I’m working on my first module and learning mostly by trial and error.
Is there a good source for advice about optimizing graphics resolutions?
I want to show off my designer’s beautiful artwork. I have pdfs with counter sizes at 185 x 185 pixels and a map/board that is 19k x 27k pixels (932MB). (Both huge of course.) I’m using GIMP for my graphics work. Is there a rule of thumb about reducing file size and preserving reasonable resolution quality?
For example, here is a beautiful counter at 185 and 105 pixels (in PNG). I can make the counter work at 105 if I reduce the map by half and adjust the zoom options in Vassal, but I’m sick about losing the resolution.
I just did 1700 counters and they look like crap, so I have to redo them all. Looking to get it right this time.
Do I have to accept the compromise? Or is there some magic I don’t know about? That’s what I’d like to learn.
You should definitely keep the 185 counters. Does the map really need to be 19000 x 27000 for that counter size? If yes, Jpg compression at 95% quality for the map can drastically cut down the filesize for the map without significant loss of detail (the default 90% quality compression in GIMP doesn’t produce great results, in my experience).
The map could probably be reduced by 10-12%, as the counters are a bit smaller on the hexes than I like, but pretty close.
Thanks for your advice. Does the order of tasking matter? I.e. (1) convert pdf counter sheet to jpg, (2) compress to 95%, (3) crop out 185-pixel counters. Versus cropping the counters directly out of the pdf first, then batch conversion/compression.
You will find that a map which is 19000 x 27000 won’t work very well. That’s almost 2GB of pixel data which has to be tiled. Note that this has nothing to do with the file size of the map. The dimensions are what matter for memory usage.
Thanks. Yes, I clearly need to cut that way down. I think the map needs to be smaller anyway for the counter proportion, and then I hopefully can compress it without losing too much fidelity.
