Help Tinting Windows / Kudane Please Help
 

Inspired by Kudane's Purple and Lambent UIs, I'm trying to make my own, I need to know how to color the window pieces / backgrounds to different colors... I'll be using Photoshop.

Tinted but Boxed!!?
 

I managed to figure out how to tint the files using Photoshop. I selected two different colors on the duo-palette (for the life of me, I can't think of a technical term for that and I'm too lazy and frustrated to load Photoshop and find out... lol), then went to Image, Adjust, Hue/Saturation... or Ctrl+U. I checked the box that said "colorize" and it did it all for me. I now have a pretty teal tint for all my window_pieces0*.tga. It matches nicely with the image I used to replace wnd_bg_*_rock.tga.

Anyhow... the problem I have is that all my windows and cursors are now blocked. It appears that when I adjusted the hue/sat, it removed the transparency of the objects within the files. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong, cuz I hate having a cursor with a black box around it. Also, if I put my spell window on 100%, it blacks out my spell gems completely.

I have no doubt I just messed up one little thing and it's a totally simple fix, but I'm begging for help. :)

Thanks!

Lady Silver
"I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. I am my own entourage."

a quick fix would be reloading the file from the default folder , then only select the pieces with the marquee tool , then tint those only .. not the whole lot.

Well, looks like I'm going to have to sit myself down and get a little deeper into Photoshop. I've not used it for anything too major yet. I guess I'm probably overlooking something because as it stands now, when I open the tga files, I have a totally flat image - pictures on a black background, no way to differentiate between the individual pix unless I manually draw them out - a very tough, loooong process. I'll go back into Photoshop and see if I'm missing some nifty capability it's trying to keep hidden. Computers like to do that to me... ;)

So off I go to hunt. Any other suggestions, ideas, comments, etc would still be much appreciated.

Thanks!

~Lady Silver

/sigh

Okay - I've spent several... too many... hours today trying to figure this out. I know it should be simple, but my brain is frying. Would someone PLEASE be so kind as to give me a short walk-through on exactly how to edit just the colors? I know which files to edit, but I don't know what to do to prevent either a box behind the objects (instead of a transparency) or else an outline of the wrong color. I read somewhere that to create a transparency, you needed to put it on a purple background (don't remember where I read that), so I massively cut the images (I've been working w/ file ...01.tga - the one with the cursors), and placed them as a transparent layer over a purple background. So now all of my items have a purple outline. Which would be fine if my color scheme was purple.... but it's teal and it kinda clashes. heh.

Anyhow - it's tomorrow here in central Europe, so I'm off to bed. Happy Editing.

~Lady Silver

Yea!!!
 

After a good night's rest and some more frustration, I finally figured it out. Using Photoshop, here's a quick breakdown. (And I was right - it is Really easy)

Open a copy of the default window_pieces0*.tga.
Choose primary color on Color Palatte. (My choice was dark teal)
Select the Magic Wand:
~ 0 Tolerance
~ Uncheck: Anti-Aliased, Use All Layers, Contiguous
Click on black background - Not one of the images.
**This should select all of the black on the screen, boxing off the images.
From the Menu:
~ Selection -> Inverse
~ Layer -> New -> Layer via Cut (or via Copy)
~ Image -> Adjust -> Hue/Saturation -> Colorize (check box)
**Here you can adjust the levels of Hue/Sat/Lightness

That's it. Save your file as the correct window_pieces... make sure you save a copy as .tga, because it will automaticaly want to save it as a Photoshop-type file. Wash, Rinse, Repeat and enjoy your new colors!!!


~Lady Silver