If you use virtual tabletops for your RPGs, you have almost certainly looked at a token and thought to yourself, “that token would be perfect if it were just gold.” We’ve all been there, friend, and I have a solution for you. With four minutes of work, you can make anything golden.
Download Paint.net. It’s free and does all sorts of cool art stuff. Open it up and drag your drab token onto the canvas.
What’s that in the upper right-hand corner? Zoom. Enhance.
This is layer control. You know layers, right? There those things you’re always putting the wrong token onto. Click the New Layer button; it’s the first one in the lower left. Then double click on Layer 2.
That’ll bring up a new window. DON’T PANIC. Click on Mode and select G L O W .
Then set the Opacity to something like 50%. You don’t have to be precise. Slap OK, because you’re done with this window.
Color Wheel; lower left. Find a sorta light orange color. I like this one.
Grab the pencil icon from the toolbar on the left that I surely don’t have to point out. Draw an outline around the token.
It doesn’t have to be clean or precise. You’re a GM, not a Picasso de Michaelangelo or anything. Now, take a deep breath, pick the tipping-over-paint-can and click anywhere within your outline.
You absolute animal! Look at what you did! You just did an art, bucko.
Now, to finish up, click on Save As and set the file type to .png. Pee En Gee insures that you can make the background disappear. When you try to save, Paint.net will prompt you for bit depth and flattening and other Art-Doer stuff that I can’t explain; just press OK and Flatten.
Now, we have one last step, but it can be tricky... Select this little fellow here. He’s the Magic Wand and he is your friend.
Click on any of the background that you want to remove and then play with the Tolerance levels until it highlights all of the awful that you want to delete and none of your golden hotness. When you’re happy with the selection, hit Delete and it’s gone. You might need to go in with the eraser tool and do some precision cleaning, but I have no doubt that you will persevere.
You should end up with something like this:
The checkered background will just be transparent. Save your Art (tm) and drop it into Roll20 or Astral or whatever you use. Bask in the golden glow of your success.
