Getting the Most out of IrfanView
Again, the key is this: play to your strengths.
IrfanView is really good at converting files. If you're making dolls, you'll find it is very, very good for saving transparent GIFs. There's not a whole lot more that it can do for you, but here are some tricks that I've picked up - remember, this whole "dolling on a budget" thing is based on making the absolute most out of what you've got.
1: Getting Started with IrfanView.
- You can download IrfanView as freeware for non-commericial use (unless you are somehow making money from your dolls, you're good).
- Again, check out Xandorra's tutorial on saving transparent GIFs if you don't know how to do so already. (Tutorials > Misc > gifs in irfanview).
- Millenium's IrfanView Tutorial is a good place to get started if you need a jump-start learning how to open, resize, and save image files.
2: Save Better GIFs.
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Open the image in IrfanView and save it as a GIF with no transparency. Note that it's not really that great of a GIF - IrfanView is good at converting the palette but not the best at converting the actual image to fit the new palette. |
| Re-open the original bitmap in MSPaint and Select All (Edit > Select All or Control + A). Copy (Edit > Copy or Control + C) the original, non-converted image and then open the new GIF in MSPaint and paste (Edit > Paste or Control + V). Save. | |
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Re-open the GIF in IrfanView and save it (with transparency). Tada! Much better! |
3: Convert to Greyscale.
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This isn't very exciting and is very seldom actually useful, but there's a simple tool to convert any image to greyscale. Just go to Image > Convert to Greyscale, and there you have it. (There's also a Negative effect that is less often useful and generally very obvious since it's a common effect. Try it on clothing!) I occasionally do this with my bases when I'm making dolls of grey-skinned Ghost characters from the Forest of Shadows. Note that there is an Effects sub-menu under Image. You won't find it very useful for dols because it will destroy the pixel detail effect. In particular, the rotate tools are not much good for dolls as they just blur the edges. The Sharpen tool can occasionally be cool, particularly if your shading has become too blurry and you want to make it look more "crisp". |
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4: Play with the Colors!
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So I start working on my Ghost doll and I get this far and figure the all brown clothing thing isn't turning out so well. (Or maybe I'm just bored.) At this point I've got enough shades in there that I don't want to use MSPaint's color replacer. (This becomes more relevant if you've got a program like Picture It! and you're not pixel-shading anymore.) Open the image in IrfanView and go to Image > Enhance Colors. As you can see in the example, simply adjusting the color levels is not going to be very helpful here unless i really want the doll to have green skin! Often you'll want to pick and choose different effects for different articles of clothing. |
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The more you play around with the different sliders, the more you'll get a feel for what they do. If you like the effect, but you don't want it for the whole doll, the easiest way is to copy the image, page it into your big bitmap canvas, erase the parts you don't want, and paste what's left over your doll. Here, I did two things: for the green, I turned gamma contrast down and turned green up. For the grey shawl/scarf thing, I simply converted to greyscale and increased the brightness. |
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You will generally find that brightness/contrast/gamma changes look the best and are most useful. When I recolor a base, I usually use IrfanView (sometimes I'll tweak the colors just a little since some people have more yellow or red in their skin). There are ultimately better ways to do this in other programs, but there's no point in wasting what you already have! |
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