How to Create Custom Start Orb Image

A very useful tutorial, l'll study it and make my own start button image. Thanks to the poster!

zqding said:

A very useful tutorial, l'll study it and make my own start button image. Thanks to the poster!

My pleasure, glad you found it useful. :)

God Tut ZaLith. One thing confusing me though.
The emphasis on making sure the image you choose to paste in is the same as your base image at 72 pixels/inch I can understand. But why 72 pixels/inch when Windows perceives an image at 96 pixels/inch? Any of the clearer, or better looking start orbs I've downloaded from dA are made at 96 pixel/inch.
Or is the case of where size doesn't really matter?

fimble said:

God Tut ZaLith. One thing confusing me though.
The emphasis on making sure the image you choose to paste in is the same as your base image at 72 pixels/inch I can understand. But why 72 pixels/inch when Windows perceives an image at 96 pixels/inch? Any of the clearer, or better looking start orbs I've downloaded from dA are made at 96 pixel/inch.
Or is the case of where size doesn't really matter?

Thanks for the comments, and I'll admit that's not really something I thought about... I've been so used to PhotoShop defaulting to 72dpi for it's pictures, I made a tutorial that would work around those defaults.

I haven't really compared the two, but if using an image of 96dpi for the start orb makes as much differences as you're implying, I should really update this tutorial then... I'll do some tests tonight when I get home and see how much of a difference it makes. Thanks for pointing that out..

By the way, the emphasis wasn't really on always using 72dpi, but rather if you started with 72, to keep it at that. Switching dpi settings on an image after you've started working on it causes visual tearing and misaligned pixels. More noticeable on larger images, but it's an old habit for me to stick at the dpi I start at.

ZaLiTH said:

Thanks for the comments, and I'll admit that's not really something I thought about... I've been so used to PhotoShop defaulting to 72dpi for it's pictures, I made a tutorial that would work around those defaults.

Hmm. I'm always fighting it to switch to 300dpi, but I understand where you're coming from!

ZaLiTH said:

I haven't really compared the two, but if using an image of 96dpi for the start orb makes as much differences as you're implying, I should really update this tutorial then... I'll do some tests tonight when I get home and see how much of a difference it makes. Thanks for pointing that out..

It may just be down to the fact that the person(s) who made them at 96dpi's, they would still look better if they made them at 72dpi, or 16!

ZaLiTH said:

By the way, the emphasis wasn't really on always using 72dpi, but rather if you started with 72, to keep it at that......

You put that across very well in your Tut and I understand what you are getting at (mixed dpi formats). I hope you don't think I was criticising, or that it came across as I was, as I wasn't and if it reads that way, I apologise. It was just one of those niggling little brain stretchers that wouldn't leave me alone. I can now sleep easily, neighbours permitting!!

fimble said:

You put that across very well in your Tut and I understand what you are getting at (mixed dpi formats). I hope you don't think I was criticising, or that it came across as I was, as I wasn't and if it reads that way, I apologise. It was just one of those niggling little brain stretchers that wouldn't leave me alone. I can now sleep easily, neighbours permitting!!

Lol.. It's all good, I'm a big fan of constructive criticism, so any comments that make me think twice about something I've said makes me go do more research and make sure I know what I'm saying is correct..

can someone please convert this so i can use it as a start orb please? thanks much.

drnknondajawb said:

can someone please convert this so i can use it as a start orb please? thanks much.

idk what i did wrong i really want this orb. someone please help.

ok, so i changed it attempting to fix the problem. still doesnt work. all i see is a bunch of fractals when i set it as the start orb. i dont know what i did wrong, can someone please help? also cant save it as 32bit on paint.NET, guessing that might be the problem. here is the image:


here is what i used, can someone please make a start orb for me using this image? greatly appreciated.

drnknondajawb said:

ok, so i changed it attempting to fix the problem. still doesnt work. all i see is a bunch of fractals when i set it as the start orb. i dont know what i did wrong, can someone please help? also cant save it as 32bit on paint.NET, guessing that might be the problem. here is the image:


here is what i used, can someone please make a start orb for me using this image? greatly appreciated.

Sorry for the late reply, I don't remember seeing your message.... That image is going to be very difficult to work with for a start orb, looking at it right now in PhotoShop it's going to be a mission to try cut the background out and get any decent transparency going. Where did you get the picture from originally? Any bigger / higher quality versions perhaps?

As for Paint.net, I've never used it, so I'm not sure about it's capabilities.. GIMP is a good free photo editing program, and I know it supports saving to 32-bit BMP files. 32-bit is required to save the 4th 8-bit 'Alpha' channel with the image, this is the channel that saves the transparency information, which Windows then uses to determine which areas of the image are shown and which are not.