Eifion Herbert Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 If you're like me you like having an image of your model with the model memory on the Taranis, and not just the generic picture of a glider for your Radian, or a generic sports plane for your Wot 4, but an actual Radian or Wot 4. Well the Taranis comes with a whole bunch of them, but obviously not every model in the world can be catered for, so you might have to make your own. Surprisingly it didn't come with an image for a Wot4, odd considering how popular the type is, so I set about making my own. Looking at the included images I saw they were in .BMP format, 64 x 32 pixels in size and 4 bit colour depth. From my playing around you can copy whatever you like into the SD card, but Taranis will only display the image if it meets these three criteria, BMP format, 64 x 32 size and 4-bit depth. Format and size are pretty easy to deal with, in pretty much any image editor, but 4-bit depth not so much. Now if you have Photoshop then have at it, however if you are using something like Picasa or Pixlr then it stubbornly saves BMPs as 8 or even 24 bit depth (and Picasa won't even let you set the pixel dimensions). What you need is Gimp. You might be reluctant to google for that, but trust me it stands for "GNU Image Manipulation Program". (GNU itself is a recursive acronym - were not going there) It is a free (as in speech and beer) image editor and can be downloaded for zero pennies here: http://www.gimp.org/ Gimp is not easy to use - actually that's a little unfair, it's not hard, it's just not very intuitive, especially if you are used to a certain other image editor from Adobe. It is very powerful, and the only one I found that would give the options needed for setting colour bit depth without spending out £££ but finding the right bit you need can take a while. The parts you need are all in the Image menu. First go to Image -> Scale image and set the size to 64 by 32 pixels. You may need to click the little chain icon if your start image isn't quite the right proportion. Ignore the pixels / inch resolution bit - doesn't matter a jot - and leave the interpolation as Cubic. This will make it look as best as it can given you're shrinking an image that is several hundred pixels in width (if like me you just googled for a nice product image on a pure white background and stole it) to 64 wide - and consequently throwing a lot of information away. Hit the scale button and let Gimp do its thing. Your image is now a small, blocky postage stamp sized shadow of the original. This is what we want. Next go to Image -> Mode -Greyscale, which will unsurprisingly convert your image to greyscale. Finally go to Image -> Mode -> Indexed, and set the "Maximum number of colours"16 and hit convert. You're now ready to export your image. Don't hit save, that will only let you save it in Gimp's native format. What you need is File -> Export. Expand the Select File Type options, and scroll down to choose Windows BMP image. Choose a location for your file, give it a name and press Export. If you then copy this file to the BMP folder in your Taranis' SD card it will be selectable as a model image, and if all has gone well will be displayed on the screen. Here's the one I made for my Wot 4 Foamy if anyone is interested. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vdmt97vkkeomtm0/wot4.bmp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Nice work Eifion. I wasn't aware of Gimp - looks just the ticket for this job. BEB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Green Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 Paintshop Pro saves 4-bit bmp files too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C Norton Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I find Irfanview very easy to use for this and most other photo editing, perhaps a bit more straightforward than GIMP and runs very quickly under Windows and WINE in Linux. Worth a look. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Bott - Moderator Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I use PSP too Phil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biggles' Elder Brother - Moderator Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 I don't have PSP so this is really handy. Just tried it - works great! One "proper" Chipmunk photo coming up! (Taranis only seems to have the Super Chipmunk) BEB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Green Posted May 31, 2014 Share Posted May 31, 2014 The Jasc versions of PSP are free I think, certainly you can download it from any reputable download site. Some years ago Jasc were eaten up by Coral who changed it significantly and dont support the older versions. Mine is 7.02 so quite old. Cheers Phil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eifion Herbert Posted May 31, 2014 Author Share Posted May 31, 2014 Ah good old Irfanview - totally forgot about that one, yes much much simpler than GIMP. Edited By Eifion Herbert on 31/05/2014 21:47:48 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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