Transparent Arcade Cabinets > Calling an Army of Photoshoppers

[Mr. RetroLust]

I recently launched a theme which uses transparent arcade cabinets as a showcase how it could look, see: 

If you like to join for a future project to make all arcade cabinet images transparent and swap existing low res images to the highest resolution images/photos of cabs available, please let us know or if you know someone who might want to join this project please tag him/her. I'll tag some people below whom might be able to help or connect us with others. I am still relatively new in this community so I don't know whom to tag really.
This could benefit all themes and creativity itself for the community as a whole. Since I'm still working on other projects I can't guarantee at the moment when I can join in but maybe you guys already want to start with ideas, structure and such. Let's start from here as I have no idea yet to start such a project, hopefully someone is willing to take the lead in this.

@goofers @jvlk @Retro808 @neil9000 @DOS76 @Jason Carr @Dan @FRETW1ZARD @Kondorito @Orionsangel @Styphelus @harryoke @Lordmonkus @Omen @MadK9 @dragon57 @Riffman81 @CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT @kmoney @letstalkaboutdune @ea4492 @alnyden @deathr0w @Shinryu @damageinc86 @RetroKenesis @Sub-Zero @fire10 

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This has continued over here: 

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Mr. RetroLust

[Orionsangel]

Nice job! Very well done!

[jvlk]

I'm in as I told you, best way is to divide workload between the people who want to help.

I'm not sure where we can get the best images for the arcade cabinets, best quess would be the extra's from the mame releases I think.

[Mr. RetroLust]

3 minutes ago, jvlk said:

I'm in as I told you, best way is to divide workload between the people who want to help.

I'm not sure where we can get the best images for the arcade cabinets, best quess would be the extra's from the mame releases I think.

Great man! Yeah I guess per system/playlist classics perhaps? Most succes I've had in finding high res cab photos was by using Google Images and it's tools, you can search with the option to display pixel sizes and upping the results to only see images from a certain resolution.

[Retrofrogg]

Maybe go out to arcades and take some pics ourselves

[Mr. RetroLust]

3 minutes ago, Dan said:

Maybe go out to arcades and take some pics ourselves

I do made a few not long ago in an arcade here, but they are newer systems (around 2006-2012) like OutRun 2 and such which i'm not sure yet if they can be emulated, but i'll post em soon maybe they can be used.

[Mr.Laor]

I might have time to do a playlist. If anyone takes the reigns on the project, just let me know

[Kondorito]

Great idea @Mr. RetroLust.

I am currently in the middle of a project (UHD NES carts) but as soon as I finish I am willing to give a hand here.

The only full set of arcade pics I know is the one from progettosnaps, but they all have black or white bg, and most of the images are LQ-MQ. 

I think the best workflow might be to have a shared Google doc with restricted editing capabilities with all the mame parents listed so creators can tag themselves on the working ones and nobody overlaps. 

[goofers]

Great stuff Kondorito

[damageinc86]

Hard to take pics of them at an arcade, because you really need them to be by themselves, isolated.  If it's a working arcade, they'll usually be too close to other machines for that.

[harryoke]

hope this helps you.

smart object .psd for you all to use

has lots of nice lighting & effects options to rebuild cabinets back to their former glory.

 

arcade_cab.zip

[Mr. RetroLust]

16 minutes ago, harryoke said:

hope this helps you.

smart object .psd for you all to use

has lots of nice lighting & effects options to rebuild cabinets back to their former glory.

 

arcade_cab.zip

Thanks bro that'll come in handy for those cabs that don't have quality photos available or any at all.

Here's an idea @Kondorito for a setup to make it as easy as possisble:

1. The group downloads the cabinets pack including the updates at: http://www.progettosnaps.net/cabinets/

2. On the top of this thread I'll maintain a list from #, a, b,c, to z with a name behind a letter which is picked by a person and the status: finished/work in progress/asked for help

3. As soon as one finishes a letter he'll upload the cabs to the downloads section in a package naming it: "Arcade Cabinets package letter (Insert letter here)", if possible also uploads it's content to the database, if this is a problem for the person he'll mention it so someone else can upload them.

4. Maybe also handy if someone mentions if he wants to do quantity or quality, meaning he only has time to do the progettosnaps or also has gone through google images searching for the highest quality cab images available.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Mr. RetroLust

[Kondorito]

I like the idea. So, progettosnaps content/parents is what is taken into account. 

Something important, there needs to be guidelines on how to work each image, so a standard can be established (min. resolution, no magic wand to remove bg as the borders will get unwanted sharp/noise, etc.). What do you think? Sorry my OCD kicks in and kills all the fun XD. 

[Mr. RetroLust]

7 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

I like the idea. So, progettosnaps content/parents is what is taken into account. 

Something important, there needs to be guidelines on how to work each image, so a standard can be established (min. resolution, no magic wand to remove bg as the borders will get unwanted sharp/noise, etc.). What do you think? Sorry my OCD kicks in and kills all the fun XD. 

I completely agree although my english is not that good to explain myself technically like that, it's complicated. Would you mind to write those? Basically a minimal resolution wouldn't be wise I think, as I rather have low res than no image at all, example is the 1941 cab in the theme package, it's low res but I do like it still for some reason. 

[harryoke]

dont know what your thoughts on vectorizing them is?

before:

after: vectored with background removed

[Kondorito]

Ok, just thought on these; use them if you feel they will add to the project:

• Do your best to eliminate jaggies and ensure all cuts are clean. Using the magic wand in low res images will most likely get you very rough cuts, so using either the pen tool or the polygonal lasso tool is the way to go.
• Images should be submitted as pngs with just the cabinet on an alpha layer w/o any background, shadow, glow, or extra information.
• Before uploading, check that the image name is identical to its parent rom name (case sensitive).

Tip: after cutting your image, place it in both white bg and black bg; by doing this you will be able to check if there are unwanted pixels that you would not notice otherwise.

[Kondorito]

12 minutes ago, harryoke said:

dont know what your thoughts on vectorizing them is?

 

I love vectorizing 2d images. 3d/real pics, not so much, as you cannot get gradients right and the overall image looks like clay/watered. 

[Mr. RetroLust]

Awesome @Kondorito! I'd like to add: Use .png 24-bit not 256 colors. (loss of quality)

@harryoke It's not bad at all although is there a possibility to use the vectorized alpha channel but to use the original image? The only thing about vectorized I personally don't like are the loss of color gradients and loss of detail.

[RetroKenesis]

@Mr. RetroLust It all sounds awesome! Been pretty damn busy as of late but, let me know what you need and i'll do my best to do what I can!

[FRETW1ZARD]

Hi everyone I'm glad this project is kicking off. I have a question though: where would we have to upload these images/ who do we need to speak to in order to get them adopted as official meta data? In other words, how do we make it so that launchbox can automatically download these images for the users who want to use them?