"Easy" Modified Civ3 Unit Request

[Kryten]

Sorry for the delay in answering, but I was waiting to see if Dark Sheer would post first.
I believe that Civanator found a site where you can download a 30 day free trail version of PaintShop, but I don't know where.
You could try sending Civanator a PM.

Yes, PaintShop 7 does have a sort of 'colour selector', but I find it a bit limited. It allows you to use the 'magic wand' to select a colour (say, a brown bit on the horse), and it will include all the connecting brown bits, depending on the 'magic wand' tolerance setting, which can be from 1 to 100. But it is sometimes a bit tricky trying to get the right tolerance....too little, and it just selects a particular shade; too much, and it will start including other shades & colours. But get it right, and it will select all the connected brown bits of the horse and stop at the blue saddlecloth and blue uniform.

PaintShop also has another useful feature....the 'Colour to Target' touch-up tool.
This can only be used with a 16 million (24 bit) colour image, and allows you to simply use the 'dropper' tool to select a shade of colour, then with just ONE mouse click the entire image takes on that new colour, shading and highlights included!

Below I have posted a very quick and crude example.
In the top row I used the 'colour to target' tool to change the image to various shades of brown and grey....this also changed the rider of course.
In the second row I pasted the original rider & sadlecloth onto the new horses.
In the third row I first darkend the horses by one step (using the 'Lightness Down' tool), then I pasted the rider over the top.
And in the last row....just for a bit of fun.....I pasted the rider over the various other Civ3 horses, just for comparison.
(i.e. the Cossack horse, the Horseman horse, the Mounted Warrior horse, the Chinese Rider horse, and the War Chariot horse)

You know, PaintShop isn't that expensive.
I got my 10th Anniversary Edition PaintShop Pro 7 with Jasc Animation Shop thrown in for just £35 from PC World (now what's 35 quid in funny money....er....that's about 50 rabbits....sorry, I mean 'bucks' )

 

[Colonel Kraken]

Originally posted by Kryten
Sorry for the delay in answering, but I was waiting to see if Dark Sheer would post first.

No problem. I appreciate all your help.

In the second row I pasted the original rider & sadlecloth onto the new horses.

How did you do that?! (just selecting those objects)

And in the last row....just for a bit of fun.....I pasted the rider over the various other Civ3 horses, just for comparison.
(i.e. the Cossack horse, the Horseman horse, the Mounted Warrior horse, the Chinese Rider horse, and the War Chariot horse)

This is perfect. That is probably all I would need to do. Nobody has Chariots around by the time the Cavalry show up. Perfect.

You know, PaintShop isn't that expensive.
I got my 10th Anniversary Edition PaintShop Pro 7 with Jasc Animation Shop thrown in for just £35 from PC World (now what's 35 quid in funny money....er....that's about 50 rabbits....sorry, I mean 'bucks' )

Wow! I thought it was MUCH more expensive than that. Cool.

Thank you so much for all your help. I very well may try using my current image editor (Lview Pro), just to see what I can do. I love how you were able to just select the rider and the saddle without the horse. I've got to figure out how to do that.

 

[Kryten]

I might be wrong about that price.....it might have been £50, or $75 (it was 12 months ago, and I can't remember).
But certainly not more.

Removing The Horse, Using Paint Shop Pro 7
--------------------------------------------------------

Below I have posted examples of three different methods.....

First row, by 'pinking out' = setting the paintbrush to the background 'pink' colour, I 'pink out' the outline I want to keep, then using the 'freehand' tool to draw roughly around the bit I do want, and lastly pressing Ctrl+T to use the 'remove selected colour' tool to shrink the selection so that it contains every pixel except the pink ones.
I can now copy this and paste it as many times as I like, anywhere I like.

Second row, 'freehand' = this time I draw around the area I want without worrying about the pink bits, and then Ctrl+T to eliminate the pink, and lastly copy-'n-paste it into an empty frame, ready for future use.

Last row, the 'magic wand' = with a tolerance setting of 38 (which took about half a dozen tries to get right, as 40 was too much and 36 too little), I held the shift key down and right-clicked the mouse pointer onto the front end of the horse. This again took several tries, frequently pressing Crtl+Z to go back a step and redo it.
However, because the horse reins are the same colour as the musket, I had to redo it to stop the gun also being selected (the butt of the gun was still included no matter what I did).
Once I was happy, I then used the same tolerance setting on the rear end of the horse, and last of all pressed Ctrl+X to make the entire area within the dotted lines change to the background colour (the final frame still has a few bits dotted over it, but these can be 'pinked out').

To be honest, I prefer the 'freehand' second method, as I find it quicker.

I don't know how much of this is possible with Lview Pro, but I suspect that most of it will be possible, although called by different names.

So have a go and let us know.

 

[Colonel Kraken]

Originally posted by Kryten
Removing The Horse, Using Paint Shop Pro 7
--------------------------------------------------------

Below I have posted examples of three different methods.....

First row, by 'pinking out' = setting the paintbrush to the background 'pink' colour, I 'pink out' the outline I want to keep, then using the 'freehand' tool to draw roughly around the bit I do want, and lastly pressing Ctrl+T to use the 'remove selected colour' tool to shrink the selection so that it contains every pixel except the pink ones.
I can now copy this and paste it as many times as I like, anywhere I like.

How very clever!

Kryten, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to explain and help me with this. I'm quite excited and will give it a go as soon as time permits.

Thanks,

Colonel

EDIT: I just tried out some messing around with Lview and Flicster. Lview simply isn't versatile enough to perform the tasks you describe. Oh well . . .