FF7 PSX pre-rendered backgrounds to replacing the ones of FF7 PC version?

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I feel your pain, I got this table for font sorted an hour ago and then i accidentally shut down ff7 without saving my edits.

 :o
 

2048*2048 px


Even when I loved the background yarLson edited, I was missing a bit more sharpen on it since there was a notable contrast between the HD character and the little bit blurry background image, and yea I know I said before I do not like how the Perfect Resize sharpener effect looks, but that does not means I do not like the sharpen effect itself, so I combined and used some other methods to make the sharpen effect look much better and natural and I think I got what I was really looking for. I also wanted this time to keep the colors and the general look as close as possible to the original.

This was my last attemp with this background and I personally love how it looks in game, but maybe some ppl prefer a softer background, in that case the one yarLson did will be perfect for you (I can´t see any pic so unfortunelly I can not evaluate sl1982 work :(, except when he upload the files, but by what ppl say, they look pretty good too).

P.D.: I followed most of the tips and steps yarLson and sl1982 said before, and I combined them with new methods to get the sharpest possible background, without losing the quality and the original concept, it still won´t look perfect but I love it and I hope you like it too.

Files: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MQO87YN2
 
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Seriously, here is my 2 cents.  You have to make sure that these backgrounds look like the old ones.  Sharpen is fine as it enhances the detail, blurring is not a good idea, and I think adding noise is also a bad idea because that will make the backgrounds look phony, even if they look nice as pictures.

It has to be a fractal resize + sharpening method and nothing else, or it will come out looking bastardised.   :)  The above looks fine to me, but be aware that Station map is not true of every picture, have a look at the corel prison and try to use the method there, get it right across a few maps before you begin.

Something like sl1982 had before:

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/5598/nmkin1.jpg

Works fine.  Although that looks like it has added a bit of distortion, perhaps just a tad over sharpened.  I don't see what was wrong with my effort either:

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/2155/98884374.png

The bottom line is, it cannot be too sharp and it cannot be too soft and it cannot look phony.  It has to pass off as a game background that the eye can keep to the background in gameplay.  No good if it stares out at you as fake.
 
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Is there gonna be a project thread for this?  Either several for each person working on this, or one for the two...or three?  of you.  I don't have the proper software to help, but I have been watching this closely and think some might benefit from some organization (sl seems to know what hes doing and is making good progress, but idk about the other two.  and if someone else wanted to help it may be difficult for them to get started).  Good luck guys.
 
I am just offering suggestions on how best to proceed and some examples.  I have my hands full at the moment with several other projects that I want finishing by 2050  :P
 
Well i dont know about everyone else but I like the way mine turned out. Sure they may look a bit fake but oh well. I honestly dont have the time to go through and hand tweak everything. Some things work better for some backgrounds. As of right now I have 17 backgrounds done, but some of them cannot be put back into the game until we get a new version of palmer that fixes some issues. Either way I am still going from the end of the list alphabetically, but will probably release my stuff on my own. That way other people can start at the beginnning or elsewhere and there wont be any overlap until we meet in the middle. By that time all the backgrounds should be done so people can pick which they prefer better.
 
HAve you uploaded some backgrounds sl?  I will give them a go in game and see what I think!  8)
 
HAve you uploaded some backgrounds sl?  I will give them a go in game and see what I think!  8)
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I have not yet, i will send you a pre-release later. Release will most likely be this week.
 
well i solved my problem, and it was patience. I went in thinking the conversions would be easy and in the end it caused a ton of headache. Some careful planning and testing of layers BEFORE conversion has solved the big headache for me and I should now be able to make decent progress. I don't really like the sharpener in perfect resize either but I'm still messing around with sharpening in photoshop to find something I like. Thanks everyone for your help. And I am glad to say I am on track. Gonna test around and find a sharpening effect I like before proceeding too far, but that shouldn't take too long. I will be doing the whole game, regardless of whether or not I get help, but without help it could take upwards of 6 months or so, so I hope we can all come together as a team :]

also I just want to thank xLostWingx for the vote of confindence :P

one last thing for now. Frivol I dunno why you are resizing to 2046 but an exact 4 times resize of 512 should be 2048, just a friendly fyi.

*edit*

While I appreciate the input DLPB, any method of sharpening I seem to implement on a noticeable scale seems to add to the so called "blotchiness" and discoloration. I simply don't like it, and the detail it adds seems trivial when compared with the downside. In converse the slight blur is hardly noticeable, and while yes very slightly diminishes the level of detail, seems to fix all of my color issues. To prove this point to myself I zoomed in on a certain section of an image after resizing with fractals so that the pixels were visible, even without applying the sharpening, I notice little stringy sections of discoloration, after applying sharpening these become enhanced and thick, but after applying the 1.0 pixel blur completely eliminated these stringy inconsistencies and with a hardly noticeable diminish in quality.

 To put it simply, in regards to a re-sized image, I feel like a slight blur is a compliment while sharpening is an argument. If the starting size of the resolution were higher than sharpening would be a great tool, but in my own experience it's better to work with what you have than to try and turn charcoal into a diamond. Yes of course it is possible but it requires a lot of time and effort. If we only had to re-size a single image then yes I would be all for it, and I would clean up the discoloration manually if need be. However we have to do 1,000 or more images here and I feel that my method is the best option (for what I have working with) for cleaning these images up.

I realize I will probably come across an image that would do well with some sharpening and I will take some time for each image to decide the best course of action, but in order to get this done it can't be done perfectly. If we try, we might as well start from scratch. I know I can't change anyone's preference nor would I like to, but it seems if nobody agrees with me on the blur issue than there is only one thing for me to do. We will have to make separate projects for now.

However I also feel I should be more helpful than to just have my way and finale. So I decided, I would release my final project in 2 formats. For in game usage edited to the best of my discretion, and another with all layers merged and re-sized with fractals. No blur, no sharpening or editing of any kind will be applied to the later. This will allow the entire portion of the community which doesn't have access to Perfect Resize to make their own decision on what it should look like without the need for expensive software (there are plenty of wonderful freeware image editing tools, GIMP is one example).  of course you will have to cut the layers yourself, and when the time comes i'll try and write a detailed tutorial on this so that as many people as possible can participate. Consider it my way of making this project open source in the future. Of ocurse any one who has access to Perfect re-size can help me with this and it wouldn't take much time at all. But for now I would like to wish you the best of luck with your project sl1982, and with that I will get to work.
 
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Good luck with your project as well, may I suggest that you start at the beginning of the field files still? This will at least allow all the fine folks here the chance to enjoy a whole set of updated files that much quicker.
 
sure thing, I will be starting with all the files from the first bombing mission up to when they arrive at the slums, so I can have a demo release (its only like 5 or 6 images), but after than I will start from the beginning.
 
Hmm ok, I am not sure if i am going to be running into any of those scenes, but you are free to do whatever you wish.

edit: Actually, now that I think about it I am not sure if that is the best idea for me to start at the end. Going alphabetical is very difficult to test out as the scenes are all over the damn place (distance and chronologically)

for example: i have done the materia caves, the corel train, the truck in the flashback, chocobo sage house, and something in wutai
 
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Frivol I dunno why you are resizing to 2046 but an exact 4 times resize of 512 should be 2048, just a friendly fyi.
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Thank you yarLson but I just checked the background and it is definitely 2048*2048. It was my bad anyway cos I wrote 2046*2046, going to edit the post right now.
 
well if you want to go alphabetically you could use the black chocobo save editor to make it much easier to jump around and save anywhere (just lock the save menu item in the other tab, this will force it to always be available). It's what I've been doing, if you don't want to do that, I could go from the beginning of the game, as far as the layout and you could start at the end. I would start from bombing mission, you would start from final battle. Also I have decided I am only going to release 3 maps as a demo. I have started alphabetically now.
 
I have started going chronologically. When you jump off the train to when you board the elevator in the reactor is done so far.
 
Have you guys finished this project ? Your work was looking real good in the previous posts.
 
Most probably, he did it from scratch. Of course doing them from scratch would be the best method but it would most probably never get completed
 
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