Big Map Preview Tutorial

This technique was used to help me get a better look at things to trouble shoot my maps for detailing & design. In the end it made for a great preview instead of the mini-map picture. Here I'll explain it using layers in psp7.

First big preview made using this technique.

You will need a decent system to pull this off & a lot of patience. There is quite a bit of work involved, especially on large maps. If you have a slower system, it may help you to close out any extra programs that are running. Hit ctrl, alt, delete to bring up task manager and end task on anything not needing to be running. In Win98, the only 2 things that NEED to be running are systray & explorer. XP I can't help you with.

In order to save time and amount of screen shots needed, right click the desktop & click the display tab. Max out your resolution & if your tiberium is showing up red in FS, change Color Quality to 32 bit.

Open your paint program.

Now start up FS and open your map. Stretch the left side & bottom part to make as much of map show as possible.

Start in a corner of map, hit Print Screen, alt + tab to switch to psp7, then Ctrl + V to paste it in as new image. Alt + Tab back to FS and line up your next shot with just a bit of overlap to help things line up and do it again until you've taken all your screen shots.

Close FS & get ready for the time consuming part.
First step I take is to use the crop tool to trim the extra off image.

Then click in upper corner and drag the mouse to select area. (Notice gray line)

Hit Shift + R once you have selected area. Then it should look more like this.

Now I use the Sharpen Effect one time.

Next I resize the image down by 50%.

Now I save the image as default .psp file (If using Adobe Paint, it's .psd) Repeat until all shots are cropped, sharpened, resized & saved.

Create a New image.

Excessive required a 3510 X 1760 image to complete. The size you need can be roughly determined by one of your screen shot sizes after re-size. Example: My shots at 1600 X 1200 when resized come in a bit under 800 pixels wide. Multiply that by number of shots needed to go across width. If it took 3 shots, your width would be 2400 pixels. Height is determined same way.

Once new image is created, bring up your first screen shot. Right click on the blue bar at top of image and select copy.

Switch to your new big image, right click on it's title bar and Paste as New Layer.

You will now have a cursor that looks similar to this

You will now be able to click on the new layer and drag it to desired place. (Usually best to start with upper left corner). Continue this with every screen shot. Your Layer Palette will show you the different layers. You can turn layers off and on with the eyeglass's looking thing to help with lining up each image.

Once you have some layers lined up right, you can reduce the strain on graphics by Merging layers. I normally turn off the background and choose Merge Visible. This will turn all the other layers into one combined layer.

Once you have all the layers positioned, if you are still working on the map, save as a .psp or .psd file. It will take awhile to save. Be patient.

Then Merge All (Flatten). At this point it will take a bit of trial and error to keep image sharp. I used the Sharpen image 2 times, then resized image to 1024 wide. Then I'll use the Clarify to to help enhance picture. Also the same to go down to 800 wide.

Once you're happy with the clarity, use the crop method again to trim any excess off, then pick File / Save As & save as a .jpg file.

You're done!

If you are using the image to check your map, at any time you can open the big, multi layered .psp file and add new sections in. Then proceed like above. I've used the image as my desktop background already just to keep looking to see what I didn't like, what needed to be done.

I doubt many will use this technique due to the fact it takes a long time, but I feel the results are worth it if you've made a good quality map.

Tutorial property of Dad_A_Tude

If interested in hosting this tutorial somewhere else, email me here

I'll gladly send you all the files required. I just ask you leave all text the way it is or be kind enough to give me credit. I can not see having this (or anything else) exclusive to one site. If that site dies, the information is lost to the community. Think about it.