User talk:KGipe

Mesmer Luxon armor/Female earrings
It looks like that armor has earrings. I'd left that out of the template because I wasn't sure, though, which is why you didn't see a spot for that before (you should see a redlink for earrings now). Would you mind uploading the earrings picture? And it looks like they dye, so that one too? (If they don't dye, just let me know.) Also, the other images would be better if you cropped them to the character, instead of having a big patch of sky above her. Finally, it's not a rule per se, but the consensus here is that /attention is bad for armor galleries, so if you have time, please re-take them in the normal pose.

The earrings are the only important thing, really. Thanks, and have fun on the wiki! &mdash;Dr Ishmael 04:51, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, and thank you for the comments! Yes the armor does have earrings, although they appear to be just gold (no color in them, whether the armor is dyed or not - it's actually part of the chest piece.) I will try to take some photos of the earrings and upload, and also try to crop some of the shots I already took. Sorry for the /attention pose, it's my first upload to the site...and since all the Proph armor looked like they were in attention, I did it that way. I appreciate the feed back! KGipe 01:35, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You're welcome! Most of the Proph armors were done by two or three specific people before everyone else decided that /attention was bad, and they just haven't been replaced.  Anyway, if you feel like modeling any other armors, we've got a huge checklist that shows which galleries still need help.  And something I should've linked to before, some tips on taking good armor gallery screenshots.  P.S. There's no need to put the  in the summary when you're uploading new versions, it's already on the image's page from before.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 02:25, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Monster
You created a monster now :-) updated female elite sunspear warrior, tinted spectacles, and highlander woad. Next up elite sunspear mesmer, and tyrian necro female in grey KGipe 02:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again for some great information, I did notice that the female mesmer Ancient armor was in need of some help so as soon as this toon gets to the bone palace, I will buy her the armor, and upload the photos. I added a photo of the earrings on the Luxon armor, and am tidying up the shots so there's not so much sky above her head. Thank you again for your help!KGipe 03:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Image Editing

 * I was going to leave you a comment a while ago, but wiki decided to close the database or some $%^&, so I couldn't save, and forgot about it. You're doing some really great work on the armor galleries, but it would be even better if you could get a better imaging program to save your shots. Right now it seems like the JPG compression quality is rather degraded. MS Paint is notorious in that regard, if that's what you're using. The armor gallery project page has a decent suggestion in the first talk topic about a free program you could use (Gimp? I forget now). Also, make sure you are in full screen and max resolution/4x Anti-aliasing/Post-Process Effects OFF when you take screen shots, your images are a bit small in some of the galleries (but this could also be just because your character is small). Other than that, you've got positioning and cropping down pretty well, so great job! RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 08:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for the feedback! I have been using the max resolution/4x anti-aliasing/post process OFF, graphics within the game, but (sucky me) I *have* been using MS Paint to crop and save before I load. Sorry about that. I will look into the Gimp program, and try that to see if it looks any better. My guildies have been very willing modeling subjects, so I'll keep working and turn those red X's to green checkmarks. Thank you again for the tips! &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by KGipe (contribs).


 * GIMP.org is the program's website. It's open-source and free.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 03:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep. Just got it downloaded - thanks for the link KGipe 04:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't wait to see your results. :) I still use MS Paint to crop for convenience, because it's very simple and I know all the keyboard shortcuts already (yeah, nerd, I know...), but then I copy the cropped image into Photoshop and save it from there. You might be able to do the same with Gimp if it seems like a pain to learn how everything works (I've never tried it) - just use it to save the final result.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 05:15, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok...drumroll...Mesmer Shing Jea armor female, the dyed mask (image that was missing). Let me know what you think. I'm still getting my feet wet with Gimp. It's a little overwhelming!KGipe 15:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It looks great in the thumbnail, but seems a bit blurry when you click to zoom in. When you save, are there settings for the image quality? I know Photoshop has like a slider scale that lets you choose the quality level where higher quality = bigger image size.  Does Gimp have something like that?  If so, play with it a little.  Your image size is only like 38K, so you have some wiggle room to make it better quality.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 18:35, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yep, whenever you save a .jpg in Gimp it display a dialogue with .jpg-specific options (has different ones for .png, .gif, etc.). There's a "Quality" slider that I think is set to 85 by default.  I've found that 90-95 is the best range - going over 95 will greatly increase the file size for very little quality (probably because GW saves screenshots at ~95% compression already), and going below 90 starts introducing compression artifacts ("blurriness" in the image).  I typically use 95.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 18:54, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Question about the Vabbian gloves picture you just uploaded: it kinda looks like you upscaled the image a little bit. Compared to the other gloves images, your gloves are significantly bigger, and I took this one at max resolution.  If you are resizing the images, that would also be making them look blurry/low-quality.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 18:54, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, great feedback guys, thank you for the tips, and for putting up with my horrible image uploading. Please feel free to delete both the mask and the vabbian gloves, until I can figure this Gimp thing out KGipe 18:59, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There's never a reason to delete something if it's not perfect, because it's always better than nothing. :) RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 22:58, 14 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Getting back to the mesmer gloves, the pic of Enchanter gloves looks just right, so I'm confused as to why the Vabbian gloves pic is larger. In any case, whatever you did for the Enchanter gloves, keep doing it! :)  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 04:20, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Well because when I took the screenshot it looked really small, and because Kali mentioned earlier that I should try to make the close up shots larger, so I edited the size of the picture within Gimp to make it larger before uploading it, which as you mentioned makes the image blurry/crappy. When I took the enchanter glove picture, I didn't really mess with the size at all, made the resolution at 95% (instead of 100% which I did for the vabbian) and uploaded. And now for some reason those look better. You can't win for losing I guess :( Like I said, if you guys are okay bearing with my "work in progress" with these shots, I'll keep working on them. I figure eventually we'll get it right!KGipe 17:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * We appreciate anyone who is willing to contribute, and most people go through a learning process at the start, I did too. When I commented on the images being small, I did not mean you need to stretch it in software.  The main thing is to take the largest close-up possible on the screen BEFORE you take the screenshot.  A few tricks for that: Ctrl+Shift+H toggles game interface on and off, clearing up your screen.  This way you can move the camera closer to your character without skill bars and other things getting in the way.  Hold down the right mouse button, and move the camera as close to the character as possible, until the feet are almost touching the bottom edge of the window.  This will be as large as it gets within the game.  Here's an example of the difference it makes:



Both are screenshots of the same exact character at the same resolution, but the scar pattern was not zoomed in all the way (because I had a brainfart that day...). The only retouching you are supposed to do in software is cropping, do not resize the images. RoseOfKali 18:41, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's just me and my computer then. I do toggle the game interface off and scroll in as far as posisble on the character, but on close ups where youre shooting the headpiece, glasses, mask, earrings, etc. I can't seem to scroll in close enough to see the detail well enough without moving the camera angle into first person view (which is obviously to far) or the angle gets skewed. For Example someone did this really nice close up of Mesmer Canthan earrings



Then you have my shot of the Luxon earrings, which is first blurry, but also I couldn't zoom in enough for you to get real detail of the earrings - that's as close as I could get to her.



I'd pay money to be able to get a good shot like that! My solution (wrongly so) was to try to make the shot bigger in editing cause I couldn't get it bigger/closer when actually taking the photo. Oh well.KGipe 20:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Two possibilities there: 1) they have a more powerful video card which can support higher resolutions, resulting in apparently "larger" characters in their screenshots; 2) at character creation, they chose a larger Body Scale than you did, resulting in a truly larger character. Neither of those are things you can change easily (unless you want to spend ~$500 on a top-of-the-line video card or re-roll your mesmer), so don't worry too much about it.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 21:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, the newest Radeon (HD 4800 series) is $200 for the 4850 (which is also the one I currently use), and $300 for the 4870. Those prices are from last June tho, might be even cheaper now. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  21:26, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There's another solution for earrings and headgear, especially some caster ones like Mesmer and Necromancer (This is not advised for things like Dervish and Warrior headgear). It's called the dye preview.  It consistently produces larger pixel sizes than any normal in-game view (I also asked people to use the preview in the Mesmer glove project).  Headgear is easy, as long as it's dyeable.  This is of course impossible with things like the Blindfold, where you have to resort to standing against a wall and trying to zoom in perfectly without turning into a half-transparent ghost.  For earrings, what I do is preview any headgear, then un-equip the headgear from the character, which removes it from the preview, leaving a clear view of the earrings with a naked face.  Kind of like this:



I prefer to rotate the head, because as far as I know, all earrings are symmetric, and doing so lets me find a better unobstructed view without conflicting backgrounds. RoseOfKali 21:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You guys give such good suggestions :D thanks for all the help! The mesmer is actually at the highest height for her character. I do hope to get a proper gaming computer with a better video card, and lighted keyboard with all the fancy bells and whistles, so maybe that will do the trick. But Kali I thought Dye Preview was a no-no, since it's not Isle of the Nameless? If you important admin guru people are okay with it, though then I'll try that in the future! Thanks again. KGipe 01:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Headgear/earrings and mesmer gloves are the exception. If you can get good images of them on IotN, great; if not, dye preview is acceptable.  Rose has all the facial scars for her female necro, so she got all the male scars done by creating a male necro and dye-previewing them on him.  If I ever buy more elite armors for my male necro, I'll replace her dye-preview scar images with IotN ones to make the galleries consistent, but they're fine as they are.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 02:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Another reason I did dye preview is that my main character has a face-obstructing hairstyle, and a dye preview of a clear face is better than an Isle image of an obstructed one. Also, Nightfall Necromancer headgear only shows up visibly on dark skin, so I made dark skinned characters just for that.  Necromancer and Mesmer headgear is most of the time not directly a part of the armor set's design (it can be freely mixed and matched between sets and still look like it "belongs.")  So, taking a dye preview does not affect the overall gallery presentation very much in this case.  On top of that, since they are so mix-and-match-able, many casters do not have the headgear that belongs to their armor set, so the gallery shots end up often being made separately for armor and headgear, anyway.  Last, but not least, dye previews still are the largest images you can get if you want to show fine detail.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 02:29, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Userbox
So I see you likez mai uzerboks. XD (Certain people here... ahem... are contagious with their talk...) RoseOfKali 18:42, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I like all your pages, VERY impressive! I've look at a few of the user pages, and I am very jealous of all the work you guys do! :D Trying to make mine look a 10th as good as yours.KGipe 19:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)