Round decks

[furrytarot]

I just scanned in a round deck. I set the corner rounding to MAX but I still get annoying white borders. I tried deleting all that in photoshop and saving ROUND images as .png files - they load fine - but now with grey where the white was before. Is there a way around this ? If I'm using round cards I'd like to use them round....

Perhaps the corner cropping could be set to go that much further ?

[Programmer]

The option to show round decks (or triangular decks or any other non rectangular shape) isn't really anything to do with the edge rounding. You could just leave the edge rounding at 0.

The two things you need to take care of are first of all that the option of Transparency has been set for the deck in question on the options form. This is on the first tab marked "Deck" underneath where you set the number of cards.

What the program does then is it looks at the color of the top left hand pixel on your card and uses that as the transparent color. All areas on the card that are that color become transparent, so it is best to choose a bright, primary color that doesn't occur in the main image. If you download one of the non-rectangular decks from the website, such as the Glamour Deck, you will get a good idea of how it is done.

[furrytarot]

OK. Done. It's pretty ragged edged - is there any way around that (I didn't get an option to choose a colour...) - but it's better than it was with lots of white. Thanks !

[Programmer]

If there are ragged edges it will because there is some kind of color gradient around the edges, quite possible created by your graphics program. The color match is very precise, as defined by RGB color coodinates, so 255,0,0 is definitely not the same as 250, 5 , 5 even though they might look the same to the naked eye. The transparency color will be the color of the pixel at co-ordinate 0,0 in the image. I am not really a graphics expert, the best thing to do would be to search Google for help with your particular graphics program. It might also have something to to with the way you are saving the file. I think if you save as a JPG it blurs the colors by design. You might be better off with BMP or PNG.

[furrytarot]

It's WHITE ! and the borders are very not white. And I tried using pngs - no better, sadly.

The programme I used is photoshop - the full version.... Anyone else have any ideas ?

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi,
I was searching for an old post and found this by accident.

There is another thread where I've discovered for myself most of what's needed for nice Circular Decks (and other Decks using Transparency as well) - "Handling Transparency"

I'm using Corel PhotoPaint to do the Pixel editing of scans etc, but when creating Circular Cards I transfer to a Vector Based Program CorelDRAW, which in this case I use as a glorified "Cookie Cutter". It does the job very well indeed. (Adobe Illustrator is an equivalent Program)

Yes it is possible to "Cookie Cut" a picture with a Pixel Based Program, but with mine (CorelPhotoPaint) it is VERY tricky getting the circular "Mask" to be exactly the right size and in precisely the place you want it.

The Vector Program makes that easy as pie! With the Vector Tool you create the circle, play around getting the exact size you want, move it to precisely the place you want it and then "Do the Cookie Cut". (The function is called "Intersect" in CorelDRAW)

If you do decide to do this it's important to get the images you save from the Pixel Program all exactly the same size - the same number of pixels both ways, and then on importing them into the Vector Program, you can make sure that the scale is the same for all the cards. Otherwise.....

- - -

The most important thing to get nice crisp edges around your circular cards is to turn off a feature called "Anti-Aliasing". It's used by most graphics programs, most of the time as a "Default Setting".

If you havn't switched OFF the feature then what happens is as follows

1) You've worked hard to get your images PERFECT, with a lovely clean edge and the background is either transparent (not required for Orphalese) or white (or any other colour that doesn't occur in the Card itself).

2) You save your Hard-Earned Marvel, and the Program uses "Anti-Aliasing" in the exporting/saving to a file process. This "Anti-Aliasing" works by smudging all those clean crisp edges that you just created, so that now when viewed using Orphalese's Transparent function they appear to have Nasty White "Jaggies" all around the Circular Card.

3) How frustrating! I suggest a good strong drink followed by a session of Darts using a picture of a favourite politician!

- - -

Yes "Anti-Aliasing" is a feature which works very well for most pictures being viewed on Computer Screens. It "Smooths" the edges and generally they look less "Jagged". But it's the exact opposite when you're using "Transparent Cards" on Orphalese!! They now look MORE Jagged...

So make sure whatever program you end up using ISN'T using the default of "Anti-Aliasing" when saving/exporting your cards.

In some programs it is so much a "Default" that even if you switch it off for one card, you will have to switch it off again for the next card too - very tiresome! I hope that's not the case with your "PhotoShop"!

In fact, because "Anti-Aliasing" degrades the crispness of images and the effect is cumulative I strongly suggest using it only once in the Card Creation Process. The best place is when you resample your images from the Scanner, to get them to a more suitable size for your cards. Used at this stage it will completely remove any "Moire" that was there in the printed cards - nice!

Another thought: If you saved the images from the Scanner in JPG format, it will use "Anti-Aliasing" there (and you probably won't be offered the option to switch it off). For this reason alone I always save from the scanner in TIF format. Yes they're very large, but they're "untampered with".

On that note of formats: - DON'T use JPG for Circular Cards. With JPG EVEN IF you turn off "Anti-Aliasing", the process is used as part of the JPG compression process. So you will always have nasty "Jaggies" with Circular JPGs! Use either GIF or PNG for the Cards themselves.

A white background works well with most cards, however I have come across some where there are pure white highlights within the images, in which case you get weird trasparent bits. Doesn't look good! If you're not sure use a Transparent Background. I tend to use one that's a tiny bit bigger than the round card, otherwise it can sometimes look as if there is a flat on the four sides...

Regards
Greg the Yeti

[Tanjamuse]

I have rounded the corners of my cards but when I open them in Orphalese it doesn't show.

They are not just white in the corners but transparent.

[Programmer]

Hi Tanja, thanks for posting. That sounds like how it is meant to work. When you use edge rounding the corners should be rounded off transparently. This is so you can use the deck against a background of any colour of your choice. If the deck scans naturally have a white background you could try setting the background colour of the program to white. Does this help at all?

[Greg the Yeti]

Hi Tanjamuse

"I have rounded the corners of my cards but when I open them in Orphalese it doesn't show.
They are not just white in the corners but transparent."

What you say is actually ambiguous. If:-
1) You have rounded the cards in your graphics app and used "Transparent" as the background colour, but find they are not displaying as rounded in Orphalese it might be that you simply havn't turned on the Transparency Feature for the deck in Orphalese?...
2) For all other possibilities there might be some undisclosed problem...

Now if you have rounded those cards and used transparency in your graphics app you might think that that should show in Orphalese - but it doesn't!
The transparency from the card file will be simply interpreted by Orphalese as the "default colour", which I think would be white. So you have GOT to turn on "Transparency" in Orphalese!
This is an option for each deck, within it's properties page.

- - -

In fact if that is what you have done, then consider this too. By "rounding" the cards in a graphic app and using "Transparent" as the colour of the background you actually increase what Orphalese is doing with the card.
It will first
a) interpret the "transparent" background as white then
b) will then recut the card from it's background (using that now white background).
The two processes increase the probability that all the work you did to make the edges just PERFECT in your graphic app is spoiled...

So the best advice is NOT to use "Transparent" as the colour of the background when you create round cards for Orphalese. Use standard white OR if the cards have areas of white within the graphic, use another colour that DOES NOT OCCUR in the graphics.
You should be able to use your graphic app to find one... For example if you're using GIF format (works well with tranparency in Orphalese) then the conversion to GIF box will show you ALL of the colours actually used in the gif file (up to 244 I think). If you use the PNG format (which also works well for transparency in Orphalese) there will be a lot more colours in the file, which will just make it harder to find one that isn't included in the file...

And just thought - as far as I'm aware that background colour will have to be the same for all the cards of the pack.

Oh - and DON'T use the JPG format for cards if you're wanting to use the tranparent feature in Orphalese. It ALWAYS includes "Anti-Aliasing" with the compression of the file, which introduces nasty artefacts at the edges. You can't turn this off! Just don't!

Regards Greg

[Tanjamuse]

I didn't know that I could turn on transparency :)

Thanks so much it's now transparent in the corners.