Have you made any yet? How about adding them to this thread?
Here are mine!
little hint on how to make them look alike…
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I was trying to find images with a beige, brown orange background, ideally fire-ish
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use an overlay effect blending technique
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save your template file with the font centered and centered typing, this way it always spreads out the same way (easier for the eyes)
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use a 3 pixel “glow shaddow” in black
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the font has a plastic effect, can be achieved with emboss effect as well.
I’ve done a few but if you have been following DeVicious main Black Mamba thread you will have seen I have been having problems displaying them correctly on the hub. I’ll put them up here anyway so you can see if you have more luck. Also I’ll put the .psd files too to see if you can save them in the correct format for them to display correctly. If you do, I’d be very grateful if you can let me have a copy too 
jpg files:
.png files:
The PSD files are here: http://www.mediafire.com/?t5g77y9kasmouav,s8eyperdkyr8zzj,ax2odk2yb7zzz7h,sy97m3a3jcymysx,9gdizcrj8eepmgx,7o9dmkluascexox,cbh8onj0l22jawd,ko1oy491ex14bns
I’ve noticed quite a few people have downloaded my set of covers so I am wondering if you are getting the same poor display that I have been experiencing? I really want to know if I am the only one having this issue on the hub.
Also, if you are wondering why I have redone the same genres that DeVicious have done, I must say it is not to disrespect DeVi’s exceelent work. Her theme and committment is unparalled. The only reason is simply, she has used “The Incredibles” for her ‘Kids’ genre while I have put that movie under ‘Animation’, “Batman” for ‘Fantasy’ where I have put that movie under ‘Comic Book’ and “I am Legend” for ‘Thriller’ whereas I have that under ‘Sci-Fi’ etc. So it’s just me being pedantic. Otherwise there would be no reason for me to substitute her excellent creations.
yes mine look like [Deleted] so do yours and hers dont look as bad as our but they do not look like they do when you view them as picture files. When viewed as a pic on the hub they all look great. I do not understand how to make mine look as smooth as Dev’s. I use Paint Shop Pro 9.
flhthemi wrote:
yes mine look like [Deleted] so do yours and hers dont look as bad as our but they do not look like they do when you view them as picture files. When viewed as a pic on the hub they all look great. I do not understand how to make mine look as smooth as Dev’s. I use Paint Shop Pro 9.
Edited again for words that described how badly our covers look ONLY on WDs box. I was being humorus and the mod took them in the wrong context. Im soooo disturbed by this that I just wont post anymore.
flhthemi
Paintshop Pro is a proper program
the biggest difference between your thumbs and my thumbs is that you were using small images while I am using one large one and blend it with the background. My selection of source images follow a particular color pattern that will change the background color and your background stays grey. Google images like fire or explosion and you will find a color apporpriate background image, merge this image with the background with an “overlay” blending technique
(double click the object layer from your layer tab find the drop down box that says “merge” and select overlay, soft light or screen)
after than you might need to ajust the blending of your current images…
All I can suggest is to use basic visual info, the more images you pack into it the harder for your eye.
Another hint i can give you is when you make collages of different people it is so easy to make to wrong, it is a very hard task to do. There are so many aspects that will disturb your eye based on the way it was educated to see.
There is lighting, colors, size, cropping… in the western thumb you cut this poor gringo in half, based on the saturation he is the dominant element your eye will catch first on your TV…
Your best image is the one with John Wayne on your 2nd western thumb, if there was an appropriate background it would look like mine except for the font…
You are using an outline on the font, it makes the font look thinner and you are using the wrong font, you need the one provided in my templates. Try a 2 pixel glow shaddow surrounding the font instead of an outline.
Since you are using paint shop pro you should have a plastic effect under the texture effects or emboss under 3d effects, try to play with that as well.
As I said before, the JPEGs I create all look fine on the PC but when displayed on the WDTV they somehow get all grainy and look horrible. Today I was using Thumbgen to process some TV episodes when it occured to me that if Thumbgen can use any cover and generate a perfectly good looking JPEG for the WDTV to display then I can use Thumbgen to process the genre covers that I have created into JPEGs that my WDTV will display correctly. So what I did was run Thumbgen, choose the WDTVLive Moviesheet template, process a random movie file, tick “Generate Thumbnail” and untick all the other options. Then I chose the genre cover that I wanted to process and voila I have a genre cover that looks perfectly good on the WDTV. Of course the file was named after the movie file so I just needed to change that. A bit of a longwinded way of solving the issue but until I can figure out why I cannot save my covers into an acceptable format it will have to suffice 
I want to have all my thumbnails at width 300 x height 450 with the logo sheet (blueray,dvd etc.) how would I go about adjusting this in the xml file so that when I use thumbgen. and save the thumbnail it will output at the size needed, the thumbnail at the moment is output at 240 x 360 and at closer examination on my TV looks really pixelated. I am using the SMP and love this theme and moviesheets, I just need the thumbnails to look better, hope you can help. Thanks
bluemaul69 wrote:
I want to have all my thumbnails at width 300 x height 450 with the logo sheet (blueray,dvd etc.) how would I go about adjusting this in the xml file so that when I use thumbgen. and save the thumbnail it will output at the size needed, the thumbnail at the moment is output at 240 x 360 and at closer examination on my TV looks really pixelated. I am using the SMP and love this theme and moviesheets, I just need the thumbnails to look better, hope you can help. Thanks
that’s not working you cannot upscale the source material, the quality would get worse.
i am very picky when it comes to quality and I have a high end 55" TV and i see no pixelation whatsoever except in the upscaled list view.
Are you using by any chance an older firmware version? There been several firmware releases last year that were compressing the thumbnails heavily.
I am using firmware 1.06.04 on the SMP. The reason I ask is I managed to download a thumbs demo and the image sizes were 300x450, the quality was a lot sharper on the TV. Quality is the a must for me too as I want the best from my collection. I am not wanting to upscale any images as I always find a high quality cover and downscale, although I am unsure how to change the XML file to show the image with the bluray logo at the higher quality thumbnail size to keep the format of the media player the same.
Thank You
we can do this for 1 year if you want but the answer is the same :smileyvery-happy:
You cannot upscale the source material for that matter you cannot use these thumbnails in higher resolution you need to make your own covers. The demo you’ve downloaded was obviously not from the Black Mamba Series. Your last sentence I don’t understand, sorry… i don’t know which media player you are talking about and which corresponding xml file this is supposed to be. Please try to explain that more precisely.
