Prop Transparency
Looking into the invisible regions.
it's a lot more convenient.
If not, you'll need to use the
Scrapbook as a go-between.
The transparency mask is not preserved when pasting pictures
back and forth between programs. My method to deal with this is to
place the picture on a flat background color that I'm sure I won't be
using in the av picture itself. Usually an extreme green or blue
("bluescreen," heh). The color I usually use is[R51 G255 B0]also known (in HTML hexcode style) as
#33FF00This is a "web-safe" color that's already in the Palace CLUT, so Photoshop will never dither it when converting color spaces (Remember, Photoshop can also read a clut file directly as a group of swatches -- so you can easily get a palace-safe color from the swatch screen palette).
If you edit props in Photoshop a lot, you might want to make yourself
a smaller Photoshop swatch file (viewable in the "Swatches" palette) composed
exclusively of colors that you use regularly as backgrounds, rather
than the entire 200+.
In PS 3 and 4, I put this flat color in a background layer, and leave
the av in a transparent foreground layer with a layer mask,
"flattening" only when converting to indexed color. When
using older versions of Photoshop (like PS2.5 on my ancient,
memory-challenged Mac SE/30), I save the flat region as an extra
selection channel, too.
The transparency channel for the Palace is one bit. That
means it's or of it's off. That's not the same as Photoshop, which
allows 256 levels for soft edges (feathering) and other effects. So
you'll have to stomp on that transparency mask use the PS "Levels"
command to force it. Select only the transparency channel (usually
#4) (or the layer mask), selectImage->Adjust->Levels...and try typing in the values 127 <tab> 1 <tab> 129 in the "Levels" Dialog Box. The grayscales should pin to black and white (or the layer-mask edges will be come jaggy).
Once the picture is actually in the Palace Prop Editor, you can
easily delete the odd-colored areas with the eraser. Holding
down the Control key while erasing will quickly fill-erase large
areas of contiguous color.
Copying from
the Palace prop editor, the transparent areas
will go black. If your prop had black edges, you won't know
where they are any more! There are two good solutions for
this problem:
- Since you've been saving a copy of the original prop in Photoshop, you may have also saved the mask. You did save the original pic, didn't you? Didn't you?
- Position the prop on some flat-colored background other than
black, and do a screen grab. This illustration here was made in
the "Onyx Room"
I painted a blue blob behind the av,
then to a screen "snapshot." The resulting (RGB) picture
is then cropped-down to just the region I need, and I can select
the blue with the magic wand (magic wand antialiasing turned
off), invert the selection, and voila I get just
the avatar.
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Last Update: 30 Dec 1998