Jerseys on JerseyDatabase.com

[houheffna]

I noticed one of the forum posters had jersey avatars from JerseyDatabase.com. I would like to make pics or files (however it works) for players in my league using jerseys for the players in my league, specifically for players who will be honored or have their number retired, I have Inkscape. If anyone knows how to do it, could you please let me know how its done? thanks...

[MMA_Dave]

Originally Posted by houheffna

I noticed one of the forum posters had jersey avatars from JerseyDatabase.com. I would like to make pics or files (however it works) for players in my league using jerseys for the players in my league, specifically for players who will be honored or have their number retired, I have Inkscape. If anyone knows how to do it, could you please let me know how its done? thanks...

Are you trying to get something that looks like the back of a jersey? With a retired players name and number? I'm not familiar with jerseydatabase, so without knowing what you're trying to acheive I can't really offer more help.

At a minimum, I'd suggest downloading a graphical editing program that utilizes layers (GIMP or my favorite Paint.net are both free) and can handle .psd (photoshop files). From there, we can use the uniform templates to whip something up. Again, without knowing what you want for an end result, its hard to tell how to do it.

[houheffna]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, the uniform backs are what I am talking about, using some form of software (you seem to know which is best) to make original jerseys for all of the players and for the different teams and even for different uniforms. I am sorry I didn't explain what I wanted better, but you seem to get what I was saying...

Do you think that would be a challenge? I have no clue how to do it, I just think it would be cool...

[MMA_Dave]

OK, what we're going to do is make a template for use with Paint.net that's going to let you color and bling out your jersey as appropriate. Then we'll take that jersey and import it into Inkscape do do the lettering and numbering as appropriate.

To get started we need to do a few things:

1. Download Paint.net (Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing). Its basically MS Paint on steroids - only it does everything we need it to do.

2. Download Inkscape (Inkscape. Draw Freely.). You mentioned you have this, but for anyone following along at home its needed as well.

3. Pick out which of the below we're going to use as a basis for the template to speed things along. One of these will become the jersey back that we can then color and letter, etc. Don't worry about the varying sizes yet, we are going to scale down the finished product to your specifications.

4. Come up with some examples for us to work on. These can be real or fictional and is a great way to come up with war stories from your fictional OOTP league.

[houheffna]

The smaller variation would be the more accurate template to use...sorry for the delay in replying, I have downloaded the software you asked me to download...

[MMA_Dave]

OK, so let me know who we're making the jersey for and what number. Also what the jersey looks like (what color, if there are rings around the arms and neck and what color, any distinguishing marks to add, etc.)

Once you let me know what we're making, I'll take screenshots and walk through how to do this as best as I can. Also, I'll post the paint.net template that will allow you to crank these out left and right.

[houheffna]

Okay, here is an example, White Sox black and white home stripe jersey...it would say "Morales" on the back with #13 (okay Sox fans don't shoot me, its Ozzie's number I know...lol). I would like to see how that would be done...thanks.

[blueturf]

Originally Posted by houheffna

Okay, here is an example, White Sox black and white home stripe jersey...it would say "Morales" on the back with #13

If all of the jerseys you need are MLB jerseys you could go to mlbshop.com and create a customized jersey - then right-click and save the picture. This gives you the front and back of the jersey.
Chicago White Sox Authentic Personalized Home Jersey - MLB.com Shop

Just a quick crop and you have only the back of the jersey as needed.

[houheffna]

Well done man! That is really nice...I still want to learn it the way MMA_Dave was going to show me...but that is great man! Thank you very much....

[MMA_Dave]

I'll be around later today to post - Easter kept my wife and I running around.

[MMA_Dave]

Part One: Welcome to Paint.net – Creating the jersey itself


Paint.net is an easy to use graphic editing program. It's a raster graphics editor meaning it treats your entire work as a grid of colored pixels – similar to how your computer display works – so its a wizard at cutting, pasting, working in layers, switching colors and other tasks while it struggles with smooth scaling of objects and other things better handled by vector image editors. Functionality-wise, Paint.net lies somewhere between MS Paint and Photoshop in strength of features, but instead of Photoshop's steep learning curve we have a learning doodle.


The learning...er, sleeping Doodle in question.

To start, open up the zipped .pdn file attached to this post. You'll see what can only be charitably called a “hot mess.” Paint.net will let us change this into a variety of jerseys extremely quickly. I've turned the following pictures into thumbnails to prevent breaking people's h-scroll and causing mass confusion.


The hot mess in question.

First lets look at the layers. Make sure the layer window is open and visible by hitting F7 or clicking “Window” near the top of the screen then clicking “Layers.” You can see 10 or so different layers available in the template. Having all of them active simultaneously looks extremely bad and is more reminiscent of Dock Ellis' LSD trip than a player you wish to commemorate. Let's clean this up by clicking on the checkmarks next to the layers until only Pinstripes (arms), Pinstripes (back) and Jersey Base is visible. This leaves us our White Sox jersey.

[MMA_Dave]

If we don't want a simple White Sox home jersey, we need to be able to manipulate the colors. The fastest way to do this is to use the Paint Bucket – the little icon off to the left that looks like a paint can dumping blue paint. Let's click on the Pinstripes checkmarks, both arms and backs, until we're left with a blank white jersey.



Click on the layer marked “jersey base.” Make sure the layer you wish to work on is highlighted in blue; you are only able to edit the highlighted layer. If you're ever trying to work on something and you don't see what you expect, check to make sure the layer you want to play with is highlighted.

Now that we have a blank jersey, lets click on that paint bucket. Notice our cursor changes shape into a similar paint dumping icon. We now want to make sure the color window is up as well (F8 or “Windows” → “Color” in the file menu). Lets work on an away jersey and click on a light gray color. Now, click on somewhere in the white part of the jersey and we should have changed the jersey into a road gray.




Hmm. That looks kinda sloppy. What Paint.net is trying to do is replace all of the contiguous white of the jersey with the selected color. Since we have lines indicating the sleeves of the jersey and some artifacts from the creation it doesn't look even. Undo what we just did by pressing CTRL+ Z (this cancels our last activity). What we need to do is adjust the tolerance (the blue bar at the top middle of the screen); the tolerance controls how picky Paint.net is about replacing colors. If we click on the far right of the tolerance bar to get 100% and then re-dump the paint we get....

[MMA_Dave]

That's crap. Undo our last paint dump and experiment with the tolerance bar to get a happy medium. For me, a satisfactory result occurred with about 60% tolerance. This is a little bland, so lets bring some of the other layers into play. Click on the empty box next to “Median Cuff Stripe” in the layer window and two neon green bands should appear on our jersey. In my opinion, neon gray and green looks awesome, but my wife assures me the rest of the world doesn't share my color sense. Let use our paint bucket, making sure our color is now set to black and change the stripes to black (a tolerance of 65% is about right). Let's also bring up the collar band and turn that black as well. Now we have a White Sox road jersey.




That's all for this portion of the tutorial, so practice using the mentioned tools and work on making different colored and patterned jerseys. Next time, we'll work on lettering and numbering.


An atlas of Paint.net


[NOTE: I plan on tightening up the template a little bit in the days to come, if you think anything in particular looks sloppy let me know and I'll hit it on the next go round]