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Changing some of the colors
in a tile using the Color Replacer tool and the
Magic Wand
This came from William Thomason and Rob Roy:
Put the shade that
you want to replace in the lower box and the shade that you want to change
TO in the upper
box. Then set your tolerance level (you have
to experiment with this until you get it right.) Take a fairly large brush
(30-40 pixels) and use the replacer tool (left click of the mouse - right
click reverses the procedure) to brush over the area completely.
There may be several shades of the color you
want to replace, so you need to select another shade and
do it again. And so on. It is very fast and
since you can "undo", it is easy to experiment with until you get
it just right.
If you paint an area with the color replacer,
the color will be replaced only where the pointer wipes
BUT, if you double click, the whole picture
will have the color replaced.
The Magic Wand will select an area that matches
the criteria you use Mode = brightness/RGB
value/Hue, Tolerence and Feather). If you
then click on Selections-Invert you can select the opposite.
eg: select the sky with magic wand and invert
to select all but the sky.
The following bit came out as the result of an email from Steve Opfer...
I have managed a few different methods, but it's very hard to remember how I did a lot of it. I definitely have used captures from photos of courses. My big weapon in making it fill the tile is the clone tool. That is how I did the heavy rough in #2. It is a capture from a course photo that I then cloned and then, by working with selecting an edge area and then flipping it or mirroring it I work away until I can get it to tile well. The only problem is that ugly white line that keeps appearing on the edge of the tile that shows up in the game. It results, I think, from the process PSP uses to go from 16 million back to 256 colors. It seems to like to leave a little edge. The one and only sure way to get rid of this I've found is to use the cloning tool and clone very small bits all along the edge of the tile, being careful to match the color as much as possible. This gets rid of it very effectively. I've done others things too, such as using the layering feature to draw in little blades of grass and then copying that section I've drawn all over the layer. Then you play with the % figure in 'properties' to affect how much that shows up. That can be very helpful. Actually, the layering feature has opened up a lot for me because you can make dramatic changes by putting one texture right over top of another to get a whole new effect. It is an excellent way to create undertones of browns or orange and be able to control how much it shows up.
The clone tool is good, but you have to pick a photo that doesn't require you to use it too much or your tile will look too splotchy. If you can get a picture that will give you about 10-20% of the tile size, you should be able to make it work, I think. It also depends what terrain shape it's for too. Fringe doesn't take up much space, so it's easier that way.
Here's a bit more:
Its tricky getting that fine blades of grass look. Here's another tip with PSP that might help in getting you closer to that goal: First have a background base layer that gives you your green shade, but maybe doesn't have the grass too distinct. Then create a blank new layer and try freehand drawing very tiny blades of grass in a small area, then copy that small section all over the tile. With the image in 16 million colors (just about every neat effect needs this color level) under image, choose blur, then choose motion blur. What this does is give you the ability to take the rather coarse lines you've drawn and stretch them out with the blur tool, and you can choose how much to stretch them , by the number of pixels and also which direction to blur them. Then play around with the percent of opaqueness that this layer has over the base layer to get your effect. Of course you can alsoindependently alter the various color options for each layer too.
