Fake items - Guide & TutorialFollow

I'm writing this guide mainly because it pains me to see some horrible, horrible edits around. Letters are so obviously copy / pasted, it really detracts from the humour in a lot of them. This is my attempt to help. What I'm going to show you is a 100% way to make fake items that cannot be distinguished from the real thing. Where's my proof you say? Fair question. You tell me which is mine, and which is real:

Image 1 & 2:
http://img284.echo.cx/img284/1461/image12ow.jpg
http://img284.echo.cx/img284/7038/image26fm.jpg

So, which is the fake? Still not convinced? Click for Image 1 & 2 @ 400%.


Hard to tell, isn't it? What I've noticed is that when someone posts an image that you think, or know is fake, there is a large placebo effect taking place. Even I noticed it on my own fakes, somehow your brain just says 'that part looks pasted' or 'that part is all pixelly', when in fact they're exact copies. Like I said, even I did this with my own edits, for some reason your brain just screams 'FAKE!'. But it's different when you don't know if it's fake, if there's a possibility it's real, the placebo effect seems to be smaller. Anyways, here we go with the tutorial. There is more than one way to edit, I'll start with the easiest way.

Requirements:
1) FFXI (duh)
2) Photoshop (6, 7, CS, doesn't matter) or Paint Shop Pro
3) Fraps or any other screenshot taking utility. I highly suggest using .bmp or .png for taking screenshots to begin with. The more clarity the better.
4) You need to know how to use Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro decently (layers, etc) in order for this to be doable.

Provided you have all said materials, let's move on. Note: MSPaint can work, but it's extremely tedious and requires pixel editing that isn't worth the time. If you want to use it, go for it.






Step 1: The basics. Faking any in game text.
Now, we'll start off with simple text images like thrown equipment, defeated enemies, EXP chains, etc. This one method I will teach you here deals with the basics for everything. I suggest doing this on a mule, as it's easiest that way. Before we start though, you'll need a canvas. Just log in, make your chat log full screen and switch to anything. It'll be empty, and it'll be a huge blank canvas of whatever window setting you chose to use, take a screenshot and keep it. You can use it for any background you need.


First, you need your colours. Depending on what you're doing, you'll need 5 things:
/p colour
status colour ('You throw away')
item colour (green for drops, Auction House, etc)
/tell colour
/say colour

/p colour, /tell colour and normal white colour (for item text) are all easy to get, they're defaults. Now, how do you get anything you want to be in any colour? Simple, find the colours and copy them in game.

Change /say to green (item)
Change /sh to yellow (status)

Click here to see the colour settings for green and yellow. The rest are defaults.

I do all this in my mog house on a mule. Menu -> Config -> Font colours. Now, if you ever need something done in any colour, you have a way to get it. /tell yourself anything you need in /t format. /p anything you need in party, /say any item related things and /sh any status related things. You can get anything white by using your main character easily.




Step 2: Seperating your text from the game.
Open up Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro (I will only give PS settings, if you know PSP well you should find equivalents). Select your handy Magic Wand Tool. Set the tolerance to 50, and leave Anti-aliased, Contigious and Use All Layers unchecked. Now, whenever you need any text whatsoever, just click the background behind the text with this tool and press delete. Viola, you have exact text to use wherever you want. Here's an example of the Magic Wand used with an added black background so you can see the text:
http://img191.echo.cx/img191/3387/freetext6hp.jpg

If you aren't familiar with Photoshop, you need to use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (very top left) to cut and paste your text. Just click and drag, hit CTRL-C for copy, CTRL-V for paste. Make sure you're on the text layer while doing this so you actually cut and paste the text. The text will be a perfect exact copy of in game text. Place your text however you like on your canvas and bam, you have yourself a nice fake image. Just make sure you get spacing right and you're solid.





Step 3: Faking items.
This will use the canvas you created a lot. Go in game and take a screenshot of a blank equipment slot. I'd recommend getting your own, as this is .jpg and won't be as clear. Use the Magic Wand tool to get rid of the background and leave yourself with the border. Copy the bottom half of the border and put it on it's own layer, you'll need to move this around depending on the size of your item. In order to make large items, you need to use your canvas. Place the blank item template over your canvas and line up the background. Items always use a certain section of the window background, so make sure you do the same. Line up your blank item with the canvas so that the canvas pattern matches your blank item pattern. Copy and paste a large portion of your canvas in the correct position. Take your border and put it on the top, and leave the bottom one so you can move it around on it's own layer, like this :

http://img140.echo.cx/img140/1765/canvas0lg.jpg

Basically, you're lining up the background of your item with your blank canvas so that it's consistent with in game. Then you seperate the bottom border, put it on it's own layer so you can move it depending on it's final size. Now, after you have this pretty canvas, the rest is easy. Go in game to the AH and pic any item you want to use as your picture. Take a screenshot of it and simply pixel edit everything around it to get just the small picture and put it in place. Then, using /say, type what you'd like. For example:

http://img138.echo.cx/img138/6164/original4xp.jpg

Then, just go through the following steps:
1) Delete the background of the text and use a black background so you can see what you're doing

2) Open up your canvas and copy / paste the text in the right spots

3) Take a pic of an item in game, edit the image into the right place

4) Lastly, move the bottom border into the right place and crop the image to the right size, what are you left with?

http://img262.echo.cx/img262/3635/hatfinal7ua.jpg





A 100% faked image that is impossible to distinguish from the real thing (if it existed). If you know your way around Photoshop, you should now know how to make perfect images. If you don't know anything about Photoshop, I'm not here to teach you, go to google.com and find some basic tutorials on the tools within the program. It's that easy. You can now fake anything you like. A note on the Magic Wand with different window backgrounds, I've never tried any others, but it's very possible that it will not work directly that way. If you want to use a transparent background, for example, it's a bit trickier. This is what you'd have to do:

1) Get a blank equipment slot screencap with your chosen background, also get a canvas.
2) Take the pic of your text using the background you've seen here, Magic Wand the background so you're left with just the text.
3) Paste the text onto your canvas of a different background and you're off to the races.

It's that easy. I know this is slightly disjointed, I'm not a great writer, but I tried to keep it as simple as possible. Just get your canvas, set up your font colours, type what you want and paste it onto your canvas. Not that hard once you do it ^^

Have fun and play nice with your fakes!

Edited, Fri May 20 08:42:14 2005 by defunkt

I did remove them, but they popped back up. Looks like I edited the post too fast >< Fixed now ^^

My favorite fake item I've made is probably this one.

Edited, Fri May 20 21:41:14 2005 by akirussan

Second one is real, first is fake. Why? Because the backround in the first one is off a little.

Copying and pasting letter by letter was the way I originally did it. I typed in game the alphabet and all misc. characters in capitals and lower case and put them onto a single .psd that I copy / pasted each letter from. Then I realized that doing that was stupid, but you'd have to do it for something like the POL viewer, you did a good job ^^

EDIT : http://img286.echo.cx/img286/7233/font7gx.jpg That was my original palette, but typing in game and matching colours is much easier and less time consuming. I copy / pasted each letter, it got boring quickly ^^

Edited, Fri May 20 22:55:15 2005 by defunkt