How to create and update Bulldog chess diagrams

I thought that a topic on this would be useful.

I will describe how I do it, my method works. It is possible that other persons have other methods which also work, this can also be posted here.

I use a computer with Windows. With Windows, the free program "Paint" always comes. With Paint one can open, edit and save images.

On my computer I already have two files stored:
- An image for a new game with a starting position

- An image with graphics for all Chess pieces and most of the weird pieces

The starting position and graphics have been created by others before - I only use them. I believe that vickalan has done a lot of great work for this.

New game

I will copy my starting position image, duplicate it on my computer, and the duplicated one will be my dedicated image file for the new game. Perhaps I need to modify the starting position because different pieces have been agreed upon.

Move by move

When either you or your opponent does a move, it must be visualized in the dedicated image for that particular game.
Normally I open both the image for my game, and the graphics file - with Paint.

Paint allows you to select and copy one particular part of an image, and paste this to the same or another image, and drag it to the correct location. This is how you can move pieces from one square to another.

But we have white and black squares, and each piece has two different graphics for being on a white square resp. a black square (thanks to Vickalan).

Getting these images on your computer
- right-click
- Copy Image
- Open Paint
- Paste image
- Save image - I always save as .jpg
It will automatically get the correct format, other than how chess.com displays it.

If you want to use these images:

- right-click

- Copy Image

- Open Paint

- Paste image

- Save image - I always save as .jpg

I figured out how to make boards on a mac with a combination of preview and adobe illustrator. It was tricky, seeing as I didn't know how to use either well.You can select part of an image on preview by dragging, then copy and paste into adobe. After that, it's just trial and error to get the artboard to fit the chessboard, and to slide the pieces where they need to go. No paint on mac, or I would be modding months ago!

Thanks for the tips. I also use MS Paint to update board graphics. If you don't see it on your computer, check in "accessories". Like evert823 said it's included with Windows.

In the image below I hi-lited the tools I use the most. I also showed an example chess diagram to study a chess move.

The hi-lited tools are:

select (to select a section to move or copy it)

copy/paste
eyedropper (to pick up a color if you need to fill another area with the same color)
fill (use to fill a hole)
zoom-in/zoom-out (zoom in to where you are working)

The other lines in the diagram were to study a chess move. Black's move ...Mc2# (chancellor or called marshall) is mate, and I used this diagram to confirm it during a game.

btw, using diagrams to study chess moves is allowed in correspondence chess. But I still can't win against the best players.

Quick way to perform a pawn move, e.g. i7-i6:

But the colors mostly used are not in the standard colour palette of Paint, so then how do you do that?

With the eyedropper you click on a color on the image and you get that color. That is the point, you can easily pick a color not in the color palette.

good one

my first board

Welcome raisingsun 

Who can help me out?

I have a drawing of a Wild Goat.

But this happens when I try to fill it with a colour:

How can I give it a solid colour without doing it myself pixel by pixel?

I'm pretty sure that the best way to fix this is to work with only filetype "png".

When you save, select "png" and not "jpg". If the file is saved as jpg, there is some compression that takes place, and pure colors are lost. Then when you try to use "fill" it doesn't work.

Unfortunately, once saved as a jpg the file can't be fixed anymore. So you have to start as png, and always keep that format for colors to always remain pure.
(file size is slightly larger, but it hardly matters. Our images are still small compared to photos and anything else that is posted all over the web).

Let me know if it works.

Btw, that is a really cool goat. I'm going to assume this piece can jump?

I use an online image editor for stuff like this:

https://www.favicon-generator.org/image-editor/

Step 1: Load the image:

Step 2: Go to Image -> Color Correction

Step 3:

Drag the Green offset, Red offset and Blue offset until you get a color your satisfied with. In this case, I used Red:-92, Blue: -167, Green -255

Step 4: Click ok

Step 5: Select the Magic Wand Tool

Step 6: Click on the background in the image

Step 7: Save

And then you are done!

If you want a different background, then an addition step is:

Step 7: Select Background

Step 8: Choose the color you want and the fill tool. I entered the Red, Green, Blue Values manually

Step 9: Click on the background in the image

Step 10: save

Thanks! I used .png and that helped.

Another time I will check out the link given by Martin0.