My question is.. does it really take photoshop to put transparent gifs on the avatars we draw?

Becauuse.. I thought i heard of other ways. Eh..

Photoshop is expensive too isn't it? meh

[quote name='adiomino' timestamp='1297743224' post='78874']
My question is.. does it really take photoshop to put transparent gifs on the avatars we draw?

Becauuse.. I thought i heard of other ways. Eh..

Photoshop is expensive too isn't it? meh
[/quote]

I use CorelDraw but that is even more expensive (unless you live in Thailand its only about 3$ US here).

Cutler

Darn.. Thanks cutler.

I suppose i won't be able to turn in my avatars after all xDD

I use GIMP. It's free.

[url="http://www.gimp.org/"]http://www.gimp.org/[/url]

[quote name='adiomino' timestamp='1297745032' post='78876']
Darn.. Thanks cutler.

I suppose i won't be able to turn in my avatars after all xDD
[/quote]
Gimp is free. Just search for other programs, I think paintshop is still around too. You can also get a trial version of photoshop that lasts 30 days which is free.

And of course, you can find a friend (either in RL or MD) who has one of these programs and get their assistance, if you can't locate a suitable program (although Gimp is pretty damn good)

For simple conversion to transparent gif there are also many on-line applications. Try to type "transparent gif online" in Google and you'll find several links.

paint.net also does

Ah yay! Thank you guys. I'll definitely be using one of those then

Could someone write a brief instruction on how to prepare avatar using gimp from raw scan/ photo file with basic tricks (which filters, what should be paid attention to)? It seems many decent quality drawings may be trasnformed to dismal quality avatars; some would not even take a pencil after a few conversion atempts. Such a public MD resource could only help to get more original graphics in game; I think when someone decide to draw something for MD, MD-requirement digitilizing should not be a major obstacle. (I have just spent a few hours doing that - alpha conversion and resize kept killing any quality I managed to put on paper)

If anyone needs help with avy transparency, resizing, etc. Send me the pic and I'll fix it for you. (I see many people are having trouble with that so that's why I'm offering my help)

a small tutorial on how to use gimp to create a good transparent avy:

first you should take all color out of the picture:

Image > Mode > Grayscale
Image > Mode > RGB

and now we're going to start making it transparent:

Colors > Color to Alpha
set the background color to RGB = 241.239.214 or Hex #F1EFD6
Filters > Web > Semi-Flatten
and save it as a .gif file, select Convert to Indexed using default settings (You can convert to indexed before you save, it's up to you)

and you're done

don't forget to scale you're image to 100 x 160 px

and credits for the semi-flatten go to ravenstrider

Edited February 20, 201115 yr by samon

Semi-flatten will remove the transparency; I've tried it.

Here's a full tutorial, from raw file to upload quality: [url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/9102-avatar-tutorial-for-windows/"]link[/url].