need help

[inuroku842]

I scanned an image of a map to my computer and everytime I pull up fantasy grounds and view the image, it is way too freakin huge. As in it takes up the whole screen. I have tried everything to resize it, from rescanning, to resizing in paint, using picnik.com to resize, nothing is working and I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong.

Please help!

[Ictinike]

You need to modify the source image with and application such as Photoshop, Paintshop pro, etc. You'll need to resize to a respectful size, rotate, etc then save it locally. Once in FG depending of the rulesset you may be able to hold the Control key and drag the bottom right hand corner (or close if off the page) and drag the mouse to resize. You may also use your mouse wheel to zoom the image to the new window size there after.

[inuroku842]

I tried doing that just now, but all that did was manage to zoom. This is what it looks like when i pull up the picture. I tried modifying the source file, and I won't pay insane amounts of money for photoshop or anything like that.
Does anyone know if that's just a bug with pathfinder extension to the d20_jpg ruleset? Cause I found that I'm not having this problem with the other rulesets..

[Ictinike]

I tried doing that just now, but all that did was manage to zoom. This is what it looks like when i pull up the picture. I tried modifying the source file, and I won't pay insane amounts of money for photoshop or anything like that.
Does anyone know if that's just a bug with pathfinder extension to the d20_jpg ruleset? Cause I found that I'm not having this problem with the other rulesets..

[Edit] Re-Read your post.. Does this same image act the same way in say a 3.5 or 4E campaign and have you tested that? Just wondering, like you say, is it the d20 and SW extension that's doing it.. I have the extension as well so I could test and confirm as well..

I've had this happen a few times in the 4E rulesset. This happened when I had an image, lets say a map or pictorial image, that was bigger than I needed in both size and file size. I've gone into Photoshop and re-sized the image and saved over the old image. Once within FG it seemed to throw off the scaling of the windows and gave the same results. I was however able to hold down the CTL key, again in 4E, and drag the bottom portion to resize.


Once the image was correctly sized, in FG window, I used mouse wheel to zoom back so the image was scaled properly in the now sized FG window.

As for paying a ton of money for tools; you don't have to. While I have Photoshop (some old version) there are plenty of free tools out there that will modify images for your either automatically or by hand (re-size image while in the UI of the app).

If you could send me your image I could have a look-see on my end and see if it's the raw image or something else. There have been some issues with file header information storing the wrong pixel depth in images and even though they are a 3"x3" image sometimes the header info stores the size as something other than true. Typically I use a tool such as JStrip to remove all header information from my PNG and JPG files as it does save on space and transfer times for clients in the long run.

If I were to give you a Dropbox location would you upload the image to see if I can help? If so send me your email in a PM and I'll setup the location to upload.

Cheers,
~Ictinike

[Ictinike]

Just found out to allow you to upload to my Dropbox would require you to sign-up and create an account.

If you want to do that (who doesn't want 2gb free shared space?) then great, send me your email in a PM and I'll send you a request over where you can sign-up and have access to the shared folder. If not, you'll have to find a way for me to get the file from you.

Depending on size we could try email option but I think I can receive up to a 8mb file attachment if zipped. I can provide my email to try via PM if you want that route.

Let me know,

Cheers,
~Ictinike

[StuartW]

Not sure if this is relevant, but FG 'remembers' the size of images from one session to the next, so that if you resize them smaller, it may still use the old size.

There are two ways to get around this: either create a fresh copy of the image at the new size, alongside the previous image, so that FG realises the two are different; or delete the campaignregistry.lua file in {FG app data folder}/campaings/{your campaign}.

Just a long shot, as its been a while since I last did this for real!

Stuart

[damned]

photoshop is a wonderful tool with awesome features and the price is reasonable if you use it to make money :)
if you want another tool that has a lot of photoshops features and none of its price try gimp...

and to the real question at hand - yes - give the file a new name and the system should pick up the size correctly.

[Herodian]

There are two ways to get around this: either create a fresh copy of the image at the new size, alongside the previous image, so that FG realises the two are different; or delete the campaignregistry.lua file in {FG app data folder}/campaings/{your campaign}.

Sometimes I rename my images after I edit them. That has the same effect Stuart describes for making a new copy, and works great.

I don't like Photoshop. I use The Gimp. https://www.gimp.org/

[Griogre]

If you don't need a real powerful art program Paint.NET is a free middle weight thing to use. I find GIMPS interface to be a bit strange though it certainly is very powerful.

[StuartW]

I'd second the suggestion about Paint.NET. I use Photoshop for things where I absolutely must have the features, but still fire up Paint.NET as my app of choice for the more simple stuff. I tried the GIMP, but found I was always fighting with its user interface.

Stuart

[drahkar]

While I personally use Photoshop for pretty much everything, I have to agree completely with Stuart on GIMP. I'm sure its a solid program, but I always got hung up on the UI trying to get it to work the way I wanted it. Paint.NET is definitely a solid option for simple art.

[Herodian]

I found The Gimp just as easy to use as Photoshop, perhaps a little easier even. Different programs for different peoples' needs, I suppose! There are some great mapping tutorials for both Photoshop and The Gimp over at the Cartographers' Guild forum:

https://www.cartographersguild.com/forumdisplay.php?48-Tutorials-How-To

[MeganHunter]

As an artist I just popped in to look up this very thing. I've been doing quick tests from CS5 into the engine, and I'm still not positive what format gives you the best color vs quality vs download size. I'm guessing it's meant for PNG since that's that the portraits ect are done in.

As for the size / pixelization problem, I've got the same issue as Inuroku. Even able to size up but not down. The fastest solution I've found is Herodian's suggestion to simply rename the file. A cleaner cache wipe would be Stuart's lua, though I'm newbie enough that I'm still afraid of messing with it.

From my experiments, for some reason an 8.5 x 11 image at 72 dpi seems to snap in perfectly. Granted, you'll have to do a massive amount of scrolling, and resizing will kinda pixelate you forever and ever (is there a "snap to original size" command?*) But when I try making smaller images at 72, they come in too ugly. I figured out that I was allowed to shrink them to their built-in extent as long as I shrunk the window first...this is very important! I didn't get it at first either.

*I know you can just zoom in all the way, but is there a keyboard shortcut for it instead?

[inuroku842]

Ahh, well I did manage to get the problem fixed, I just rescanned and renamed, and then used ctrl and clicked on the center of the image to resize the image window. the window was way too big was my problem. I don't mind having to scroll around the image. I did download Gimp, but I have recently taken to using that just to make tokens for use in play.
There is no keyboard shortcut for resizing to original though, I don't believe so anyway, sorry.