Custom Card Creation Guide (Non-Photoshop)

[justjohn]

Ok, CupidsArt created a very good guide for creating custom cards using Photo Shop. Photo Shop is an awesome program, but many of us do not have it. So here is a guide for those of us who do not have that program, and want cards that look a little more realistic than the ones created with HSToolKit.
There is some back and forth, but once you understand what you are doing, it is very easy.


What you will need:
MSPaint
The Gimp (a free image editor available at: http://www.gimp.org
Microsoft Publisher (this is optional, but does make life alot easier)
Blank Card Templates available here: http://heroscapers.com/community/showthread.php?t=269

Step 1
Choose the card template you would like to use. Open Publisher. Create a new publication. Go to insert, picture from file, and then choose the template you want. Move the image all the way to the left and top margins of the page (you will get thick black lines on the edge of the page when the image is all the way to the top and left). Now click the little dot on the bottom right corner, click and drag the image so that it fits the page horizontally (clicking this dot will enlarge the image proportionally). Now save the file as a .bmp.

If you do not have Publisher, skip to step 2.

Step 2
If you are not a great photographer, you may opt to use a prexisting pic of your figure available on the web. That is, of course, considering you are using a Wizkids or Wizards figure, whose pictures almost always are white (blank) backgrounded. We will assume you know how to save the picture off of the internet.

Open The Gimp, and open the figure's picture. Go to Tools, Selection Tools, Fuzzy Select. Click anywhere on the white portion of the picture, and move the mouse down. The end result will(should) be a dashed line around your figure. If you see the dashed line anywhere on the figure, move the mouse slightly until the dashed line just outlines the figure. Hit CRTL+K to delete what was selected. Repeat this for any blank space opening between legs and what not. Hit CRTL+A to select everything, then hit CRTL+C to copy it.

Step 3
Open MSPaint. Open the blank card template you enlarged with Publisher (if you didn't use Publisher in step 1, just open the original blank card template). Hit CTRL+V to paste the figure picture that you just edited in The Gimp. After pasting, 2 new icons should appear at the end of MSPaint's tool bar. Make sure you click the bottom/last one. This will turn the white area around your figure's picture into blank/negative space, and it will look right. If your picture is too big or too small, hit CRTL-W to stretch and skew the figures image-Make sure you do the same percents for horizontal and vertical values. 75% is a good place to start if the figure is too big. Also, if there are thing white lines around the figure, don't sweat it, we will fix that in a later step.

Step 4
Go back to the image you still have open in The Gimp. Go to Tools, Color Tools, Threshold. You will see a preview of the image, and it will be black and white. Slide the bar until the bulk of the figure is almost entirely black, and the majority of the surround space is still white. Hit OK. Then hit CTRL+A, CTRL+C.

Open a **NEW** MSPaint-VERY important that you open a NEW MSPaint. Hit CRTL+V to paste the image. This part may take a little back and forth. Click on the Bucket Fill icon and chose red. Click the figure and what was black should turn red. Now fill the white with Black Paint, then fill with White again (this will knock out those random black specks in the picture) If the figure has any white specs within the red, paint the white space black again, and then paint the Red figure White, then Red again, now paint the black background White again.

You should have a red image of the figure on a white background. Now click the circle image on MSPaint's tool bar, and click the last new option (the solid gray rectangle). Choose the green, and make a small green circle for the LOS mark that is normally on this part of the card.

Now resize the entire image by click and sliding the little bluish squares that are on the far right and far bottom of the image. After this, hit CRTL+A and then CRTL+C.

Go back to the previous MSPaint you had open with the card+figure image and CRTL+P to paste the red/green figure picture onto the image. You will more than likely have to stretch/skew the image to make the icon fit on the black area of the card.

Now file, save as, whatever.BMP. BMP! NOT NOT NOT a .jpeg. You want a big file for editing. jpeg will more than likely blur the image at this point if you save it that way in MSPaint. I cannot explain why it does this, it just does.

Step 5
Open the newly saved .bmp in The Gimp. Go to tools, paint tool, Convolve. Now click the mouse and go around the edges of the figure to get rid of any white lines that exist. Then go over the bottom portion of the figure generously to blur the bottom half of the figure.

Go back to the original interface that The Gimp opened, the one that actually says The Gimp on your Window's bottom task bar. Click the icon that looks like a black dot, wood grain, and grey to white fade (sounds confusing, but you'll know it when you see it) and select "Sand Dunes" from the options that are available.

Go back to your image, and go to tools, paint tools, smudge. Now go over the bottom half of the figure with the smudge. The sand dune will give a nice foggish effect.

Now save the file as a jpeg, you're done with the image end of things!

Step 6
Now you are at the text part. You have 2 options here-Publisher if you have it, or MSPaint. A simple, yet official looking font choice for the text is Arial (bolded) for all information other than ability text, and Arial Narrow for the ability text. Text that goes outside of the Ability text is almost always White and Bolded. In the ability box, the only text that is Bolded are ability names.

Whether you are using Publisher or MSPaint, entering the text is a matter of creating text boxes and filling them with text. If you have a question on how big or where something should go, or how it should look, refer to an official card.

In MSPaint, when you are done typing, save the file as a BMP. then save it as a jpeg, again, I can't explain it, just do it.

In Publisher, you will have a huge card. Save the file as a .bmp. Go to MSPaint and open the newly saved image. Move the card to the top left of the page, and resize the page so that barely, if any, white is visable on the sides of the card (you can't do any thing about the angular corners, just worry about the horizontal and vertical edges). Save the file.

Now go back to Publisher and start a new document. Insert the picture you just saved in paint, and move it to the top left of the page. Now click the bottom right dot and resize the image until the Y axis reads 4.875 (the scale is availble at the bottom right of the page) and this will yield a card that is pretty much dead on size wise, and doesn't get messed up by resizing.

Save the file as a .jpeg and you're ready to display you work for all to see.


Hopefully this guide will help some of you to make decent looking cards without Photo Shop and without much effort. Hopefully it was not too confusing, but feel free to ask me question if you need clarification!

Thanks

-jj

[MBSowards]

Wow, thanks a lot. This guide is very helpful. The only question I have is what is the best way to do the hitzone photo of the characters?

[justjohn]

The hit zone part is covered in step 4.

-jj

[MBSowards]

Whoa, how did I miss that? Anyway, thanks a lot.

[CupidsArt]

This should be Stickied


Great guide Justjohn,

Here is my guide for Gimp users...

http://isfoundhere.com/heroscape/myohc/index.php

All you need is the GIMP!

[bunjee]

Hey there, rather than enlarge the blanks in publisher, try using the blanks from the gallery, they are already huge. They are the ones I made ages ago and will provide a very nice looking print out that is the same size as the official cards when placed into Word, Publisher, or other print document program and reduced to 24% original size.

http://www.heroscapers.com/oldgaller...s.php?album=17

The only one that isn't massive, is the glyph card, someone else made that one.

[justjohn]

While those are great, high res pictures, there are limits as to how far one can enlarge the majority of preexisting images of figures used for customs. You would have to minimize the cards to make the figure pictures fit, because enlarging the figure pictures to match would more than likely result in extreme distortion. If you did opt to minimize those high res pictures, you would find yourself right back at the beginning of this tutorial, just minimizing in publisher, rather than maximizing.

[bunjee]

True. I usually use my digital camera to take photos of the figs that I have whenever possible.

[toddrew]

Thanks for the guide, JJ. Trying it out right now...

[toddrew]

Originally Posted by MBSowards

Wow, thanks a lot. This guide is very helpful. The only question I have is what is the best way to do the hitzone photo of the characters?

JJ, I don't know if this is what MBS was asking, but it's my question now - Is there an easier way to select the parts of the hitzone image that are to be designated as not hitzones (i.e. shaded gray) than using the freehand select tool?

Another issue I'm having: I've got Publisher from Office 2000 on my computer and it seems to only let me save the file as a .PUB extension, or some other extension that is compatible with other word processing programs. Am I missing something, or just out of luck with this particular version?

[justjohn]

Hmm, I believe I have pub 2002, but I don't know why it wouldn't allow you to save it as whatever. A remedy would be to copy everything from publisher and paste it into paint, and save it as a .bmp that way. Then you could insert it back into publisher.

As far as the hitzones, I haven't found an easier way to do the gray areas.

Sometimes, if it is an extended part, you can just draw in a gray line where it would begin from the red part, and then fill in the remainder with the bucket feature, since the area will be isolated and it won't fill in the rest of the figure gray. Did that make any sense?