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I want to print out images from the Bestiary to show my players what they are encountering during the game. I have used copy/paste into a word document, but it fills in the background of the image with black. I do not want to purchase any expensive software to do this for me. Any advice how to extract the image with a blank or white background that is suitable for printing?
I use GIMP (link) all the time. It's free and you can do a lot of things with it :).
I have done that sometimes (new players, didn't want to carry Bestiary 1-2 around). Depending on the quality you want, you can get something useful in a few seconds.
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I used GIMP 2 weeks ago, to extract the picture of the Belker.
I imported it into GIMP, but it didn't get imported as layers, like I expected.
I turned the border transparent (a fiddly job, given the wispy nature of the creature), then saved it as a jpeg. This did the job the OP was asking for, to act as a handout.
Unfortunately, when trying to import it into the Gnome Stew Standee template, it showed the black background, where the transparency showed through. Any ideas?
I used GIMP 2 weeks ago, to extract the picture of the Belker.
I imported it into GIMP, but it didn't get imported as layers, like I expected.
I turned the border transparent (a fiddly job, given the wispy nature of the creature), then saved it as a jpeg. This did the job the OP was asking for, to act as a handout.Unfortunately, when trying to import it into the Gnome Stew Standee template, it showed the black background, where the transparency showed through. Any ideas?
Humm... maybe you didn't add the Alpha channel on the imported layer? It's the only thing I can think of :/.
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I want to print out images from the Bestiary to show my players what they are encountering during the game. I have used copy/paste into a word document, but it fills in the background of the image with black. I do not want to purchase any expensive software to do this for me. Any advice how to extract the image with a blank or white background that is suitable for printing?
In my profile is a link to a free PDF image extracter... you tell it what pages, and it makes a folder of all the images as jpegs. No black background
Maybe they'll put some of the images into a community use package someday.
For the time being, I know it's not the BESTIARY art, but WotC put the 3.x Monster Manual art into free use. You can find it easily at the d20 SRD Monsters Index. When you click on a monster, the entry has an "eye" icon next to the monster's name. When you click on that "eye," you get a picture of the monster. Of course, this doesn't help for monsters unique to the Bestiary, but it's something.
Mild Derail
Just a crazy old coot's copyright warning. Liberating anything from your pdf's exposes you a bit. I know personal use and generating something for your players to see on game-day is a generally acceptable gray area....just be careful when treading those waters.
"You kids git awf maw lawn"
/Mild Derail
Chief Technical Officer
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I want to print out images from the Bestiary to show my players what they are encountering during the game. I have used copy/paste into a word document, but it fills in the background of the image with black. I do not want to purchase any expensive software to do this for me. Any advice how to extract the image with a blank or white background that is suitable for printing?
The part you're seeing as black is what's called an "alpha channel," which is used (among other things) for transparency. When you go from software or file formats that use alpha channels and transparency to software or file formats that don't, something along the way will decide how to convert it (depending on your configuration, it's probably either the OS itself or the application you're pasting into).
So you have a couple of choices.
First, you could try to find some software that lets you control how that transition is handled. That probably means some kind of image editing software.
Second, you could try to paste the image into a different application—ideally one that understands alpha channels and transparency, or at least one that defaults to white instead of black.
For specific advice, I can only tell you what I use; Graphic Converter for OS X. It has a function called "Flatten Alpha Channel," which sets the background to whatever color you have currently selected as the background color in your toolbox and then permanently renders the image against that color.