Clean Cabinet Images

[drventure]

Ok, probably everyone knows about Mr Do's cabinet images, and Progrettos collection is also very nice.

BUT...

As far as I can tell, the images look like they've been cobbled together from a myriad of different sources, some very low res, some decent res, etc.

However, one thing that's bugged me for a while is that they are not, as far as I can tell, chroma keyed for a front end like Mala.

Mala expects the bottom left (or is it right) pixel to be the color that is used for transparency. So Mala uses a Keyed transparency system. Not great, but it can be OK.

However, none of the cabinet images on those sites are set up that way.

I sent emails to both about whether source photoshop files or some other format was available, but no response.

I'm guessing there's no definitive "source" set anyway.

So I figured I'll build one.

Hmm, 3300+ images. Ok then.

First step was to get rid of any pure black in all the images and replace it with "near black".

Using ImageMajik that was simple.

Next, I just have to crop out all the backgrounds and then replace it back with pure black (0,0,0 RGB), making sure the bottom two corner pixels are always set to pure black.
My plan is to actually create Photoshop files with the cropped cabinet image saved as a separate layer, so that later, if it makes sense, I can "blend" the edges of the cabinet to produce a better, antialias'd image for those frontends that support alpha channels. But for now, Mala doesn't, so I'm not going to take it that far.

Before I get too much further into this, I thought I'd just throw this out and ask if anyone knows whether this has already been attempted/done? No reason to reinvent the wheel.

[marioxb]

That sounds pretty awesome to me. I haven't seen anything like this before.

[drventure]

Hey, thanks for the comment.

I was kind of wondering, with no one commenting, if this had been done and I just wasn't looking in the right places.

I posted a comment over on EMUMOVIES for Circo to see if his Cab images has been cleaned up, but no response yet.

I didn't see any comments one way or the other, doing a few searches of the board there, so I'm guessing his set is likely very similar to Progetto's set.

[drventure]

Well, interestingly, I never got a reply from Circo or the guy that oversees progretto snaps.

Not sure what to make of that but, no big deal.

It took about 6 weeks, but they're all finally done. Right at 3400 cabinet images. Ugh. But they look so much better using Mala's transparency ability. No black boxes. No weird, totally messed up images because there are alpha channel pixels in them. and every one has the bottom left and right pixel set to pure black, as is every element of the image that's supposed to be transparent. Any black in the original is now, almost, but not quite black. Visually, though, you can't tell a difference.

I'm thinking I might run the lot through PNGOUT to recompress them. Rough tests show about a 10% improvement over the raw images I started out with.

The Fireworks PNGs that I've ended up with are over twice as big, mainly because each cabinet is stored internally as a properly clipped object, but then it's also rendered to the final PNG bits that most programs actually see.

I'm going to keep those PNGs around, mainly because I suspect I'll want to convert them over to PSD files en masse for some additional alterations eventually.

At almost 2.4 gig, that collection is way too big for me to host publicly. Not sure what I'll do next with them, but at least they're all nice and consistent now.

[Le Chuck]

Holy balls, that's a huge amount of space for machine images.  Any chances of a DVD burn for those interested in benefiting from all your hard work (this guy)?  I can send a black zip stick with prepaid return postage or can pay burning and shipping fees if you're interested.  BTW the results look really sharp.  Well done.

[yotsuya]

Holy balls, that's a huge amount of space for machine images.  Any chances of a DVD burn for those interested in benefiting from all your hard work (this guy)?  I can send a black zip stick with prepaid return postage or can pay burning and shipping fees if you're interested.  BTW the results look really sharp.  Well done.

Seconded.

[drventure]

Holy balls, that's a huge amount of space for machine images.

True, but keep in mind the 2.4gb is for the Fireworks PNG versions, which essentially have the entire image doubled. I'm running the set through PNGOUT (a png compressor) right now, and it's looking like I might get about 5-10% less than the size of the original set. I'm guessing the original set was probably run through a compressor as well.

I can send a black zip stick with prepaid return postage or can pay burning and shipping fees if you're interested.  BTW the results look really sharp.  Well done.

which would you want, the final PNGs or the Fireworks version? You'd likely only want the Fireworks version if you planned on further processing them (like adding a fading transparency glow or something, which looks A LOT better than chromakeyed transparency, but doesn't work in Mala.)

But sure, shoot me a usb stick with return postage and I'll make a copy for you. PM me if you're interested.

The only thing I'd ask is, if you notice any that don't look great, let me know so I can fix it. I call myself pretty thorough (there were even some pics where there was clearly a guy standing at the machine, but he'd been blacked out, so I removed the blackout, and replicated the blacked out parts back into the picture. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of those!)

[drventure]

One more note

I have not put +near+ the effort of categorizing, sorting, filtering by Mame version, etc. that Progretto, Mr Do, and Circo have put into things.

I essentially grabbed every cabinet image I could find, dumped them all into a folder, when there were dupes, I checked the content to see if they were different (none were), and then started in.

So that 950mb figure is for all cab images for all versions of mame that I could find all lumped together.

I believe CLRMamePro could help resolve and filter to specific versions of mame, but I've just never gotten the hang of that app, and plus, a gig isn't that must cost to spare me the headache 

[Le Chuck]

Thanks!  The zip stick will probably not be black (it could be) but it will definitely be blank.  I lurve autocorrect. 

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