Thread:Mhommer/@comment-26090008-20150210223232/@comment-15636815-20150212030037

Yeah, we all had to go through the learning process for a while. I had a bunch of trouble figuring out how to edit the images because no one had experience with GIMP; I made a bunch of mistakes before I figured out how to do the job quickly. ;-)

It looks like the best place for me to post these instructions is right here. Enjoy! Oh yeah, and I know this looks really long. Don't let that scare you. Most of it simply explains how to do whatever you're supposed to do, or sometimes explains why. Once you do the process a few times, you'll see how quick and easy it really is. ;-)

First, let's configure GIMP to make things a little quicker and easier. Do this only the first time you run GIMP. The program saves the configuration when it closes. GIMP is ready to go. There are many more things you can configure, including within the Toolbox itself. Select whatever settings you like. I strongly recommend leaving the Toolbox (with its options tab at the bottom) on the screen at all times, assuming your monitor has resolution high enough. At low resolutions, the Toolbox can get in the way of editing.
 * 1) In the menus, click Tools > Toolbox. The toolbox will appear in the middle of the screen. Move it anywhere you want, and GIMP will remember where you like it. I recommend also making it larger left-to-right, so that it contains 4 or 5 icons on each row.
 * 2) In the menus, click Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Tool Options. When the Tool Options window appears, click on the tab and drag it to the bottom of the Toolbox. This makes using the tools MUCH faster.

Now you're ready to create images for TS Wiki!
 * 1) The easiest way to get the image out of TS is to copy the screen with the item displayed. (In Windows, press .)
 * 2) On Windows, the best way to get the image into GIMP is to use Paint to save the image first. (Right now, that doesn't make sense. It will soon.) Paste the image into Paint, then save it as a .png file. For the file name, use the name of the item exactly as it appears in the game, including weird spelling, weird capitalization, and letters with weird marks (which are called "diacritics"). Again, the file name needs to match exactly.
 * 3) Open the .png file in GIMP.
 * 4) In the menus, select Layer > Transparency > Add Alpha Channel. This creates the transparent background.
 * 5) In the menus, select Tools > Selection Tools > By Color Select.
 * 6) Under "Tool Options" (at the bottom of the Toolbox), set Threshold to 15. This setting works best for editing most TrainStation images. Also, change the Mode to "Add to the current selection" (2nd Mode icon from the left).
 * 7) Click anywhere on the blue sky background. GIMP will select some of it. Click on the blue background again, somewhere outside the selected area. GIMP will select another part of the background and add it to what it selected with your first click. Repeat until the entire background is selected.
 * 8) On the keyboard, press 4. This will increase the magnification of the image to 800%. Yes, you're going to look at individual pixels in the next step.
 * 9) Navigate to any corner of the image. Along the edge of the selected area, look for unselected pixels in "transition colors"part background blue, part whatever is the color of the image in that spot. Usually, you will find a few pixels (or a bunch!) that the threshold did not select, but are close enough to the background color that they will leave a blue border around the edge of the image. To eliminate the unwanted blue border, click on the pixels that most closely match the color of the background to select them. Move around the entire edge of the image and repeat the process until you return to your starting point.
 * 10) Sometimes, one or more colors in the image will be close enough to the background color to be selected. We must deselect these areas before we delete the background. Otherwise, we'll delete parts of the image itself. In my experience, the fastest and easiest way to handle this is to click Tools > Selection Tools > Rectangle Select. Next to "Mode" in Tool Options, click "Subtract from the current selection" (3rd Mode icon from the left).
 * 11) Draw a rectangular box around anything inside the image that is selected. Everything inside the box will become unselected. Repeat as many times as necessary to ensure that everything you want to keep is unselected. (Note: Sometimes an image will have holes on purpose, and you can see the background through the holes. Ignore this step for these holes. Unselect only colors which are part of the image itself.)
 * 12) In the menus, click Edit > Clear.
 * 13) The background is gone, and a grey checkerboard pattern replaced it. If you see plain white instead of the checkerboard, you forgot to add the Alpha Channel. Just click Edit > Undo, add the Alpha Channel (step #4 above), then delete the background again.
 * 14) Check the image to see if it has any blue borders left over from the background. (You may want to press 3 or 2 on the keyboard to zoom out a little bit first.) You will see these borders very often at first. With experience, you'll get better at selecting the right colors the first time. Images with many jagged edges will produce borders more often than images with straight edges.
 * 15) *If your image has blue borders, go back to the Color Select Tool, select the parts you don't want, and delete them, using the same steps as before.
 * 16) *(Hint: Don't stress about getting this 100% perfect. Press 1 on the keyboard to zoom out to the image's normal size. If you can't see a border on your screen, no one will see a border on the Wiki.)
 * 17) Now your image definitely has a transparent background and definitely does not have any noticeable blue borders. The final step in editing is to trim away the extra pixels we don't need. Go back to the Rectangle Select Tool and draw a rectangle around the entire image. Press 4 on the keyboard, then adjust all four sides of the rectangle for the best size. I usually place the sides of the rectangle one pixel (one checkerboard square) away from the tallest/widest part of the image. This makes sure that I don't cut away anything by mistake.
 * 18) In the menus, click Image > Crop to Selection. The image now is complete.
 * 19) Remember how step #2 didn't make sense? It will, in about 30 seconds.
 * 20) *With the "Save" command, GIMP uses only one formatGIMP format. To save an image in any other format, you must use GIMP's Export feature, which forces you to configure various settings for the format you want, plus verify the file's location. Although the default format settings probably will work, exporting still requires 3 or more steps every time you do it, and it's more or less a pain in the ass.
 * 21) *To save your work in one step, click File > Overwrite . Done.
 * 22) **What? I can't just overwrite the file! What if I made a mistake somewhere?
 * 23) **Relax. You didn't want all that extra stuff, anyway. Just fix the mistake and Overwrite again.
 * 24) **If you really, truly, horribly screwed up the image and there's no way to fix it, just go back to the game and start over by copying the original image again. That fixes everything! :-D
 * 25) In the menus, click File > Close View. GIMP will ask if you want to save your changes before closing. Your Overwrite already saved your changes, though. If you click "Save As", GIMP will attempt to save the image in GIMP format. Instead, click "Discard Changes". I know that sounds scary, but remember that we can always start over. Trust me. ;-)

Now you have an image file that is ready to upload to TS Wiki. When you upload images, always remember to click on the drop-down menu for "Licensing". For images copied from the game, select the sentence under "Fair use". And if you have any questions about any part of this, just ask. We're always happy to help someone become a new editor. :-)