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Problem in Player View

B

bobloblah

Member
I've just discovered a strange problem. I have a Smart Image of a map I am using, and I have revealed some of the Reveal Mask on the map, then saved and shared the map in the Player View. However, when I view the Smart Image in Player View, the revealed portion is wildly different than if I view the actual map and Show Reveal Mask. See the images below. It almost looks as if the Player View has scaled the image very differently under the mask. Has anyone else seen this?
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For reference, I'm running Realm Works pass 409, and have made no adjustments to thumbnails, but this image was loaded and revealed after the update.
 
For what it is worth: No, I haven't experienced that. I use the feature regularly (not every time we play, but still) and it has behaved as expected.

I think that I haven't used it since the 209 update - so I will just be off and try it in my test realm.

Yep, seems to work as expected in my test realm.

I think you should submit a bug report.
 
Is the image you brought in a JPG image? Is it a grayscale JPG image? There is something screwy with grayscale JPG images that cause the scaling to be off. This can be corrected by switching to a full color JPG or you can switch to a PNG image. In this thread Smart Image Question, someone had a similar issue and it ended up with their particular source image, it would be smaller if converted to PNG rather than using JPG.
 
I have not had that issue, but have run into an issue where I would display a map in player view and it just would not show the map. I double and triple checked that I revealed everything that needed to be revealed but it just wouldn't display. I have never, however, run into your issue where it was revealing areas other than what you selected to reveal. That would be a bigger problem for me. It is one thing to not be able to display a map, but quite another to display something before the players should know about it.
 
davidp said:
Is the image you brought in a JPG image? Is it a grayscale JPG image? There is something screwy with grayscale JPG images that cause the scaling to be off. This can be corrected by switching to a full color JPG or you can switch to a PNG image. In this thread Smart Image Question, someone had a similar issue and it ended up with their particular source image, it would be smaller if converted to PNG rather than using JPG.
Click to expand...

Ah! That is probably what is going on with the images I was having an issue with. Looks like they may be grayscale jpeg, though I have no way of verifying this because I can't determine the image properties of images in RW.

If is use the Adobe Acrobat snapshot tool and then use the "paste from clipboard" option in RW to add a smart map, what format will that image be brought in as? Is it dependent upon the PDF? It is very convenient to add maps this way from PDF documents, but based on your post, it seems like it would be safer to first past into MS Paint and save as a PNG file.
 
Poking around, Acrobat 10 always offers Windows Bitmaps (BMP/DIB) on the clipboard when you use the snapshot tool or when you select a bitmap graphic and copy/paste it. What Realm Works does with that is up to it.

If you want control over the format, then yes, you should bring the image into a bitmap editor first and save it with the settings you like. (I prefer paint.net to Paint, but whatever works.)

You might also find that saving the image or saving the page as an image might be better starting points, if your PDF and/or PDF software allows.
 
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Thanks Parody. I have Adobe Acrobat X Pro so I can save pdf pages to individual TIFFs, JPGs, etc. But then I often have to further edit in a graphic editor, such as crop everything outside of the map. The snapshot tool is just so darn convenient. Drag a rectangle over the areas you want, it is automatically put into the clipboard, then go to RW and paste from clipboard. Soooo easy. But it is likely the cause of my issues with the maps in question. The PDF itself is in grayscale.

Anyway, my next best option is to use Skitch, which allows me to do the same thing with any part of my computer screen and save as a PNG. A few more clicks to load an image from a file than from the clickboard, but I can live with it.
 
The difference is control, mostly over resolution but also added content. The snapshot tool's default settings, the Snipping Tool, the standard Windows screenshot tool, presumably Skitch*, etc. all create a bitmap of "exactly what's showing on the screen", which may not be what you want when the PDF has higher-resolution graphics and/or text overlaying the graphic.

For DPI you can change the settings to force a higher but fixed resolution for the snapshot tool, if you don't want the overlaid text you'll need to extract the graphic separately, and so on. It depends on your needs and the sorts of PDFs with which you work.

I use graphics more outside of Realm Works than inside it, so any graphic I'm extracting from a PDF goes to the bitmap editor before being imported in Realm Works from a file. I'm just used to working that way.


* I'm assuming you mean the canceled Evernote add-on/separate application/something? I'm not familiar with this one.
 
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Parody said:
The difference is control, mostly over resolution but also added content. The snapshot tool's default settings, the Snipping Tool, the standard Windows screenshot tool, presumably Skitch*, etc. all create a bitmap of "exactly what's showing on the screen", which may not be what you want when the PDF has higher-resolution graphics and/or text overlaying the graphic.
Click to expand...

Understood, but rarely has taking screen shot been an issue. Copying from Acrobat and insterting into RW from clipboard is much more convenient than going through a separate image editor. It has only been an issue with images from one PDF.

* I'm assuming you mean the canceled Evernote add-on/separate application/something? I'm not familiar with this one.
Click to expand...

Yes, Evernote Skitch: https://evernote.com/skitch/

I didn't know it was cancelled. Where did you read that? Nothing on the website indicates that. Evernote has its own snipping capability. My PrtSc button is now a hotkey to take a screen shot with EN. What is nice with skitch though is that I can quickly save to an image file without having have it saved in Evernote. It also has some nice, simple markup features.
 
MNBlockHead said:
Understood, but rarely has taking screen shot been an issue. Copying from Acrobat and insterting into RW from clipboard is much more convenient than going through a separate image editor. It has only been an issue with images from one PDF.
Click to expand...
As long as you're happy with the results, then great! The PDFs I've been using can do better than 72 DPI at the largest I can make the window, though. (Edit: Not always, as I have good monitors on my main computer, but still easier than making a giant window and zooming way in on one image.)

There's also taking maps out without the location markers so I can use them for players.

MNBlockHead said:
I didn't know it was cancelled. Where did you read that?
Click to expand...
I typed Skitch into Google and articles about it were on the first page, including this blog post on Evernote's website. I guess it's still going on the Mac so it's only "mostly canceled", but we're pretty Windows-oriented around here.

MNBlockHead said:
What is nice with skitch though is that I can quickly save to an image file without having have it saved in Evernote. It also has some nice, simple markup features.
Click to expand...
I used to use a fancy screenshot program with all sorts of control over the results back when I wrote video game reviews, but I just don't need that stuff anymore.
 
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