your marquee tool open, go to the top where it says style and select fixed ratio.
set it to 1:1.
and just like that: you have squares. no guesswork. (this trick also works with circles, just sayin ;3)
as for resizing, i resize all of my photos at once when i’m done with cropping. it’s easiest to do this in preview because you can select all x00 files and resize them to 100px or whatever your jam is all at once.
step five: loading files into photoshop
now we're getting close to the fun part. (at least i think this is the most fun part.) the first thing we need to do is upload all of your frames to photoshop.
(i will warn that if you’re an order freak; photoshop will require you to use as many digits as the largest number or else you’ll get 1, 11, 12, 13, 14 before you get to 2s, etc. it. is. annoying. i personally run my files through photoscape and set them to 3 or 4 digits to avoid this but this is an optional step. if you want to know how to do this, i get to photoscape at the end.)
now. to mass-import: go to file > scripts > load files into stack
it’ll bring up this box:
click browse, select your files, and:
BAM! there they are. now click okay and... be patient. uvu”
step six: prepare for mass editing
now photoshop should look about like this:
so go ahead and click that blurry “create frame animation” at the bottom. once you do, click the little lines to your right and make frames from layers.
once that’s done, go back to the same menu and convert to video timeline.
last step before we start editing is to go over to the layers. select ALL of them. then right click to open the menu and click convert to smart object.
step seven: mass editing (circular borders)
once your document looks like this, i suggest saving. because now you’re free to edit! i’m going to show you how to make a basic circular border for this tutorial. color editing will be left for another time because that’s a tutorial all its own.
first thing’s first: we need to make this slightly smaller. for this one, i’ll be using 96 x 96, but you can go smaller if you want a bigger border or a drop shadow. so resize in image size:
then we move over to canvas size
and take it back up to 100px.
next we need guides. they make making perfect circles MASSIVELY easier. you find lock guides here:
once you have the dialogue screen up (you’ll need to do these one at a time) set them to 2px and 98px both vertically and horizontally. your icons should be perfectly outlined.
go to the marquee tool and change it to oval/circle. now you can drag it from one corner to the opposite corner (assuming you left ratio in 1:1) to make a perfect circle. looks like so:
make sure you don’t accidentally deselect this, and make a new layer. i name it clipping mask so it’s easy to find but you don’t technically HAVE to. make sure to move it DIRECTLY BELOW the icons’ layer.
now go to the fill tool and fill it with literally whatever solid color. (the color you use won’t matter unless you mess with the icons layer’s opacity or style but again; another tutorial.)
once you’ve done that, right click the icon layer and select create clipping mask. Bam! It’s a circle.
next we add a border. your circle marquee should still be up (but if it’s not, just command click the icon on the clipping mask layer and it will re-select the circle you made). make another new layer and place it below your clipping mask layer. once this is done, go to the stroke tool. for the size we’ve chosen, 3px is the maximum we can do. pick the color that matches in the dialogue box; i chose magenta for this icon:
at this point we could call the icons done, but for grins and giggles, we’re gonna add a quick effect. head over to the clipping mask layer and right click it to bring up the effects menu and select inner glow.
you can honestly play around with the settings and see what you like but here’s what i did for this set:
Before I reveal the icons, there’s one last thing we have to do: fix the timeline at the bottom. For some reason CC hates us and new layers do not automatically match the length of the timeline you’re working with. Easy but sometimes tedious fix. Just go down into the timeline and drag the layers that AREN’T the icons to match length:
Et voila! We’re ready to export.
step eight: mass exporting
alright fam we’re almost there! head on over to file > export > render video. make sure your settings match this screen (‘cause in all honesty i’ve had it set this way for so long i don’t remember what i changed... smh...)
that’s it! once you’ve set your title, click render and it’ll automatically name it Title000 and so on. (You can set it to start at 1 where it says Starting #). You’re going to have to use this method to export regardless, but if you want MORE naming options (like having JUST numbers for example), then photoscape has you covered:
i find photoscape easier to understand, anyway.
in either case, be sure to SELECT YOUR FOLDER before you click okay/render. in photoshop that’s “select folder” in the top left. in photoscape, that’s “save to” in the same location. don’t do what i’ve done on multiple occasions and accidentally start rendering files to your desktop. the worst.
