-=[How To Edit the Dream Inducer Font]=-
- curt_grymala
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-=[How To Edit the Dream Inducer Font]=-
How to Edit the Dream Inducer Font
A Quick and Dirty Tutorial
How to Make the Font Characters Visible
EDIT: Thanks to BlackAura, I have now edited this step to be much easier and more universal. Here are the new steps in this process:
1) Open "font.png" in Paint Shop Pro (I have not tried this in PhotoShop, but you should be able to search for "Alpha Channel" in the help menu to figure out how to do it using that program).
2) Go to "Selections" menu.
3) Choose "Load from Alpha Channel"
4) Select "Alpha Channel 1" and click "OK"
5) Go to "Selections" menu and choose "Promote to Layer"
6) Then, change the color of the background layer, so that the characters on the promoted layer show up.
OR
1) Open "font.png" in Paint Shop Pro 5
2) Go to "Masks" menu
3) Click "Load From Alpha Channel"
4) Choose Alpha Channel 1 and click OK
END OF EDIT
How to Edit the Font Characters
1) Open the new bitmap in your image editing program (I have used Paint Shop Pro 5.0 and Adobe PhotoShop LE)
2) Create a new layer on top of the existing image.
3) Begin creating your new characters on the new layer, matching them up to the existing ones on the background layer.
4) When you are finished with all of the characters, make the background layer invisible, and then merge them together.
5) Reduce your image to two colors.
6) Set the transparency to your background color.
7) Save the file as a portable network graphics (PNG) file.
Some Tips To Help You Out
1) I suggest using a dark color as the color for your new characters. That way, when you reduce the image to two colors, the characters will not be reduced to white (which is what your background will most likely be reduced to when you merge your layers).
EDIT: Common-sense thought - If you choose to anti-alias your characters, you should only reduce your image to 256 colors. Obviously anti-aliasing does absolutely no good if you reduce it to two colors. If you choose to use anti-aliasing, I suggest using a dark background and making your new characters white, but this will make it a little more difficult to discern which ones are your characters, and which ones are the old characters. END OF EDIT
2) Once you reduce it to two colors, your characters should be black, and your background should be white. Reverse the colors in order to make your characters white, and your background black. Then, make sure you set the transparency, so that your background color is still the transparent color. (I don't know if the color of the font makes any difference, but just to be safe, I suggest making sure your characters are white when you saved the finished product).
3) If you plan on adding this to an existing theme, make sure that you save your new file with the same name, in the same path, as the original font file. The theme documents are created to use a specific font file (usually called "Font.png"), and will not work if it cannot find a file in that directory, under that name. For instance, if the original font file is in /Inducer/Themes/Font.png, make sure you save your new font file in /Inducer/Themes/Font.png.
That should at least help you on your way to creating your own custom font for Dream Inducer themes. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them. It is not difficult to do this, but I just wanted to get you started. You can download a bitmap copy of the font (allowing you to skip the first set of steps) from http://www.septiclean.com/DCStuff/Files/Font.bmp. Downloading that file will allow you to use any browser you want. Because it has already been saved as a non-transparent bitmap, the characters will appear against a colored background no matter which browser you choose. Good luck.
A Quick and Dirty Tutorial
How to Make the Font Characters Visible
EDIT: Thanks to BlackAura, I have now edited this step to be much easier and more universal. Here are the new steps in this process:
1) Open "font.png" in Paint Shop Pro (I have not tried this in PhotoShop, but you should be able to search for "Alpha Channel" in the help menu to figure out how to do it using that program).
2) Go to "Selections" menu.
3) Choose "Load from Alpha Channel"
4) Select "Alpha Channel 1" and click "OK"
5) Go to "Selections" menu and choose "Promote to Layer"
6) Then, change the color of the background layer, so that the characters on the promoted layer show up.
OR
1) Open "font.png" in Paint Shop Pro 5
2) Go to "Masks" menu
3) Click "Load From Alpha Channel"
4) Choose Alpha Channel 1 and click OK
END OF EDIT
How to Edit the Font Characters
1) Open the new bitmap in your image editing program (I have used Paint Shop Pro 5.0 and Adobe PhotoShop LE)
2) Create a new layer on top of the existing image.
3) Begin creating your new characters on the new layer, matching them up to the existing ones on the background layer.
4) When you are finished with all of the characters, make the background layer invisible, and then merge them together.
5) Reduce your image to two colors.
6) Set the transparency to your background color.
7) Save the file as a portable network graphics (PNG) file.
Some Tips To Help You Out
1) I suggest using a dark color as the color for your new characters. That way, when you reduce the image to two colors, the characters will not be reduced to white (which is what your background will most likely be reduced to when you merge your layers).
EDIT: Common-sense thought - If you choose to anti-alias your characters, you should only reduce your image to 256 colors. Obviously anti-aliasing does absolutely no good if you reduce it to two colors. If you choose to use anti-aliasing, I suggest using a dark background and making your new characters white, but this will make it a little more difficult to discern which ones are your characters, and which ones are the old characters. END OF EDIT
2) Once you reduce it to two colors, your characters should be black, and your background should be white. Reverse the colors in order to make your characters white, and your background black. Then, make sure you set the transparency, so that your background color is still the transparent color. (I don't know if the color of the font makes any difference, but just to be safe, I suggest making sure your characters are white when you saved the finished product).
3) If you plan on adding this to an existing theme, make sure that you save your new file with the same name, in the same path, as the original font file. The theme documents are created to use a specific font file (usually called "Font.png"), and will not work if it cannot find a file in that directory, under that name. For instance, if the original font file is in /Inducer/Themes/Font.png, make sure you save your new font file in /Inducer/Themes/Font.png.
That should at least help you on your way to creating your own custom font for Dream Inducer themes. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them. It is not difficult to do this, but I just wanted to get you started. You can download a bitmap copy of the font (allowing you to skip the first set of steps) from http://www.septiclean.com/DCStuff/Files/Font.bmp. Downloading that file will allow you to use any browser you want. Because it has already been saved as a non-transparent bitmap, the characters will appear against a colored background no matter which browser you choose. Good luck.
Last edited by curt_grymala on Thu Sep 04, 2003 11:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
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- curt_grymala
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EDIT: I thought there was a problem with changing the color of the font, but I have realized that it was my own stupidity that was keeping my newest themes from working properly. Sorry for the false alarm. Carry on. The method described in the tutorial above should work without any trouble.
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As an added bonus, I have uploaded three examples of new Dream Inducer fonts to my web site. They have been formatted as SBT files, and given filenames that start with "ZZ", so that they will be the very last file that is extracted by Selfboot Inducer. If you save the custom font files in your SBI directory, they will overwrite the default font when you run Selfboot Inducer.
If you would like to view the examples without using Selfboot Inducer, you can download them and give them "ZIP" extensions, and then unzip them yourself. The file named "Font.png" will be located in the /Inducer/Themes/ directory.
BTW - Thanks for stickying this topic. I hope it will be helpful to anyone interested in doing this.
If you would like to view the examples without using Selfboot Inducer, you can download them and give them "ZIP" extensions, and then unzip them yourself. The file named "Font.png" will be located in the /Inducer/Themes/ directory.
BTW - Thanks for stickying this topic. I hope it will be helpful to anyone interested in doing this.
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- curt_grymala
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I have created a little template for use when you are trying to edit the Dream Inducer font. The image has four layers:
1) The old font
2) The guidelines (I drew guidelines in yellow and filled them in with red, so that you can make sure your characters fit inside the boxes)
3) The black background (this layer is currently invisible. When you finish editing the font, you will make Layers 1 and 2 invisible, and make this layer visible).
4) The new font (you will put your new font characters on this layer. I suggest using white when you make your characters, and make sure you put them all on this layer).
When you finish making your new font, you will make layer 1 and layer 2 invisible. Then, make layer 3 visible, and merge all of the layers. Set your pallette transparency to black, and you are good to go. Good luck with it.
At the moment, this file is saved as a PSP file (PaintShopPro). I realize this is not compatible with PhotoShop, but I do not know of any other file format that will maintain the layer structure. If any one knows of a file format that will maintain the layer structure, please let me know, and I will convert it.
Anyways, here is the link:
http://dchelp.net/Files/Font.psp
EDIT: I have added a copy of this file in PhotoShop format, as well. Here is the link to it:
http://dchelp.net/Files/Font.psd
And here is what it looks like:
Edited to fix links.
1) The old font
2) The guidelines (I drew guidelines in yellow and filled them in with red, so that you can make sure your characters fit inside the boxes)
3) The black background (this layer is currently invisible. When you finish editing the font, you will make Layers 1 and 2 invisible, and make this layer visible).
4) The new font (you will put your new font characters on this layer. I suggest using white when you make your characters, and make sure you put them all on this layer).
When you finish making your new font, you will make layer 1 and layer 2 invisible. Then, make layer 3 visible, and merge all of the layers. Set your pallette transparency to black, and you are good to go. Good luck with it.
At the moment, this file is saved as a PSP file (PaintShopPro). I realize this is not compatible with PhotoShop, but I do not know of any other file format that will maintain the layer structure. If any one knows of a file format that will maintain the layer structure, please let me know, and I will convert it.
Anyways, here is the link:
http://dchelp.net/Files/Font.psp
EDIT: I have added a copy of this file in PhotoShop format, as well. Here is the link to it:
http://dchelp.net/Files/Font.psd
And here is what it looks like:
Edited to fix links.
Last edited by curt_grymala on Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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- curt_grymala
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Already done. I edited the post to include a link to PSD format while you were typing your post.
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- dream devil
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- curt_grymala
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What do you mean? You would be creating a font. You would then simply locate the font.png file that's being used by the current theme, and replace it with the one you created.dream devil wrote:how I USE IN SBIV4? NEED VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: -=[How To Edit the Dream Inducer Font]=-
Sorry for the necro post. I'm bumping this un-dead thread to ask a question. Is there a way to create new fonts compatible with DI without Photoshop, Paintshop, etc...
I can't afford a several hundred dollar suite, so is there an alternative method? Or does anyone have any other pre-made fonts I could download to use? Hopefully a comic sans font...
I can't afford a several hundred dollar suite, so is there an alternative method? Or does anyone have any other pre-made fonts I could download to use? Hopefully a comic sans font...
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Re: -=[How To Edit the Dream Inducer Font]=-
I'm pretty sure that you could use GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/
Insane homebrew collector.