"Enhanced" Portraits. Yay or nay?

[Lightning]

I did some pixel manipulation in an attempt to touch up a few of the existing portraits for my mod, and wondered what people think.  The "enhanced" versions on the right side use the normal 16 colors, but I merely attempted to remap the palette to create a better color gradient to remove some of the harsh edges. Any thoughts on these?  Should I proceed to do more?

Edit: Re-uploaded with adjustments and without the upscaling blur caused by the forums:

[madsiur]

They look good but it's a bit hard to tell with all this blur.. I like the new palettes though.

[Lightning]

They look good but it's a bit hard to tell with all this blur.. I like the new palettes though.

Yeah, either the forum or the image host blurred the images, which is annoying when we need to see the pixels. Lol.

Edit: To clarify, I did not just remap the palette, but spent hours adding pixels for more of a gradient. Most of the harsh edges and pixelation present in the original portraits are gone (although it is hard to tell when the image host is blurring the images). The images above kind of show what I'm talking about if you look at Sabin's neck and cheek.

[Gi Nattak]

Comparing them side to side I prefer the originals, but your edits aren't bad at all, just a bit too dark or desaturated than I'm used to I think it is. If they are all uniformed though it might work out, would like to see a picture of them in the game menu. I think I may like your Leo a bit more, actually. His portrait can only be improved I'd think lol.

[Lightning]

Comparing them side to side I prefer the originals, but your edits aren't bad at all, just a bit too dark or desaturated than I'm used to I think it is. If they are all uniformed though it might work out, would like to see a picture of them in the game menu. I think I may like your Leo a bit more, actually. His portrait can only be improved I'd think lol.

Yeah, enhancing any graphic almost always results in a slightly desaturated look, even though I used almost the exact same brightness for the highs and lows. That is because the extra color gradient removes the cartoonish effect, resulting in a more realistic yet slightly desaturated appearance. I ran in to this same problem when I made high-res skins for all of the Unreal monsters/inventory. The High-res skins would always appear slightly desaturated even though I compared the original skins side by side to make the new skins, thanks to the detail textures and extra shading.  I guess this is why modern games always look washed out (which I actually hate).

[madsiur]

If you use this tag it leaves the image unmodified with no blur:
[noparse][/noparse]

if you scale up to a multiple of 40 it still has blur:
[noparse][/noparse]

scaling up in Gimp to a multiple of 40 (80x80 or 120x120) with no filter will have no blur though and there will be no need to resize it in the image tag.

[Lightning]

Thanks for the tip!  I made quite a few adjustments to the images and uploaded them again (hopefully) without the upscaling blur filter:





I also updated my first post with these ones.

[seibaby]

I like these portraits, especially the Sabin one!

[Odbarc]

Critique of Celes: The new space between her hair and forehead makes her head look like it's got a bit of a slouch in it, like a deformity. If you filled it with one or two pixels to indicate that her head isn't missing a chunk, it might look nicer. The original has it.

Critique of Sabin: I never noticed this before but Sabin has a pixel under his nose that I would probably get rid of it.

If you've already tampered and experimented with these pixels and found they weren't improvements, I'll digress.
All in all, they're definitely improvements and I like them. Will all the characters be getting a treatment?

[Lightning]

Critique of Celes: The new space between her hair and forehead makes her head look like it's got a bit of a slouch in it, like a deformity. If you filled it with one or two pixels to indicate that her head isn't missing a chunk, it might look nicer. The original has it.

Critique of Sabin: I never noticed this before but Sabin has a pixel under his nose that I would probably get rid of it.

If you've already tampered and experimented with these pixels and found they weren't improvements, I'll digress.
All in all, they're definitely improvements and I like them. Will all the characters be getting a treatment?

I'm not sure how I managed to miss those few pixels on Celes's forehead, but I will fix that!  The pixel on Sabin's nose bothers me too, but I simply forgot to deal with it.

I will do more enhanced portraits later. For my own mod, I actually used a combination of enhanced/converted portraits found on these forums from various artists, but I just wasn't happy with any of the alternate versions of Sabin, Celes, or Leo (hence my enhanced originals).