New TV logos for Dutch TV

[csberto]

Je bent fantastisch!! Sorry: You are fantastic!!
Logos preview TV and InfoTV are exactly the same. Is that correct?

[CHli]

Originally Posted by akie43

Thanks.... but your logo's are larger! My logos are 50x46 pixels, yours are 114x112. Why is that? I took a screenshot of the TV Guide, and those logo's are only 50x46....

Is there another place where these logo's are used?

+Using higher resolution logos will give better quality on HDTV skins etc.
+They are used in other places in bigger size : E.G in the recorder shows screen, the TV-OSD, etc.
+The logos size doesn't have to be small since they are resized when beeing drawn by mp a skinner could should to display the logo way bigger if he wants.

[akie43]

Originally Posted by CHli

+Using higher resolution logos will give better quality on HDTV skins etc.
+They are used in other places in bigger size : E.G in the recorder shows screen, the TV-OSD, etc.
+The logos size doesn't have to be small since they are resized when beeing drawn by mp a skinner could should to display the logo way bigger if he wants.

Good points there. Too bad I didn't think of that before

Anyway, would you mind linking to this thread from the post in your signature?

[chucky69]

Hi akie43,

Perfect work!

Could you give us an explanation on how you created the logo's?
Others are then able to help to get other logo's in the same quality.
(I've a lot of digital channels, and others too)

Maybe it would be nice later on that we could setup a sort of a database inside MP's website to download each logo whatever someone needs.

[akie43]

Originally Posted by chucky69

Could you give us an explanation on how you created the logo's?

Why, sure!

1. Start your favorite image editor. For this tutorial, I will use Adobe Photoshop.

2. Use Google Images and look for a reasonably clean and large version of the logo. Other good image sources are Wikipedia (search for the channel name) and Satlogo Media. Images like this are preferred to images that look like this. Ideally, your logo should be at least 150x150 pixels and have an even background-color.

3. Save this image to your computer, and open it in your image editor.

4. The image is now opened in Photoshop, but it is not a Photoshop document. Usually, it is a GIF or JPG file. We need to fix that. Select the window that contains your image, press CTRL-A, then press CTRL-C. Now create a new Photoshop document by pressing CTRL-N, and ENTER. Finally, press CTRL-V to paste the logo into this new document.

5. You now have an open Photoshop document, of the right size, that contains your logo. Good job!

6. In the 'Layers' popup (press F7 if you don't see it), right click the "Background" layer. Select "Delete layer". Press "Yes".

7. Now, we will remove the background of the logo. Why? Because logos with a background look bad in MediaPortal. So, let's get rid of it. Click on the "magic wand" tool, and then click on the background that you want to remove. Since (in our ideal world ) we have an even background-color, this instantly selects every part of the logo that we want to remove. Then, press 'DELETE' to remove it. If this doesn't work, then you need to figure out another way to select and delete all excess pixels.

8. If all's well, the deleted parts of your logo have been replaced by a checker-pattern. This is ok - that means this part of the logo is transparent. If you see no change, then make sure you have deleted the "Background" layer (step 6).

9. Now, select 'Trim' from the 'Image' menu. Check "Transparent pixels", and check every box in the "Trim away" section. Then, press OK.

Alternatively, click the document window, press CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-N, ENTER, and CTRL-V. Then, delete the "Background" layer (step 6). The goal is to create a Photoshop document of the minimum size necessary to just fit the logo.

10. Select "Image size" from the "Image" menu. Make sure the option "Constrain proportions" is checked. We want to scale the image to fit within 114x112 pixels. To achieve this, enter "114" and "pixels" in the "width" column. Press "OK" if the height changes to a number smaller than (or equal to) 112. If the new height is more than 112 pixels, then change it to 112 and press "OK".

11. Finally (finally!) we need to make sure the final document is exactly 114x112 pixels. Choose "Canvas size" from the "Image" menu. Choose "114 pixels" as the new width, and "112 pixels" as the new height. In the "Anchor" field, click the middle square. Then, click OK.

12. Now, we can save the document. Choose "Save as" from the "File" menu. Then choose "PNG" from the "Format" option. Finally, choose a location and a filename. The filename should be equal to the channel's name as it is used in your TV guide.

13. You're done! Make sure to test it in MediaPortal. To do this, place it in the "C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\TV\Logos" directory. Start MediaPortal, and fire up the TV guide. See if it looks alright. If it doesn't (for example, you see "jaggies" your logo), then go back to Photoshop and try to fix it.

14. Proceed to step 1

All this might seem like a lot of work, but in ideal situations all this can be done in under a minute - given enough experience, that is Usually though, it will take some more work to clean up the image. Hope this helps

[chucky69]

Thanks Akie43,

With your explanation a lot of people can create nice logo's for MP.

Later this week I want to test it out.

>Vele handen maken licht werk<

[RutgerDB]

I just installed photoshop and will make a contribution too! Great work.

Does this also work with digital TV? Is the placement of the logo's the same?

[akie43]

Hi Rutger,

sorry for the late reply

I don't know if these logos work with digital TV. I suspect they do, but honestly - I don't know! If you have managed to get these logos working with digital tv, then please post your reply in this thread.

If you have created some logos that you would like to see added to this package, then please send me a private message.

[RutgerDB]

Hi Akie,

The logo's work perfectly with digital TV. Only a couple have to be renamed for the complete package to function. I think it would be a brilliant idea to develop a package that contains all Dutch logo's. If all Dutch MP users would contribute a couple of logo's we're done within a week probably ;-)

As I said, I'm going to make logo's for my Digital setup (That has Motors TV, Fashion TV, MTV2 and MTV Base etc).

Throw 'm in one big package, you do the collecting of the images and when done we can make it available for download.

[akie43]

Hi Rutger,

I am looking forward to your contribution! But I guess things have stalled a little bit with the excellent weather of the previous couple of days

Just send them when you have 'em, and I'll add them to the package. Thanks in advance!