Classic British Flight Sim

Hi folks,

Do any of you experienced painters have any tips for adding text to repaints? If a font matches one I've got in Word I've been using Word to type the text and then copy, size and paste it into the paint project. However zooming in much past the view distance in the picture below the text starts to blur very quickly. I guess there must be a better way of doing things which gives clearer results? Should I be using Paintshop to put text in direct, I'm finding that hard to control? Also are there any tips for keeping flags reasonably sharp when shrunk to size, that Marshall Islands Flag has proved a disaster so far ?

Can anyone please offer some advice to a novice?

Many thanks
Jon

My fonts are in the windows font folder

That way they are availiable in Word and my paint programmes.

I just select the font via the font menu in the painting programme when applying text and should be very controllable. :think:

Garry

Yup.. works for me too! Do you have mips added to that paint as I find text is one of the first things to go fuzzy?? :think: Text will also blur if you've copied and pasted a text string in then had to enlarge it so if you don't have a font there or thereabouts, find and cut the text string from a shot and save it at a high resolution.

Flags are a devil mate.. especially where the texture map is low (512x512 or lower). Best thing to try and do is find the smallest, most detailed version of what you want then try it. Many flag bitmaps are rather large and don't take too kindly to being reduced to a 10th of their original size (or less) :roll:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Soory I was in a hurry and missed the flags bit

When reducing bimaps of text, flags, logos etc.......you are better reducing the bitmap and calling in the smaller than reducing it by scaling within the programme

When you get small the is a lot of detail to be recreated by few pixels so it is always a tricky subject and usually needs a touch of unsharp mask to restore something reasonable.

Garry

Hi,

With text it can be a nuisance at times to get things right. I've only used Paintshop for getting text etc but experimentation is the key here. When I am doing text for a registration I nearly always do it straight into the repaint as a seperate layer. I always try and size the text using font size initially and then you can fine tune with the size box when you have the text selected once in the layer. Altering spacing can also help on some occasions.

With regard fuselage logos, I nearly always start a seperate PSP file from which I can export it into the repaint file as a new layer. Doing it seperately I have found gives greater scope for sizing, spacing and mix and matching of fonts. Don't be afraid to use layers in your seperate file if you need to add individual letters so that you can space them exactly where you want. You will also find sometimes that 95% of what you want is in one font and 5% is in another or may even need to be 'custom built'. Once you have built your logo with layers use the 'copy merged' function, minimise and then paste as new layer into your repaint file. If you find the new layer is too big or too small, you can resize it in the layer or alternatively save your 'copy merged' image as a new image, resize that. Once you've resized it copy and paste as new layer into your repaint file again. You might need to do this a couple of times before you get the size near enough - fine tune the size by dragging the size box around your new logo once it's in as a new layer. I find that just using the size box to scale things does degrade the edges of text etc. Getting it scaled before you import it into your repaint keeps things crisper. Getting multiple words of a logo to have ideal spacing can sometimes be hit and miss as well. If that is the case, you can import as many copies of the logo as you want and then erase words in each layer so you are left with individual words per layer that you can move them independantly of each other to get correct spacing.

With regard flags, I resize them before importing as new layer. If you have a large flag and then reduce the size once in as a layer it goes all fuzzy. Getting the correct size in to start with is best. If you find the flag is too sharp, colour-wise, reduce it's opacity to make it 'fade' slightly.

If I have a logo that I cannot find a font for, I custom build it in Paintshop. Get the best photo you can, enlarge it, crop it to a manageable size, straigthen it, then use it as your background. Make a layer 'guidelines' to keep you level and then start getting artistic and trace over your background using the tools in PSP. Once you are happy with it, hide everything you don't want and then copy merged and paste as new layer into your repaint file.

Always remember to save any seperate logo files in psp format so you can revisit the file again if you need to move things slightly.

Hope you get the drift of my ramblings.

Regards

John

Thanks everyone, much appreciated !

I'll print your replies and try and find a quiet corner to read and learn. It looks like practice makes perfect is the only answer here, but these tips will hopefully give me a bit of a head-start.

Too late now, time for a beer, guess I better leave text alignment until tomorrow !

CHEERS
Jon

Sort of semi-related and may be of interest to many, if you're having problems matching a font there is a handy website I've linked below that allows you to upload a source image and it will attempt to decipher the font and point you in the direction of the closest match.

http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

For instance I snaffled the following image from the front page airliners.net:
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Qantas/B ... 1125991/L/
Cropped the "Quantas" part off and uploaded the cropped piece. You identify the letters that it highlights and then it suggests a number of fonts. On the first page it suggested the following, which are pretty good matches and can easily be modified into looking exactly like the Quantas logo.
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/anti ... rd-italic/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/a ... cal-97009/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/antiq ... cal-97009/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/ ... rd-italic/

I've used it quite a few times when designing letterheads and logos and it's saved me hours and hours of having to hand draw out charachters because I couldn't find a match. I've never used it for FS as I tend to stick to military repaints however I imagine it could be useful for many.

Hi Chris,

A very handy little tool that as well as bringing a new meaning to WTF! ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

TBH I've never found that much use :-(

Perhaps because so many of the older stuff is not true fonts as such. :think:

Not sayings it's no good.....just that it may not help you much with the older

As it happens QANTAS was one of the very few It sorted for me but worth trying for more modern agency designed liveries.

Caution though as it can make you think it's found it and then closer looking finds it's not really that close so as Chris says be prepared to modify or re draw.

Garry

Once again thanks for all the help. Dave I have no idea what a Mip is but once I'd worked out not to include them when saving in DXTBmp everything has sharpened up nicely, text, flags the lot. Boy am I relieved

So I'm just going to tidy up all those liveries and they should be ready very shortly.

Just one problem now. I'm getting bleed through on the nacelles as you can see below. Any way to correct that ?

Cheers
Jon