Making pixel art in photoshop
polycounter lvl 9
So I've taken up making photos into pixel style art using beads. There's some really great examples out there. I'm having issues with getting the size I want the design to be. Maybe I'm just over thinking again. Here's the break down of what I've done....
I scaled down the image til I got the pixel look that still retained enough detail. Originally the image was 576x673 pixels which roughly equals about 8x9.3 inches. Rescaling it to 128x150 pixels makes the image itself 1.7x2 inches. Then I add the guides to divide up the reference into quadrants to make viewing the pixels easier.
Now we get to the issue. If I want the design itself to be a certain size I can't adjust that without affecting the pixelation I wanted in the first place. One pixel = 1 bead. As it stands 128x150 pixels means I'll be using 128 beads across and 150 down. The peg board I'm using is about 10x10inches and comprised of about 3300 pegs so you can see why the size of Spidey vs the peg board is an issue. It's a vicious circle :poly142: Just to give you an idea of the size I'm going for I want it to be poster size. That's about 20x30inches. Maybe I just use the Pixilazation filter after I size up the image I want the design to be?
SOLUTION FOUND - I just needed to select Nearest neighbor to retain the hard edges of the pixels in he image size settings. Its was on Bicupic so it it kept wanting to retain a smoothness when I upscaled it. Silly me.
I scaled down the image til I got the pixel look that still retained enough detail. Originally the image was 576x673 pixels which roughly equals about 8x9.3 inches. Rescaling it to 128x150 pixels makes the image itself 1.7x2 inches. Then I add the guides to divide up the reference into quadrants to make viewing the pixels easier.
Now we get to the issue. If I want the design itself to be a certain size I can't adjust that without affecting the pixelation I wanted in the first place. One pixel = 1 bead. As it stands 128x150 pixels means I'll be using 128 beads across and 150 down. The peg board I'm using is about 10x10inches and comprised of about 3300 pegs so you can see why the size of Spidey vs the peg board is an issue. It's a vicious circle :poly142: Just to give you an idea of the size I'm going for I want it to be poster size. That's about 20x30inches. Maybe I just use the Pixilazation filter after I size up the image I want the design to be?
SOLUTION FOUND - I just needed to select Nearest neighbor to retain the hard edges of the pixels in he image size settings. Its was on Bicupic so it it kept wanting to retain a smoothness when I upscaled it. Silly me.
Replies
Basically :
... doesn't mean anything
If you want to work with clean pixels (one peg = one pixel), simply make a blank PSD with the proper amount of pixels in width and height, and drag that original picture in. Then scale it down, and you're done !
If you want to use the nearest neighbor "look", simply scale down that original image separately, then drag it inside that pixel-perfect PSD. But you'll have cleanup to do anyways. One good trick is to convert your image to indexed colors with the desired number of hues based on the real life colors you have available. Then clean up.
For reference you can then print that pixel perfect template at any size you want - simply type in the desired printing dimensions in inches in the image size dialogue, turning off "resample image".
If your pegs are not square, then you have to work with the display ratio options in photoshop. That way you can have a source image made of perfect pixels, but displayed with a desired distortion amount.
About the printing. I'm not sure I'm following. If you adjust the image size for printing doesn't that defeat the purpose of setting the image size in the first place? When you mess with the image settings whether in the inches box or pixels box, one will effect the other. Unless that's what tuning off resampling takes care of....just wanting to understand haha.
Hope this makes sense !