Digital Squad patches

[Daniel]

Anyone know where I can get my squad's patch turned from cloth to digital (computer)
as I am building my units website and I have no photoeditting skills

[gistek]

I've had reasonable luck by scanning a brand new patch at very high resolution then resizing it down.

Use a black matt background and leave a little space around the patch.

IrfanView image manager will allow you to rotate the image by fractions of a degree in case you find you didn't have the patch exactly straight.

Use gif or tiff format. Tiff is huge, so if you're 'puter is limited, go with gif.

To do any editing, save the image as a bmp then do the editing in paint or gimp.

Before making the final save, make absolutely certain the border color is one solid color. I do this in MSPaint by filling the border with light color that isn't used anywhere else in the image. This allows me to see any pixels that are not quite the same. I select the new background color and paint them out.

It is vital that the final background color not be used anywhere in the patch. When you save a gif format in IrfanView you have the option to select a background color. This color will disappear. This allows a gif image to be inserted over a background and the background will show through. This is why a smilie gif doesn't have a white square around it.

[whatevah]

From a graphic standpoint, DO NOT use GIF format while you are working on any images.  GIF is a presentation format only, not for use while editing.  It's limited to 256 colors while JPG, PNG, etc are not limited and can be compressed.  JPG is lossy compression, however and should not be used for archival purposes. PNG is much better for editing use and archival of graphics as it is not limited to 256 colors and does not use lossy compression.  There is almost no use for TIF these days.

If you need a true digital format of the artwork, you might need to talk to the designer of your patch to see if a file is available. Either that or team up with a local graphics person (college student?) to recreate it based off a scan. Photoshop and Illustrator will work wonders in the hands of a good artist.

[Eclipse]

PM away...

[gistek]

Thanks for the advise, whatevah.

The main reason I use gif is I can be sure the image colors will render properly on all browsers. I'm not fond of jpg during the editing phase because every save blends the borders between colors and can make the image become fuzzy at the edges. While editing, I want nice sharp edges between colors.

I haven't used png much, but will begin trying it out.

I mentioned IrfanView, gimp and paint because I can't afford Photoshop or Illustrator.

[Gunner C]

Daniel

It sounds like you're really getting into CAP - keep it up.  One thing, though:  squad is not short-hand for squadron.  They're two different things.

Keep up the good work and keep the excitement!

Lt Col Pierce

[Chief2009]

I used Butler Digitizing.

Just select Vector Art and usually the first one is free!

DN