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making your own tokens

So I have photoshop cs5 and wanted to make my own tokens. The photoshop pics I have already seem to work fine, but I was wondering if there were little things I could do to make them better. For instance should they be a certain size to help in my total allowance of pics. Etc.
Depends on what you need in the token. If it has transparency you need .png which will be a bigger size then .jpg. Remember that the default pixel to 5 ft ratio is 70px. So for standard PC and NPC tokens use a 70x70px format. This will also help minimize your size constraints. Always size your work for roll20. Making a 140x140 tile will be a double tile. Roll20 will auto size things to the map based on pixel size...
June 07 (10 years ago)
Gid
Roll20 Team
Actually, you're probably best off following the marketplace wiki guide for image specs - https://wiki.roll20.net/Creating_Marketplace_Assets
Pretty much the same thing I just told him.
June 07 (10 years ago)
Gid
Roll20 Team
Not quite, we recommend tokens be 280 x 280 pixels. With that size if you need to zoom in or increase the token's size due to spells or effects that increase it's size, it won't become pixelated.

But that's just a guideline. You don't have to make them that large if you're just doing a casual convert.
June 08 (10 years ago)
your recommendation also shows 8 bit color, is that accurate?
June 08 (10 years ago)

Edited June 08 (10 years ago)
Hmmm, so you recommend making things 4 times larger then they need to be? I also thought the DPI was 70 for the pixel to 5ft ratio.
June 08 (10 years ago)
Lithl
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter

Michael P. said:

I also thought the DPI was 70 for the pixel to 5ft ratio.

DPI is actually pretty meaningless for images which nobody intends to print. While some image formats store DPI information, it's only actually used (if at all) by the printer. The standard web image filetypes (PNG, GIF, JPG) don't even store DPI information as far as I'm aware.

Roll20 doesn't drop a 140x140 onto the map as a 2x2 tile. I've dropped entire maps onto the token grid (whoops forgot to switch to map mode again) and it just resized them to 1x1 automatically, unless something has changed with the default behavior in the last update. So by making them bigger you can have that paladin token resized to be a giant or a pixie as needed.
June 08 (10 years ago)

Edited June 08 (10 years ago)
Gid
Roll20 Team
As Brian said, DPI doesn't actually affect how a graphic displays on a monitor. From a web perspective, the DPI just contributes to file size bloat. 72 DPI - 90 DPI is pretty much the web standard, simply because the graphics are still moderately recognizable if you have to print out a web page.

Tinker pretty much explained why we recommend a larger image size for tokens. I'll make a graphic example that might make this easier to demonstrate than just writing about it.

FeltZ, I'm doing a little bit of research regarding 8-bit color. My assumption is that 8-bit is being used because it keeps the file size down. When you're assembling maps in Roll20, graphic file size is definitely a limiting factor when gaming and you can hit a critical mass where a GM's or Player's browser slows down to molasses because there's just too much content being moved around on the tabletop.
June 08 (10 years ago)

Edited June 08 (10 years ago)
Gid
Roll20 Team
Okay. So here's a visual demonstration as to why you should use more than 70 x 70 pixels for your tokens.

I used this awesome dwarf illustration that's on Deviantart by artist shonensan

I created a version of this image that is 70 x 70 pixels and another at 280 x 280 pixels and placed them on the tabletop.



Now here's what the images look like when I increase their scale



And here's what the images look like at 150% zoom

June 08 (10 years ago)
Gold
Forum Champion
That's an excellent demonstration of pixel resolution & scaling / zoom!

Great presentation, Kristin C.!
Very nice. I see what you mean.
well thank you guys. So to replay, To be able to size it up and down it needs to be 280 pixels.
So the question goes will that not greatly limit the amount of pics I can use?
June 09 (10 years ago)
Lithl
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter

For tokens, not likely. The dwarf picture Kristin used for her example is 148 kb before being reduced from the original 847x943. Resizing to 251x280 in Microsoft Paint makes it 25.2 kb; you could store nearly 4,000 images of that size on a Base account.

PNG images (which you'd need in order to get transparency) will be somewhat larger as they aren't compressed like a JPG is, and background images will by necessity be bigger than 280 square, but you can still fit a good number of images without even upgrading to Supporter.

You can also just store your tokens on your HDD until needed. Only problem is that you will have to re-tag them every time.
yea that's the thing. putting all that info on the token, it only stays on THAT token (but you can copy and paste) Thanks.