Taking good photos for RailPro

[Craig]

Does anyone have any tips for how to get your custom photos of locomotives to come out looking nice on the controller? The RP Assistant User guide references a section on taking good photos for RailPro but I can't find that section in the guide. I was able to upload (download?) my photo but it came out looking all green, almost like a photo negative, on the controller screen. I took the photo of the locomotive against a white background using a iPhone 5S and used GIMP2 editing software to get it to the correct size.

[Alan]

Your photo has color information embedded. RailPro controller misinterprets the color data. Remove the embedded metadata. See this thread: http://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php?topic=23.msg74#msg74

[Alan]

I have come to favor doing my artwork in Adobe Illustrator and then loading the rasterized image into RailPro. It allows me to give all my loco art a common consistent style on the controller. If you have Illustrator or Inkscape (and a lot of patience) give it a try.

[Craig]

Thanks for the tips and the link to the thread on getting rid of the embedded data.  Clicking on the "do not write color space information" did the trick.

[KPack]

I think the key to good photos/selectable icons is consistency.  If you are using photos of the actual model, then take them all under the same lighting.  I take all mine outdoors under natural sunlight.  If you are using computer generated images, don't mix those with pictures of models. 

If you do happen to use pictures of your models, good lighting is key.  Hence the reason I take mine outdoors.  Also use a neutral background that is easy to remove on Photoshop or similar programs.  Tripods are very handy and recommended for any model photography.

-Kevin