GIMP and maps

[Arralen]

You needn't script it. At least, I dunno how to do that

It's a matter of a few seconds, anyhow.
Letme try to show how. Sorry if I don't get the menue item names right - I'm using the german Version and can't really remember the english labelling from the previous Version.


Right-click on the pic. Use "select", "per color" (or something like that, it's way down the list that pops up), turn "impreciseness" down to "0", klick on a white pixel.

open the layers menue.
right-click on the pic again, choose "selection", "floating"

in the layer menue there will appear a "floating selection" entry, already marked as active (blue)

hit "keep transparency", than the "new layer" button. the floating selection will be converted into a transparent, "floating layer".

you may rename it to "pixels" or something ...

Activate the backgraound layer, do any smoothing and anti-aliasing you wish.

Proceed similarly for other colors to generate borders etc.

If you add another layer for "objects", you may copy in trees, bushes, mountains etc. from another pic easily. You may even select them later again and move them around by dragging - as long as you keep them on a seperate, transparent layer.

When done, merge all layers.

hope this is helpful

A.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Arralen:
You needn't script it. At least, I dunno how to do that

Yeah almost worth learning Scheme just to make a script-fu of it.

It's a matter of a few seconds, anyhow.

OK thats great, and I will do it. But Im not going to do it to 30 files every day.

Maybe if I find a really good one in one of the batches I will do this and then use it as a basis for one of my fun random things.

Maybe if I copy the steps to one of the gimp or scheme newsGroups I can get someone to script it out.
Thanks for the steps.

[ January 16, 2004, 02:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Gandalf Parker]

WOW thanks Arralen! That worked SO WELL.
Here is a short Version I worked up for use with my Windows Version of GIMP

load .tga and open layers
Rclick image, select-> by color, choose color, Shft-Ctrl-L
go to layers, clik "keep transp", clik "new layer"
select original layer, repeat above for both border colors
after getting 3 transparent floating layers, select blur
Ctrl-M to merge all layers then save

Now if I could just get someone to autoscript it

[ January 16, 2004, 18:23: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Gandalf Parker]

A note on the routine used to make the DomMap images alittle more pleasing to the eye. Ihave dicovered that using the SCATTER effect before doing the BLUR makes a much nicer result. Scatter basically takes large areas of a single color (green, blue, tan) and mixies it up abit with sight variations. If I use it at a setting of 8 then the green area becomes a mix of greens within 8 slight variations of the original shade. This works well for adding alittle visual variety to provinces that ended up a solid block of color. Especialy the water.

[Gandalf Parker]

GIMP 2.0 is OUT! Get it here... www.gimp.org

The first stable release to officially support unix, linux, windows and mac. Alot of nice additions. mostly visual and easier to use layouts. GIMP scripting, besides supporting scheme... now supports python, C, and PERL.

[ March 25, 2004, 16:15: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Is anyone playing with the new GIMP? Ive had trouble getting it to run in Windows XP.

At first I got errors that now dont show up (wish Id written it down the first time) but the program doesnt load. Ive seen Messages in the GIMP newsgroup where others have problems and fix it with various old dll deletes or some fonts. Here is part of the conversation on that...

> 1) Do a search for ".fonts.Cache-1"
> 2) On Windows XP, you should find the file in the C:\Documents and
> Settings\username directory.
> 3) Open the file in notepad or wordpad.
> 4) Do a search for "profont.fon" in the file.
> 5) You should see 7 lines for this font. The Last two lines read as
> follows:
> "C:\\WINDOWS\\fonts\\profont.fon" 5 1035317746 "ProFontWindows
> "C:\\WINDOWS\\fonts\\profont.fon" 6 1035317746 "ProFontWindows
> 6) Immediately after the words ProFontWindows you should see some
> unreadable characters (and maybe even some readable ones that
> shouldn't be there). Delete them.
> 7) The beginning of the Last two lines should now look like this:
> "C:\\WINDOWS\\fonts\\profont.fon" 5 1035317746 "ProFontWindowsyle
> "C:\\WINDOWS\\fonts\\profont.fon" 6 1035317746 "ProFontWindowsyle

It worked for some but I dont find ProFonts in mine so I suspect its another font. I may have to set aside time to hack that file.

[ March 28, 2004, 14:37: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Gandalf Parker]

OK I finally ironed out my problems with GIMP2. This is my post from the comp.graphics.apps.gimp newsgroup.

> Thank you for following up on this. I ran into these same problem,
> but your idea did not work for me as I didn't have profont for some
> reason.

Yep me too so Ive been waiting for a different sugestion.

> What I did do was rename ".fonts.Cache-1" Started gimp and it
> worked... It also rebuilt ".fonts.Cache-1" when it started..

Sounded good. I was hopeful. But not yet.

I did finally see the error window stick around long enugh to read it. It
said.......
> >(gimp-1.3.exe:1542): Glib-CRITICAL **:file gconvert.c: line 498
> >(g_convert): assertion 'str != NULL' failed
and an error report which wanted to be sent to microsoft about msvcrt.dll
(I have WinXP). I googled extensively for both in web and newsGroups. I
found them many times in relation to many programs, but no real answers. So
I will include them in this post to allow others to find this.

By now I was determined so here is what I did. I opened a window to C:
\windows\fonts. Then I created a c:\temp directory and opened a window to
that. I sized both windows so that I could see them side by side. Now I
went thru the fonts one at a time double-clicking them one at a time which
brought them up in "Windows Font Viewer". I had no idea what I was looking
for but most of the displays looked pretty much the same. Any that looked
different I dragged it over to the temp window then tried to open GIMP.

Finally, after moving a file called BBCWIN.FON gimp came up. I closed it
and moved back all the fonts but that Last one, then opened gimp again.
Then, just to be sure, I deleted the C:\Documents and Settings\Gandalf
\.fonts.Cache-1 file and opened gimp again which took longer while it
rebuilt the fonts file. YAY! I HAVE GIMP 2.0!

Thank you everyone here for the various hints, tips, bits and pieces. Feel
free to put these steps on some web page somewhere so it will web-google
for people also.

Gandalf Parker
-- I have often spent way too much money
because I GNU too little on a subject