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Post by gloriousbattle on Sept 13, 2018 18:43:01 GMT -9
Used to have a fair sized collection of Patrick Crusiau's figures. Just getting back into the hobby (selling off my lead and plastic; its just a bit too heavy and expensive at my age, and I always loved paper flats anyway). I have to say, gents, I'm kind of bewildered and displeased with the way some things seem to have developed. For one thing, everything seems to be pdfs now. Why? One of the great things about paper, even from 12 years ago, was that it was all jpegs, bmps and pngs. All of my brababtini stuff is still that way, of course, and I can make quite the nice collection out of it. But why pdfs? They make stylistic changes impossible (for example, I like Patrick's green bases, and will generally modify new pieces to include these. An example follows. These cuddly lil fellas are simply pictures I pulled off the web. Before anyone goes copyright crazy, I did a google advanced search for stuff that was in the public domain and available for modification. Then I simply added one of Patrick's bases to the wolf, put a thick black line around it. Cut halfway through, and you end up with a nice dark border. Apply a sharpie to the edge, and, presto, the White Witch's Secret Police! I blew a few up to 150% to make captains / chieftains / pack leaders, whatever. Whole thing took about an hour. This is the kind of thing that always made paper flats appeal to me. You were not simply stuck with what you bought. You could play around with your creations and do what you wanted. Is it really no longer that way? :-(
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Post by okumarts on Sept 13, 2018 20:20:39 GMT -9
Just pull one of my PDFs into a graphic program like Photoshop or Gimp and go for it. I love editing paper minis, but PDFs are my preferred delivery vehicle because I can add alternate colours and features. If that is an issue I suppose you could print to PDF and create a version of the multi-layer pdf that you want to edit.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Sept 14, 2018 2:17:02 GMT -9
If you're using Adobe Reader for PDFs, there's Edit > Take a Snapshot -- it lets you copy any region of the PDF. The trick is to make sure you go to Edit > Preferences and set the General option "Use fixed resolution for Snapshot tool images" to 300 pixels/inch.
PDFs solve a lot of packaging problems that individual images can suffer from.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Sept 14, 2018 2:43:41 GMT -9
Yeah, the main reason that everything is PDF now is that PDF has specific advantages that JPGs and BMPs do not have. The most important of those is that they ensure that things print out consistently and at the correct scale no matter what set-up the end user has. The other is that the format allows for a degree of customisability.
As folks have said, the fact that everything is in PDF now shouldn't get in the way of you tweaking things for your own personal collection. Most graphic editing software will allow you to open a flattened version of the PDF so that you can paint over it, or you can take snapshots as mproteau suggested.
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Post by Parduz on Sept 14, 2018 2:55:56 GMT -9
I don't remember about the Adobe Reader, but almost all free PDF related programs have a command that "exports all images" and/or "export the PDF as images". The results may vary between the two commands (depending on how the PDF was built) from having a folder full of tiny parts of miniatures to a single image per page. Anyway, i never failed in having the images of the PDFs i've purchased, and i never have print a sheet of minis from the PDF.
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Post by cowboycentaur on Sept 14, 2018 3:02:27 GMT -9
I edit and modify nearly every mini I print off in gimp, then export them back into a pdf because jpegs end up looking like crap. The control of their size and the print quality of a jpeg is nowhere near as good as a pdf, they're grainy and look terrible.
Paper minis have improved dramatically in just the few years I've been gaming. Kev, Marshall, dave and Grond & Wilson have upped the bar of quality to where they're getting respect from notable people in tbe gaming industry and becoming a potential cottage industry rather than just a hobby.
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Post by gloriousbattle on Sept 15, 2018 17:57:34 GMT -9
Perhaps I spoke too quickly in talking about jpegs, which I never liked because they degrade each time you open them, but have things really improved beyond the png and bmp formats? Please note that, as curmudgeonly as this thread may seem, I GENUINELY AM ALWAYS WILLING TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW. However, it would take some convincing.
As another example, here are a couple of sheets of big monsters (interspersed with a few Crusiau figs) that I made many years ago. I got them, I freely admit, by raiding children's books at the local public library.
Again, all I did was scan these, add in black borders and Patrick style bases, and I had a nice collection of big critters. The slightly cartoony style of those early figs makes these a good fit, I think, though personal tastes may differ, of course.
N.B.: If copyright is a problem, these were drawn randomly from children's books, and I would be surprised if they were out of copyright, though I would be equally surprised if the illustrators of said books got upset over wargamers using their creations. Nonetheless, if these are a problem, I would ask the mods to please remove them, and no hard feelings.
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Post by cowboyleland on Sept 15, 2018 19:20:18 GMT -9
So, I am not sure what you want. Are you saying creators should put down their pencils (stili) 'cause we can all just scan children's books? If that is what you like you are free to do that. If you want to share those please get permission from the artist rather than guessing it is OK. I have certainly grabbed images off of google for my home game if I couldn't find just what I wanted, but they stay at my home table unless I can find permission to share somewhere. Also, if I am too rushed to do backs I just leave the back blank. I see no value it two fronts.
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Post by oldschooldm on Sept 15, 2018 20:21:49 GMT -9
Copyright goes for decades past the creators death. That post should remove the images, since the poster doesn't have permission to reuse/redistribute them without attribution. Sorry gloriousbattle. You can do whatever you want at your table, but not repost anyone else's artwork here without explicit permission. There are many content creators here, on this forum.
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Post by oldschooldm on Sept 15, 2018 20:30:37 GMT -9
For the record (for everyone, not just the post in question): From www.proboards.com/tos20. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (a) Compliance with Law You represent and warrant that, when using the Website and Services, You will obey the law and respect the intellectual property rights of others. Your use of the Website and Services is at all times governed by and subject to laws regarding copyright ownership and use of intellectual property generally. You agree not to upload, post, transmit, display, perform or distribute any content, information or other materials in violation of any third-party's copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property or proprietary rights.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Sept 16, 2018 7:31:04 GMT -9
Perhaps you don't realize it because you have been gone from the scene for so long, but the truth of the matter is that paper minis are actually going through something of a golden age right now. Today it is possible to find pretty much any miniature for pretty much any genre, finished to an incredibly professional standard by skilled artists who have put a lot of effort into ensuring that the finished piece will print out perfectly and look great on any table. You can find things in a wide range of styles from very cartoony, to highly realistic.
What has changed is that a lot of really talented professional artists have started doing paper minis, and professional artists use professional tools to make professional products. If the professional products are not up to your standards, there are still a lot of amateur artists that do create free paper minis as PNGs and JPGs in the monthly hoard section that you can grab and modify to your heart's content, but bear in mind that all artists, professional or amateur, are doing the things their way because that's what they want to do, and your telling them how much you hate their way is really not doing much to persuade any of them to cater to your particularly idiosyncratic needs.
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Post by gloriousbattle on Sept 16, 2018 16:59:40 GMT -9
Not trying to ruffle feathers, either by posting my (admittedly illegal, though, since they were drawn from older kids books, I see that as a tempest in a teapot, kinda like jaywalking on a country road at midnight of the away football game, but its your forum, and I will respect the rules) pieces, but I did like the colorful simplicity, and the collegial nature of everybody sharing everybody's stuff.
Still, as I said, I can be educated, and look forward to a mind broadening (though still two dimensional) experience. ;-)
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Post by Vermin King on Sept 16, 2018 17:22:14 GMT -9
It's generally safest to acknowledge images taken from elsewhere
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Post by jeffgeorge on Sept 16, 2018 17:53:09 GMT -9
Still, as I said, I can be educated, and look forward to a mind broadening (though still two dimensional) experience. ;-) Okay, let me try to broaden your mind. On my blog, printandplaygamer.com, I've posted two (excruciatingly) detailed tutorials that walk you thru the process of extracting miniatures from several PDFs; formatting them into a single, new PDF; and modding them by recoloring the uniforms. The sample miniatures I used are from David Okum's Where No Man Has Gone Before line of Star Trek-adjacent characters, and the application I used to do the work is the open-source image editor, GIMP 2.8. (GIMP has released a version 2.10 now, but I have yet to upgrade, being a bit of an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it guy.) I think those tutorials will show you how to work with current-era minis in PDF format to do all the things you did with PNG and other image formats. The tutorials are: Format Miniatures in a PDFRecolor Printable Minis with GIMP
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Post by okumarts on Sept 17, 2018 3:06:03 GMT -9
Still, as I said, I can be educated, and look forward to a mind broadening (though still two dimensional) experience. ;-) Okay, let me try to broaden your mind. On my blog, printandplaygamer.com, I've posted two (excruciatingly) detailed tutorials that walk you thru the process of extracting miniatures from several PDFs; formatting them into a single, new PDF; and modding them by recoloring the uniforms. The sample miniatures I used are from David Okum's Where No Man Has Gone Before line of Star Trek-adjacent characters, and the application I used to do the work is the open-source image editor, GIMP 2.8. (GIMP has released a version 2.10 now, but I have yet to upgrade, being a bit of an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it guy.) I think those tutorials will show you how to work with current-era minis in PDF format to do all the things you did with PNG and other image formats. The tutorials are: Format Miniatures in a PDFRecolor Printable Minis with GIMPThese are really great tutorials!
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Post by gloriousbattle on Sept 18, 2018 18:44:17 GMT -9
Okay, let me try to broaden your mind. On my blog, printandplaygamer.com, I've posted two (excruciatingly) detailed tutorials that walk you thru the process of extracting miniatures from several PDFs; formatting them into a single, new PDF; and modding them by recoloring the uniforms. The sample miniatures I used are from David Okum's Where No Man Has Gone Before line of Star Trek-adjacent characters, and the application I used to do the work is the open-source image editor, GIMP 2.8. (GIMP has released a version 2.10 now, but I have yet to upgrade, being a bit of an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it guy.) I think those tutorials will show you how to work with current-era minis in PDF format to do all the things you did with PNG and other image formats. The tutorials are: Format Miniatures in a PDFRecolor Printable Minis with GIMPThese are really great tutorials! Thanks for these. I figured out how to modify the pdfs, by first turning them into bmps, but the color editor is something I have really wanted to do for a long time. Kudos!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Sept 23, 2018 18:30:49 GMT -9
Glad I could help, gloriousbattle. Have fun tinkering with your minis!
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