Blurry Background?

[Ragnarak]

I've read through a lot of the tutorials and i can't find any mention of this.

I'm creating backgrounds for a game with 320x200 resolution.  However i make the backgrounds they always end up being very blurred.

I've tried making them at a higher resolution (640x400) and then once finished, resizing the image but that didn't make any difference.

I've also tried increasing the DPI when first creating the image but that sems to have made no difference either.

How exactly do you all get your images to be so sharp and crisp?

Any help or directions to tutorials (my backgrounds are meant to be 'cartoony' by the way) would be really appreciated.  I'm still searching through the massive thread of tutorials but not found anything relevant yet

[scotch]

you might be using antialiasing (which I think looks good in 320x200 anyway) or using the blur tool.. these things become more obvious at low res.
Perhaps you could post one of your backgrounds, that would make it easier to work out.

[Ragnarak]

As i've been trying to solve this problem for last few days i didn't want to start on a decent background before i'd solved it to so please excuse the crapness of the actual drawing

Gif Version at 320x150

Gif Version at 800x375

PCX Version at 320x150

PCX Version at 800x375


I uploaded Gif versions so you could see them in IE but it's the pcx versions i've tried to load into the game.  When i load in the 320x150 version, it's the right size but very blurred, if i try to load in a larger res version it's just too big and doesn't fit the screen.

Also 320x150 as i'm using one of the GUI's whihc takes up the bottom section of the screen (The FOA GUI)

[scotch]

ah ok.. I think you're referring to the fact that they are antialiased, I think personally that if you can use antialiasing well then there's no problem with it in 320x200, but I cas see why you might see is as blurry in those backgrounds.  In photoshop or PSP you can turn of antialiasing on the pencil, fill and line tools, use the pencil tool instead of the brush tool, it's not antialiased.  If you're using a vector program like flash you can turn it off in the export options.

(note that if you resize a background then it will look blurry, this is due to the filtering that is used when scaling, draw pixel art at the size it is intended for rather than resizing, and if you need to resize turn off bicubic or biliner filtering)

[Ragnarak]

I'm using photoshop.  Thanks for the help, will give it a go.

[Ragnarak]

Oh. I was under the impression it would be better to actually make it big and then resize it down small. What you're saying indicates this is incorrect, right?

Instead i'm better just making the image 320x150 but zooming in to draw it?

[scotch]

Not really incorrent, but if you want a pixelly style then it is better not to, when working with higher res antialiased images scaling down doesn't do much damage and makes them easier to paint sometimes.

[Ragnarak]

Thanks

One last thing, where in photoshop do i turn off anti-aliasingfor the pencil, etc?  I can't seem to find it

Sorry

[scotch]

Hold down the mouse on the brush tool for a second and the pencil will pop out for selection.  You can do that on all the tools that have the little triangle in the bottom right corner to select different ones.

[Ragnarak]

I can find the pencil tool, it was the anti-aliasing option i was having a problem with, there was no tickbox to turn it on or off.

Thanks, all sorted now