News Jerseys Help?

[The Blue Meanie]

Hi guys

I'm making some news jerseys icons(nhl) a lot like what is already on offer at this site.

But I have a problem

When I use mine, the images all have annoying white haze around the jersey. Why?

I have the transparency set at 3%.

I only have Microsoft photo editor and Paint

Thanks

pls help

[The Blue Meanie]

OK

I went and got adobe photoshop

I just lassoed the pic and it looked a lot better...

any other hints out there?

and is it possible to have three news jerseys for each team and have them rotate?

I know its possible in fm to have different player pics show up...?

[Minstrel]

The rotating and/or random pics is something that is on the list (and I'll be fighting for in testing) but there wasn't time for it to get enabled yet...

I assume you mean you are working with a jersey source on a white background? In doing mine, I mainly used the Polygonal Lasso tool since jerseys are fairly 'boxey'. I took that source, and pasted into an adjustments file that is substantially larger than your source image and has a transparent background. Go to your preferences and set your 'Tansparency & Gamut' to a small grid with either medium or dark grid colors, this will make it much easier to see what portions of the white backround you may have missed.

Then, if it is a 'folded sleeves' look select the sleeves and scale them to be 50% less wide (I've posted about that 'trick' several times before so either search or look back in the forum for more info) but make sure you don't leave a single transparent line between your jersey and resized sleeves which is easy to do. To guard against that you may want to change your grid to light grey to make it easier to see if you've left a space if you have a dark jersey and keep it on dark if you are working on a light jersey.

Then you take that adjusted item and paste it into a collective jerseys file; I used 200 wide by 250 tall for mine to make them as large as possible and yet not interefere with the news display. Go to your 'View' menu and make sure you have it set to display 'Rulers' and to also show 'Guides'. Then click on each ruler, hold down your button and drag a 'guide' from each side to give you a grid with four equal squares and a center point. In that 'View' menu also set 'Snap to Guides'.

This way you can paste in jerseys of any size and scale them to fit in the center of this document so all of your jerseys will appear in news items centered in the same area helping them to look better as a set. Again use your grid colors to check your edges. It may help to also make a background layer you can fill with black and a screenshot of the background used in news items. You can switch to that as a background to show exactly what it will look like in the game without testing it

Then using 200% zoom and your assorted backgrounds use the layer masking tool to 'paint out' the rough edges and give your jersey a more "jersey looking" shape; round the shoulders, clear up the neck lines, smooth assorted lines etc. and then save 'em

If you want to play around with the cloning tool you could also recreate shapes and deal with 'rough' sources. For example... here's a quick before and after of my Marlies jersey. That's the source on the left and my finished version on the right:



Since you said you had Photoshop it was easier for me to let you know exactly how I set mine up, hope it helps Any other questions let me know but please don't post topics in all caps, no need to shout

[The Blue Meanie]

Thank you very much for all your detailed help.

I'll try out your ideas when I get home from work.

Sorry for all the shouting