I'm about to submit images for about 20 Switch games and would like some advice to ensure quality

[Clutz450]

I have about 20 Nintendo Switch games and I just recently finished scanning both the inside and outside of the full cover as well as the front and back of the cartridge.  I am not a photo editor at all and I was wondering if someone would be able to help me with what I assume would be something very simple.  On my front an back cart scans, I don't know how to remove the blank space in the corners to turn them transparent.  It's very minor as I did my best to ensure the cart images filled as much of the screen as possible, but still I would like the quality of my submissions to be a correct as possible.  Also, if you look at my full box cover scan of Bluey, you will see that there is a small crease that can be seen in the middle of the spine that I would like to fix but again I do not know how.

Speaking of the full box scans, I did both the full outside of the box as well as the full inside of the box (what you see when you open up the case).  Obviously, I will tag the full outside box scan as "Unassigned Images --> Box Full".  But what should I tag the inside scan as?  I'm leaning towards tagging it as "Background Images --> Fanart - Background".  However, that is not entirely correct as it is an actual scan from the box and not Fanart, but in my opinion is the most "correct" based on how LaunchBox would use this image to display it.

Lastly, I also scanned any inserts that were inside of the box.  Some of them are advertisements for toys or the TV show (in the case of Bluey), and others were cards that had DLC codes on them (I was able to remove the code in Paint which looks ok but if you look closely you can tell that I removed it).  Again, these images don't really have a proper category but I am leaning towards adding them to "Box Front Images --> Advertisement Flyer - Front" and "Box Back Images --> Advertisement Flyer - Back" respectively.  

Please take a look at the scans I attached as examples of what I am talking about and if you have any advice either for or against my plans on how I plan on submitting them.  Thank you.

Edit: It turns how that me trying to attach the images errors out.  Maybe because my file sizes are too big.  I uploaded them to my Google Drive and linked to them instead.  Hopefully this works.  Thanks.  (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hFhCHhlVWnOOi9lsgxKXl1umSimcDw3m?usp=sharing)

 

 

[Thanatos_Prime]

There are some big ones, but I don't see anything too large. It usually will give an error on the submission page if it has an issue. Your cart images will need to be converted to png, even simple free programs like mspaint will do this. As you said the images need transparency on the corners. This can easily be done with Photoshop or GIMP, GIMP is free so that is often a good starting point.

Here is the procedure for creating transparency. Once you have converted them to png files, open the png file in GIMP, click the fuzzy select tool, use it to select the section in the corners and click delete. If it shows a checkboard pattern on the section you just selected and deleted then you have transparency on that corner, if it shows white then go to Layer\Transparency and choose Add Alpha Channel and click the section again and delete so you see the "transparent" checkerboard. Do this for all sections, you can also use the Rectangle Select Tool and the Free Select Tool to select sections to change to transparent.

Once you have the image as you want it, choose File, Export as and choose where you want to export to. Et voila, you have an uploadable cart front image.

-There really isn't any place for the inside of the box scans. Please don't upload them as Fanart Background, this is the image shown on the background of your monitor when you click on the game. It should be a modern monitor size image related to the game, this is a background not a place for media scans.

Hope this helps.

[Clutz450]

Thank you for your reply.  I'll give GIMP a try.  Sounds simple enough.  

Do you happen to be involved with maintaining the database?  I personally like the idea of submitting the inside box covers just for the potential that one day things may change and we will have fully reconstructed boxes that we can open.  I can kind of compare it to how we have all these front and back scans of NES, SNES, etc boxes, but no one really thought to scan the sides.  Now we have all these reconstructed 3D box arts that don't 100% match how they originally looked because some kind of template was used to create them.  So my thought was that even if LaunchBox can't use them right now, maybe we could make a more appropriate category to upload them to just so they can sit there until needed.

But aside from that, I will keep these kinds of scans to myself for now until I find a better place to upload them.  Thanks again for your help, and hopefully soon I will have the rest of my images uploaded to the database.

[sundogak]

12 hours ago, Clutz450 said:

Thank you for your reply.  I'll give GIMP a try.  Sounds simple enough.  

Do you happen to be involved with maintaining the database?  I personally like the idea of submitting the inside box covers just for the potential that one day things may change and we will have fully reconstructed boxes that we can open.  I can kind of compare it to how we have all these front and back scans of NES, SNES, etc boxes, but no one really thought to scan the sides.  Now we have all these reconstructed 3D box arts that don't 100% match how they originally looked because some kind of template was used to create them.  So my thought was that even if LaunchBox can't use them right now, maybe we could make a more appropriate category to upload them to just so they can sit there until needed.

But aside from that, I will keep these kinds of scans to myself for now until I find a better place to upload them.  Thanks again for your help, and hopefully soon I will have the rest of my images uploaded to the database.

You can upload them to as "Fanart-Box-Back".  This is where inside covers tend to be loaded (and where I place them) although not ideal as having a separate category.  You run into this for Arcade flyers as well as no "inside" page category.  The database data most part is user maintained other than the LB team determines the categories. LB team is working on addressing some of the limitations of current DB and appears they are looking at tagging to help but nothing in place at moment (separate thread on Forum).