Need Photoshop or Paint.net help for card creation

[Ragnarök]

Hi everybody,
since my son is old enough for Hero Quest, I decided to get those old boxes of my own childhood out of the basement. I even started to create new cards (mainly old Talisman 3rd Ed. conversions for HQ, where I used the art for new HQ cards). First I downloaded some new card packs, then I decided to do them on my own, since I wanted to have the US version only cards translated into German and various German downloadable card sets have their flaws since I don't like the art (often too different from the orignal HQ art) or the card text is not to my liking (spelling errors, expressions, bad translations etc.)
Anyway I'm pretty much new to this. I can change the text on cards and exchange the pictures. I also use those downloadable card templates in order to create new cards. Both are easy tasks. But I don't know how to add a picture with different layers. For example I scanned a warhammer out of a Advanced HQ or Warhammer Quest rulebook and put it on the generic dungeon background for a new purchaseable weapon card. But the shadow is missing and the colours don't match. Would be great, if someone could help.

[Ragnarök]

And here are other cards I made, where the shadow is also missing and the colours don't match. Both are potion cards, using the orignal background as shown in the US rulebook, but put on a European style card. Would be great, if someone knows a solution for adding shadows and adjusting colours.

[lestodante]

You need to play a bit with Contrast and Saturation trying to match the same colors.
Also adjusting Highlight/Midtone/Shadow will help.

[KrautScientist]

Just speaking for Photoshop here, but whenever you paste in something new, Photoshop should really place it onto its own layer (unless you've set it up otherwise). You can then go tweak the saturation, brightness and/or colour levels, as suggested by lestodante ( seeing how you're German too, try the "Bild --> Korrekturen" tab and you should be all set. Be aware, though, that your changes will only work on the currently selected layer. You can change layer selections by looking at the layers tab). You can also add shadows or other effects to the respective layers by adding Layer-effects (to be found under the Layer tab).

Another useful tool is to use CTRL-U (or, STRG-U, in your case ) to bring up the colour levels tab. You can mess around with that as well, adding or reducing colour hues as needed. Just to get you started

P.S. Here's your second card with some tweaked colour settings, just to show you what I was referring to:



Hope this helps!

[StratosVX]

If the image is black and white and you are trying to match it up to the two colors on the cards, there is an easier way. Paste the image into photoshop on its own layer. Use the color selector to make the two active colors you are using (the foreground color and the background color) to the two colors that are used in the card. Then, go to the layers palette and select "Gradient Map". This will turn your black and white image into an image of the two colors above. Note, the order of your colors for foreground/background matter here. If the light parts of the original image turn into the reddish/brown from the card, delete the layer, switch your foreground and background colors and try again. I don't know what these would be in German, but maybe KrautScientist can tell you what they'd be.

[Ragnarök]

Thank you so much all of you for these advices! I'll try your suggestions out and post the results soon.

[Ragnarök]

Okay, I tried my best with some Photoshop help sites and your great advices: Here is a first result. I always wanted to make a purchasable dagger for a European style equipment card, since a dagger was in the armory of the US rulebook, but it never appeared in the UK or German version. Most likely it was seen as irrelevant, since equipped with a dagger one can only attack with one dice.



The shadow doesn't seem right, maybe you've got some more advices especially on creating shadows?

[DullandRusty]

if you're doing the shadow for the layer, on the right side of Photoshop if you right-click the layer you can add the shadow to the specified layer and then you can change the angle. The angle of the Shadow is off in this picture as the whole item is shadowed, but you can change what area is shadowed by changing the angle the light source.

[DullandRusty]

You can also change how diffuse it is as well as how far it extends so it's not such a harsh shadow

[lestodante]

the shadow on the dagger is reversed. You will get a better result if you mirror the dagger in vertical or if you rotate it of 180°.
The darken part of the blade is in shadow and should be on the lower side. Also the shadow is on the wrong side.