Zhao Yunlan icons

[mekare]

They are nothing special (I'm not really that skilled), but if you are interested: here

Does anyone know of an easier way to erase the background from a cap than handpainting it over with a brush (I use gimp)?

Comments

[teaotter]

In GIMP, I use layer masking -- which is kinda like painting over the background with a brush, but you don't have to worry as much if you make mistakes. A layer mask controls the opacity of the layer, so you can turn sections transparent if you want. (And then put things on another layer behind it.)

I can dig up some tutorials if you want?

[teaotter]

Re-reading this comment, I am not at all sure it makes sense if you don't already know what I'm talking about. Sorry! Let me track down a tutorial instead.

[extrapenguin]

Here is GIMP's official Layer Mask tutorial.

[extrapenguin]

And to give some details on my actual process:
1. I crop the screencap so it's square (but leave it at original size)
2. I duplicate the layer and add a black (100% transparency) layer mask on the top one (because I'm neurotic and like to leave the untouched base at the bottom)
3. I use Free Select to select the thing of interest into a selection
4. I shrink the selection by 1-2 pixels
(5. I turn off the bottom layer so I can look at how the layer mask went and on the layer mask use a paintbrush in black to make things transparent and use a paintbrush in white to bring things back into existence – cleanup!)
6. I Gaussian Blur the layer mask with the default radius of 1.5 pixels
7. I scale the image to 100 × 100 pixels and start the actual icon-making process, usually by e.g. adjusting the contrast with Levels.

[mekare]

Thank you for the detailed process. Will try that out next time.

[extrapenguin]

Looking at the comment, I realize I left out an essential step: once the selection has been shrunk (step 4), fill it with white! Otherwise there will be nothing showing, lol.

[mekare]

Thank you! That's helpful.