Adding Pictures To Locos Not Listed

[gizmo334455]

Hello All,

I have just got Railmaster and have set up all my DCC'd locos, the Hornby ones have been easy to select pictures, but my Bachmann's and Athearn's are obviously not on there. I have downloaded pictures and resized them to fit the Hornby
specs, but every time I load it into the picture section I get the error message "The image size should be around 185 x 39 pixels. Please resize and try again" I am using "Paint" to resize the pixels and then saving and trying to upload to Railmaster.

This
might be duplicated from another forum, but I cannot see one. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Brightstar]

It is not the size of the pixels but the number, so that a picture containing 200 x 150 pixels would be reduced in size to 186 x 39. Paint will not beable to do this you need photo editing software, such as corel paint or adobe photo elements.

I

have just done a web search and come up with this free software:

http://pixlr.com/

I have not tried it so I would recommend making a copy of any photographs and play with the copies not the originals.

[Brightstar]

Or you might try this:

http://picasa.google.com/

[gizmo334455]

Thanks Brightstar, will have a go tonight.

Many thanks for quick reply, great help.

[wiggy25]

I've been trying this tonight with picasa and thumbnail software.
You have to start with a decent image in the first place though!

When you click on the magnifying glass to search for an image it says the size is 185x36, when you get the error

pop up window it says 185x39.

I've resized an image to 185x36 and that actually loaded ok, the image looks rubbish as it's all out of proportion, hence starting off with a decent image that has the ratios ok to begin with.

Cheers

Ian

[Postman Prat]

Hi Wiggy

I've only just spotted your post of 24/7, mainly because I don't look in here. I haven't the first clue, nor interest in computers and these people who go on about do this, do that, it must be something else etc make me feel totally inadequet.

However

to your problem. I know nothing about computers but I do a fair bit of digital photowork. You say that when you reduced your photograph it was rubbish and out of proportion.

Your photo at the start is probably in the proportion 6:4. You could try cropping

this (top and bottom) until you reach the proportions 5:1 and then reduce to your 185x36.Don't know if this will work, but could be worth a try.

A useful 'basic' photosite is Microsoft Office Photomanager (or Picturemanager, can't remember which).

I use it quite often rather than Photoshop. If you've got Office, you've got Photomanager somewhere.

I hope the above helps. Like I said I'm no expert...

[poliss]

When resizing photos, to stop the proportions getting altered you need to tick the box that says 'Maintain aspect ratio' if your program has it.

[BrianSmith66]

Pixlr is free tool but it does not support for processing all photos.GIMP is a free one but a bit complex in using. I prefer to image watermark generator to add pictures. Simple operations and save substantial time.

[Chrissaf]

I have 5 non Hornby locos, so have had to import a non standard image 5 times. I can't recall ever having to do the resizing before hand externally from RM using additional photo software. It was some time ago since I last imported a loco image, but I recall there was an option within RM for RM to do the resizing for you. My loco images were added without any undue faffing around.

.

PS - I find the loco images on the Hattons site are a pretty good starting point image for this purpose.

.

EDIT: See pages 43 to 45 of the version 1.64 RM manual. These pages are devoted to importing and resizing non Hornby loco images and describes the process I now remember using.

[96RAF]

I see to remember being told one of my home brewed images was the wrong size Chris and did I want to resize it. Said yes and it happened.

 

When resizing manually in an app I try to crop to roughly the right shape then opt for the keep ratio and feed in the dimension of the side that fits best.

 

Of interest does anyone else find RM sometimes swaps the loco pictures around and you have to go in and re-find them again. It has been reported and supposedly fixed long since but it still happens now and then.

[Chrissaf]

Rob, you and I have been sucked in to an old obsolete post resurrected by Brian. Look at the time stamp on the last post prior to his. It is dated 2011.

[96RAF]

Sometimes I need to think things through Chris before I decide what to do next, but usually I just put my foot straght in my mouth...