Template GuideDownloadRight click - Save Link As...
http://www.ektophase.com/TG16/TG16TemplateV3.7zSetting up the Template-There are two rear layouts in the file BL1 and BL2 (Back Layout 1 and 2) (Thanks to BadChad for BL2 layout)
-Tip use Ctrl ; (control and semicolon) to hide and show the guides
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Front-Take your instruction manual cover and scan it at 600dpi be sure to have descreen checked, also see the scanning guide in the guides section of this site.
Tip 1- I put black paper behind the cover to make sure none of the text printed on the covers backside (page 0 and 1) scans through (this can be a problem especially when you start turning up the contrast and other color settings its also more apparent on light colored covers). Also the paper is larger than the cover and sticks out on three sides helping reduce bright edges (see tip 2)
Tip 2- Also putting a black T shirt or cloth over the entire cover before closing the lid can help reduce bright edges from light bleeding under the spine side (and other sides if you are not using tip 1) make sure there are no wrinkles and the cloth is flat.
Tip 3- I put a 2.5 pound weight on top of the scanner lid to help compress the cover down.
-Use the lens-correction tool with the grid on to rotate the cover square, you can also use Image Rotation- Arbitrary and use some guides to check for squareness keep in mind you can rotate .25degrees and lower even.
-Then Crop the cover, the easiest and most accurate way in my opinion is to drag some guides around it (with close magnification) and then use the selection tool with snap on to select. Then copy and paste to a new page.
-Touch the cover up with the clone stamp tool, basically get rid of dust and specks as well as damage or errors from printing (Tip - Use Ctrl and + and - to zoom in and out quickly). Zoom in and really scan for specks and stuff to fix. If you like you can also get rid of any TMs, and if its easy (such as a solid color) get rid of the NEC logo as well - we already have NEC located on the front in large white letters. In Most cases its too hard to get rid of and we will be covering the NEC and TG16 logos with high quality versions. Starting In Version 3 of the template it is a black NEC logo with a white boarder only, some had black and some had white in reality but we will use black on the cover since its white on the lower corner.
-Before Resizing be sure and save your full size touched up cover. Spend the time to name it something appropriate.
-Resize the image so it will fit in the 1180x1180 hole, when resizing be sure to have constrain proportions checked then type in 1180 into the smaller of the two numbers,Use bi-cubic sharper. This may result in an imperfect square, something like 1184x1180(example) but this is fine we don't want to stretch or pinch any thing if we don't have to and the cover template will cover the extra pixels.
-Place the new cover in the template above the default cover layer. you can move it around if you have extra pixels on one side, if you have the move tool selected you can use the arrow keys to move it one pixel at a time.
-Adjust the image and color a bit (brightness contrast saturation sharpen mainly) I've included an example cover with the template try and match that approximate color and sharpness
-Now place the new TG16 logo over the old and a new NEC logo over the old, if the nec logo is not covering the old 100% you can adjust the stroke and outer-glow size a few pixels or just erase the old one some with the clone stamp.
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BackGetting ScreenshotsFirst you need to use an emulator to get some new screen shots of the game 4 - 6 good ones I used magic engine.
With magic engine you can use the letter P to get a clean pause then hit Backspace for screen shot, also some times I hit the zero on the number pad to play games in slow motion so its easier to get a good shot, it also makes some games (like shooters) easier to reach the later levels in. Be sure to use save-states often, I sometimes need to play the game a few times to get good shots.
Screen shot Sizing With template V3 we are using a 5 by 4 ratio. This is two sizes mainly 800x640 for large shots and 600x480 for small size. On BL1 (back layout 1) the cropped shot is large shot cropped to 800x480.
-Before resizing crop off unused areas of shot (like if there is a black bar/boarder on the bottom)
-To resize first you will need to double or triple the size using nearest neighbor then resize using the default bi-cubic to get the final size. For example say we have a standard size shot that is 256x239, for the large shot; first triple the size with nearest neighbor, percent 300 then resize again to 800x640 bi-cubic. You are getting the closest you can to the final size with nearest neighbor(constrained proportions) to keep the pixel look and keep the pixes proportioned properly then using bi-cubic for the stretching and hitting the final size. Some games have different resolutions and may need different settings to reach the proper size “do the math”
-Note--If we just resized once in bi-cubic it would get too blurry, if we just resized once in nearest neighbor to a non proportionate size you would get odd looking pixels and pixel tiling artifacts.
-Note--the reason i did not make a 4x3 ratio is I couldn't get a good layout and some games can look stretched at 4x3, this is kind of a happy medium from the ratio the games were designed in and the TV ratio. There is also an illusion that a standard CRT TV is a perfect square (or near perfect) so being slightly more square makes the shots look more normal.
-Note--I generally think BL2 is a better looking layout unless I have a screen shot that would look good cropped like an intro scene, but its up to you.
ScreenShot Sizing Simplified1-- All pics from a game should be cropped the same before resizing, this is just the Height. Here we are getting rid of the boarders from the emulator and cropping it to look like it would on a real TV.
2-- Large Shot Cropped (
BL1 pic:1 Only!!) resize 1st with [300 by 300] [percent] [Nearest Neighbor] then [800 by 640] [Pixels] [Bicubic] lastly do the final crop, pick a reagon 800 by 480
3-- Large Shot (BL1 pic:3 & BL2 pic:1) resize 1st with [300 by 300] [percent] [Nearest Neighbor] then [800 by 640] [Pixels] [Bicubic]
4-- Small Shots (BL1 pic:2,4 & BL2 pic:2,3,4) resize 1st with [200 by 200] [percent] [Nearest Neighbor] then [600 by 480] [Pixels] [Bicubic]
5-- If the
width of your game screen shot is 344 pixels or above then for the large shots (step 2 & 3) instead of 300% change to 200%
(As far as I know most games are 256w by 239h or 242h in the emulator screenshots and these are often cropped to 256x224. I do have some games that are 344w and 352w in the screenshots for those I used step 5)
-When switching to the Color Coded version change the 8px stroke around the shots to match the covers color.
Story - Find a shot of the box online for the story and features, In rare cases (Kieth Courage) the manual has a sufficient story in it.
-story sizing I have hyphenate off but you may want to turn it on and see if it looks ok. otherwise you can see what happens when you change the font width percent from like85-95 default is 90%
Features - Mainly just get the player count right and number of levels. Some of the features I leave out if they are too long or unnecessary to save space but this is personal preference.
-Note-Most CD games don't list features so I just put the player count since that is nice to know.
-The bullet points(or in this case dashes - ) start at the top guide on Bl1 and sit on the bottom guide on Bl2 depending on how many bullet points there are you may have to move them on BL2
Developer - Look online at wikipedia and at the title screen of the game. you have spaces for three developers on layout 1(BL1) it starts on line 2 and on bl2 its starts on line 1. see my covers.
(V3 I locked the Seal of approval since I have it in that exact spot on all my covers now, don't move it unless you have to)
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Spine Title and Rear Title -Color Coded version put the name in all caps, if its too long shorten the length percent only, for long names you usually only have to adjust the back title but if its real long then both
-Orange version you can either find a similar font like Gotham nights or contact me and I can make you the title layer, I used a 3d app to create most of the tg16 font vary closely it takes me around 15 mins to make one up for you. so contact me or post a list of games you need and Ill try and get them done asap.
-The back title if its one word like neutopia the first and last letter get capitalized like NeutopiA if its two words then its just the first letter in both words like Alien Crush
for the spine all words just have the first letter capital even one word titles so that would just be Neutopia and Alien Crush
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Color Coded and Genres- I included all of the main genres (9 of them)there are a few freak ones I purposely left out because I figure we can fit all of them into these, also for CD games you will need to pick the most fitting genre. (example dungeon explorer 2 has a red duo symbol on the cover and is listed as action-rpg because dungeon explorer 1 is just rpg and i wanted them to match and de2 already had rpg in it I chose rpg)
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SavingIn PS go to "File" then "Save As" now enter the name then and select jpeg, uncheck icc profile and hit save, now in the last pop up change Quality to 12 and make sure "Baseline Standard" is the box checked
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Some of this is pretty obvious if you know photoshop basics, I assume people who use the template will know most of this but at the least it should help save some time and help keep the covers more consistent looking.
