To help understand what I am about to inquire you might like to skim through this thread
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=11596.0this is concerning my "Project Blackfan"
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=11505.0let me say first that not smoothing these layers is not an option. After my 0.35 release I realize that a ton of these images look like absolutely crap without smoothed layers essentially nullifying the purpose of this project. It smoothing or nothing at this point.
basically I have finally found a way to carry out the smoothing layer process entirely automatically but I am having problems. Right now it takes about 45 minutes to an hour just to smooth all the layers in a single background. This is because there is a lot of tedious manual effort. For images with tons of layers it can take up to 2 or 3 hours to get everything perfect. Using what I have discovered I can bring this time down dramatically to well within just a few minutes. The problem is that my screen isn't big enough to carry it out.
Let me now explain what I am trying to do. In the first thread that I mention above, I talk about and show that their are tiny area's of pure black that show up in Palmer and in game when the layers are smoothed, and these little black pixels must then be filled in automatically. This is what takes me an insane amount of time to fix manually. However I discovered that if I import the smoothed layers into Palmer and then print screen when the image is at its true size that I can align the image up to the layers perfectly. This allows me to run a color select of the black areas and all at once fill them in using the base image. It brings down hours of work into a single button push.
However I have a major problem. I have to print screen several times and align the image manually several times since my screen isn't big enough to show these entire images at their true pixel size. This takes a lot of time especially for the images that are something like 5360x2080 pixels. This can mean I have to print screen 8 or 9 times and then align that print 8 or 9 times. Doing this takes just as long as fixing the black areas manually so in its current state this method is absolutely useless. So here is where I need your help. Please note that I have already sent a request to Aali to include a special mod in Palmer to help me solve this but I can't rely on him to fix this for me so I need everyone's help.
Now here are some questions that have arisen in my mind at this point:
Is there some kind of hack I can run to get print screen to print more than just what shows on my physical screen? This would solve the problem.
If you run more than one monitor and you "print screen" will it print both screens or just one of the two? This will help solve the problem if it prints both screens but I'll have to go out and buy a as big a monitor as I can find which is never cheap, on top of the fact that I would need a new graphics card to go beyond my current resolution. This is not an option I'd prefer but since I plan to upgrade my machine sometime this year it may be feasible.
Is there some other way besides print screen, (ie maybe some special kind of software I have never heard of) and besides modding palmer to get what shows up in palmer to show up in photoshop in exactly the same manner? This could solve the problem
Has their ever been source code available for any version of Palmer? I am a piss poor programmer but I will at least try to include the modification myself if I can
I have a 1080p big screen TV and a dvi to hdmi cable. Is there a way I could hack my tv to have it show more than just 1920 by 1080 pixels. Say maybe 4000 x 4000? This wold solve the problem but it doesn't sound easy.
thats pretty much it for now. I am completely stumped. If I think of anything or discover anything else I will post it here. Please help me! if I can figure this out I can bring the ETA for a final release down from a year or even 2 from now to maybe about 4 or 5 months conservatively. I could potentially do it even faster than that. Smoothing is the only process that I have no way to batch as of right now. If you can help me solve this I will be flying through these backgrounds! Thank you for your time everyone.