RailPro User Group

General => General Discussion => Topic started by: G8B4Life on December 31, 2019, 08:36:39 AM

Title: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: G8B4Life on December 31, 2019, 08:36:39 AM
Happy New Year to you all.

It ticked over to 2020 just over an hour ago here and while my start to 2020 was not happy at all I thought I'd post something for the rest of you.

I'd stumbled onto this website some time back and forgot about it. http://soprisan.uv.ro/ (http://soprisan.uv.ro/). It has some nicely done pictures of loco's that while designed for a screensaver are just about the perfect size for RP.  They would make excellent fill in's for while your waiting to take your own photo, or if you can't take a photo. They are GIF format but that can be easily converted with almost any graphics program and the "canvas" size would need to be increased as well to the size that RP needs. Note, the backgrounds are not black with a grid as you see the pics on the webpage but it is transparent, which will be white after conversion. You save the linked zip files to get the pics.

sortains_capture.jpg
(As others are talking about the ScaleTrains Dash 9 right now the top one is a Dash 9 I wish they'd do).

Note too, that there are two sizes for many of the pics; the old size (60px) and the new size (120px). The new size are the ones that you'll want.

Please respect the authors wishes and only use them privately for yourself.

- Tim

... and congratulations to Bill for attaining 1000 posts  ;)
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: The_Dave on February 18, 2020, 11:33:41 PM
Thanks for the link, lots of great renderings on the page.

Would it be possible for you to give some basic instructions on how to convert these to the proper format to use with RP? I'm a bit challenged when it comes to this type of stuff...

Thanks!
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: G8B4Life on February 19, 2020, 05:52:43 AM
Yep, you can try the method for MS Paint in this thread: https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,194.0.html (https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,194.0.html).

Bill's online converter from that thread doesn't work for GIF images so you can't use that I'm afraid (Hey Bill, a future update to the online converter tool?  ;) ).

Now, saying that MS Paint may interpret the transparent background of the GIF image as black instead of white. If that's the case then you'll need to use a more advanced program like Gimp (no tutorial for that on RPUG yet that I remember).

- Tim


Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: William Brillinger on February 19, 2020, 06:57:10 AM
Quote
Bill's online converter from that thread doesn't work for GIF images

I'll look into it.
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: G8B4Life on February 19, 2020, 07:28:44 AM
Bill, I wasn't serious with the quip about a future upgrade to the online converter tool. I think GIF images would be a very small usage case.

The_Dave, If MS Paint doesn't work (black background when you open it) I've created a tutorial here https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,977.0.html (https://rpug.pdc.ca/index.php/topic,977.0.html) for using Gimp to get the job done. Gimp is free so you don't need to buy it, just download and install it if you don't already have it.

- Tim
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: William Brillinger on February 19, 2020, 07:33:30 AM
Quote
Bill, I wasn't serious with the quip about a future upgrade to the online converter tool. I think GIF images would be a very small usage case.

It may just be a switch in the conversion software that needs to be enabled. If so, no reason not to enable it.
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: William Brillinger on February 19, 2020, 03:21:38 PM
The RailPro Bitmap Builder now supports JPG, PNG, GIF, and BMP formats.

https://pdc.ca/rr/RailProBmp/
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: Alan on February 19, 2020, 03:49:32 PM
Looks like you have all the popular formats covered. May want to make sure .JPEG and .JPE extensions are accepted as well. No difference in the actual file, just different naming conventions.
Title: Re: Happy New Year: Locomotives icons
Post by: William Brillinger on February 19, 2020, 10:12:49 PM
Yes, .JPEG and .JPE are also supported.