Image Editing

Hey all, Lhikan634 here. I've been at image editing for about 6 to 7 years now. I'm most well-known for my edited LCD images which appear on what was then the foremost Digimon Digidex website, the DMA (Digital Monsters Almanac, formerly the Digimon Master Alliance). I've also done a bit of computer-assisted drawing, taking a hand-drawn image and then digitally modifying and coloring it.

Back when I first started working with computerized images for the DMA, I was very unskilled. My edited art back then consisted of not much more than color alterations of very simple LCD images. I then began working on slightly more complex LCD images where I'd be adding small stuff such as claws or spikes. A lot of my first batch were horrendous to be honest. After a bit more work, and a lot of tips on improvement, I began working with much more complex LCD images by taking parts from possibly up to 5 images, modifying them, splicing them together, smoothing out the splice job, adding details to the initial outline, and then (finally) adding coloration. I think my playing around with digitizing hand-drawn creations helped with that a bit.

So, after all of that background info, I've got sort of a guide to image editing. It's by no means complete, and I'm constantly finding new tools and new ways to work with images. What I'll go into is mainly from the Mac world, but there are definitely PC applications as well, whether Windows-world or otherwise. For all edited images on the Huntik Wiki (save administrative images), the key here is reconstruction, not creation. The goal is to slowly reveal what the original idea or image was supposed to be. If you find yourself having to guess too much about how hair is supposed to be styled or positioned, or whether you see a spike in an image or not, you need to move on to a new image - on my 7th year working with editing images, I can tell you that you almost definitely will not come up with what you want.

Editing Icons

The Huntik franchise loves using icons to represent Titans or groups. However, one of the major pains is that many of these icons do not exceed 60x60 pixels (translation: very small). Some of this may be due to limitations from our source (The Silverware's Titan table, whose focus is the actual Titans) or due to resizing by a fan site. For your final, resized work,

The first thing I tend to do is look at the quality of the image to see how severe the reconstruction is. Working with official stock art is completely different from working with a card scan or a screenshot. The overall process uses the same tools, but some require more work than others. You will want to save often and possibly as multiple files (delete the extras only after you're completely finished and fully satisfied). Photoshop especially has issues with being erratic and quitting unexpectedly. I've had times where I've lost around 1 or more hours' work thanks to PS crashing, and it's almost always the times I think it'll be fine if I don't go crazy on the saves.

Regarding copyright and licensing, this is actually a bit ambiguous in some cases, so here's the current Huntik Wiki policy. Due to the amount of work involved as well as the modification of the original screenshot, you may use the {{edited|<author>}} licensing template, substituting your username for the author parameter. This template spells out that the original image is copyrighted by Rainbow, Big Bocca, and/or UpperDeck. It also gives you attribution for your work editing the image - reading below will show what all can be involved. If you select the Edited licensing from the drop-down menu, you can edit the page and fill in your username; otherwise, it will just list you as "the author." It also states anyone using the image elsewhere is required to contact you here about using the edited image and if you have any requirements for attribution. Some icons will take a lot of work, so you may wish to restrict use to the Huntik Wiki. Note, however, that the initial copyright associated with the Huntik franchise can overrule your decision should they choose. Though unlikely to be exercised, they do have the right to order you to cease editing their work and remove them from the internet should they find your use to be unpleasing or unsavory.

Resizing Stock Art Icons

For more complex stock art, such as Overlos' icon, I'd highly recommend starting by using the free trial of Vectormagic, an online application that converts bitmap images info vector images. What this will do is smooth out the image using pretty high-end software. The icon may have to be edited within the program, and the finished Vectormagic product will likely have to be edited for proper smoothing. It is possible to use their online trial to upload an image, modify it, and take a screenshot (Apple-shift-4 and select the image region on a Mac) without actually converting to a vector. Further modification will follow the same processes as other stock art icons using Photoshop.

1. If you're working with official stock art, you're most likely in luck. For the most part, Photoshop (I use Photoshop Elements 3) is all that's required, but it can be a bit of a lengthy process. If there's a lot of excess gray pixels, you might want to up the contrast ever so slightly from the start (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Brightness / Contrast). You don't want to overdo it, otherwise you're going to be stuck with doing a lot of smoothing out of pixel blocks. Just a touch of gray within the outline will help make sure everything's smooth in the final edit.
2. After that, I tend to resize the canvas to be somewhere around 300 - 500% larger and then manually scale the image to fit, holding the Shift key to make sure the proportions are retained. It may be my imagination, but the scale feature seems to be a bit more accurate for this purpose than the image resize feature.
3. After resizing, I then play around with the Brightness / Contrast; in some cases, I may use the paint can to make sure the background's actually white at this point. Sometimes you may need to lower the brightness in the first round of Bri/Con level alterations to weed out some of the residual "glow" of gray pixels around the icon. The final Bri/Con leveling should up the contrast, likely going no higher than the 80 - 90% range to make sure the black icon fades properly into the white background. Of note, the larger your image, the less of a problem this will be. If you start noticing pixellated images or separate parts blending together, you need to lower the Contrast, up the Brightness, or do some of both.
4. Some images may have a few areas that need touching up. If needed, use the paint bucket to verify that the background is actually white at this point. Avoid the pencil tool at all costs. Instead, use the paintbrush tool since it will smooth out the icon's edges with gray pixels. Make sure you zoom in several times, otherwise you're not going to be able to control your mouse well enough. Just trust me on this. Depending on the quality of the original art, you may need to extend some spikes or smooth out edges. Always make sure to have the original, unaltered version of the image up at this point to make sure you're following the right curvatures.
5. Crop the image so that just the icon is present with no extra background along any edge (or if there's any, make it be the same left/right, top/bottom). Adjust the canvas size so that you have a square image, using the largest dimension of the icon itself plus about 20 pixels (assuming it's in the 400 - 500 px range).

Resizing Screenshot Icons

1. First of all, make sure you have a good quality screenshot of the icon. If you can't clearly tell what the icon is supposed to look like, you seriously need to move on to another image or higher-quality video. Episodes on DVD or iTunes should be the best quality, and they should lack those obnoxious network watermarks. You also may need to check a different episode. Believe it or not, some of this art actually does vary a bit based on the pace of the episode.
2. At this point, you want to crop the image to isolate the icon. Don't worry about removing the background just yet. After the initial cropping, you want to resize your image. You may want to go as large as 1000x1000 pixels for reasons discussed below, but you can probably manage around the 250x250-pixel range if you have a very steady hand and have been at this for a while.
3. You're now going to be turning the image into a black icon on a white background. If you're lucky and have a really high-quality and high-resolution image, you might be able to just use the paint bucket and be done with this step (though you may need to increase the tolerance).
4. The likelihood is that this won't be the situation. The paintbrush tool will become your best friend here. Zoom in a bit and use your paintbrush to create your image. For the most part, you can choose whether to trace from the outside with a white brush or from the inside with a black brush. Some regions may require both, most notably any form of curved spike. You will have to trace the whole image. Having a larger image will make minor wobbles in your mouse be less evident. When you finish up a region, shrink the image and make sure it appears to be smooth. Some sizes may pixellate by nature, so check ±1 zoom-out. Also make sure that a smoothly-curved surface doesn't get a random bend or point added to it. If you have one, you can go over it again to smooth it out. You will want to take the tracing very slowly. To repeat what is mentioned above, you will want to save after every major section is edited. What I tend to do is Save as (Apple-shift-s on a Mac) instead of overwriting the previous save. This way, if I find I made a mistake, it's easier to go back to before I made the mistake, fix that region, and then splice the fixed version onto a later edit.
5. Once you have the whole thing fully traced, increase the tolerance of your paintbrush through the roof and fill in any remaining regions, making sure that nothing spills out into the background space. Alternatively, you may simply use the brush tool if most of the image is composed of thinner lines.
6. One thing I like to do now is set the paint bucket to around 25 tolerance and click on the black region of the icon. This should get any "off-black" pixels inside the icon left from the paint brush tool. This should also leave the gray-pixel border.
7. Use the color-selector tool and select the black regions. If there are regions of black within the background or you have multiple pieces to the icon, select one part, then hold shift as you click on another part. Continue until all of the icon itself is selected. Invert your selection (Apple-shift-i on a Mac) to select everything in your background and then press the Delete key (for Mac, this may be Backspace in Windows-world). This will make your background be either all white or all transparent. If your background is transparent, create a new layer (Apple-shift-n on a Mac) and use the paint bucket on the new layer to make a white background. Move the white background layer below the icon layer, otherwise you'll end up covering up the icon you worked so hard on.
8. Now you have your icon - and, boy is it large! At this point, you can use the Scale tool to get the icon to a more usable size. This should retain your nice, smooth edges you worked so hard on. I'd advise around the size of Overlos' edited icon.
9. Crop the image so that just the icon is present with no extra background along any edge (or if there's any, make it be the same left/right, top/bottom). Adjust the canvas size so that you have a square image, using the largest dimension of the icon itself plus about 20 pixels (assuming it's in the 400 - 500 px range).

Resizing Card Scan Icons

1. First, make sure you have a clear and clean scan of the card. Get the best quality image available. If you possess the card, you can make a high-resolution scan (though be careful of holo-foil cards - you'll be better with a good camera, flash turned OFF, and a very steady hand that can get the image to have nearly right-angle corners).
2. As with stock art images, begin by resizing the canvas and then Scale the image itself. Again, you want a decently large image to make sure you have control of your brush.
3. Card icons are a bit different in that they tend to be much lower-quality due to their size, and they tend to have a non-grayscale background. Start by lowering the master saturation completely (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Hue / Saturation). Depending on the quality, you may also adjust the brightness for the individual colors here - do NOT use master. This should give you a grayscale image.
4. Do the same thing as with other images with the rest of the Bri/Con levels.
5. Do the same thing as with other images with the paintbrush tool. Be especially careful to use the original, unedited image in another window to make sure you're doing the right traces. For card icons, you may have to re-add areas, such as spikes. You want to make sure you follow the natural curve of the image as well as following the original image.
6. Do the same thing as with other images to make sure you have a black icon, white background, and grayscale pixels in between for a smooth transition at the edge. Zooming back out, the icon should appear to be a smooth black image on a white background.
7. Scale down the image if you're working with an icon of larger than 500x500 pixels. It should retain its smooth edges. If not, undo and scale down for something a bit larger than that.
8. Crop the image so that just the icon is present with no extra background along any edge (or if there's any, make it be the same left/right, top/bottom). Adjust the canvas size so that you have a square image, using the largest dimension of the icon itself plus about 20 pixels (assuming it's in the 400 - 500 px range).

White-background Images

Sometimes, a character may completely lack official stock art to use in the article's Infobox. In this case, you may decide to find a high-resolution and high-quality screenshot to use in its place. But, as you notice, you have another character in the background, the background's fairly dark, or it just doesn't look right.

1. First, make sure you have a usable, full-screen screenshot. Avoid action shots unless it's completely unavoidable. Make sure no other characters or objects are obscuring the character, and avoid any spell auras. Make sure the character's eyes are open and that their mouth is closed naturally. If possible, try to get a screenshot where the character is looking to the left. However strange it is, it draws more attention to the article and is more likely to draw in the reader. It's something about psychology that other larger wikis (TARDIS, for example) have noted.
2. Make sure you'll be able to tell where the character ends and the background begins for all of the character. Be very careful with dark backgrounds with dark hair. Double-check this when you zoom into the screenshot. Sometimes there will be enough of a hint for a trained eye to work. If you, personally, have trouble distinguishing any aspect from the background, you'll want to move on to another screenshot (possibly from a different episode). If you have no other episode or screenshot choices, just upload the image with the background.
3. While still zoomed in, use the paintbrush tool (in white) to trace around the edges. Usually, you should notice a slight black to gray line several pixels thick around the image which should then face into grays. Have the edge of the paintbrush go just past the lighter gray pixels so that you're leaving behind a nice, smooth edge. Some areas won't have this edge - don't add it. Just trace around that part as per normal, and the paintbrush will make sure it leaves a nice smooth edge.
4. For the majority of editing, I tend to use somewhere between a 6 to 9 pixel paintbrush for the majority of the image. This gives a nice, smooth look to the edges you go over. For smaller regions, you may need to go as small as 4 or even 2 pixels. Try to avoid 1-px since it won't give the same effect.
5. Always go back and forth between zoomed-in and (approximately) Infobox-sized to make sure everything's all smooth. You may find a few areas where the outline will appear to be too thick, as if it's including part of the background. That actually might be what's happening. Use the paintbrush tool to slowly go back by single-pixel layers until the image looks natural. Do the same if you start noticing and "blocky" regions. For blocky regions, you may be using too small a paintbrush, making it not transition as many pixels. Try a larger paintbrush size if you can.
6. Once you have your image traced, so that it has a white line around every edge, begin removing the rest of the background with the rectangle-selector tool and the Delete key. Also make sure any space, such as between arm and body, are properly removed. Be careful not to remove regions of the character by mistake.
7. Crop the image so your canvas is the same size as your image (any border needs to be uniform left/right, top/bottom). After that, simply resize the canvas to the Infobox aspect ratio based on the largest dimension plus about 20 pixels. This will almost always be increasing the width as opposed to the height.