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 Post Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 10:01 pm 
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Sorry but I have to 'LOL!'. You did REALLY well as to isolating the tail but I doubt that you want a mouse pointer that has a width of 1024. ;)

Let's work with this. Just right click on the image and select to 'Save Picture as...'
Attachment:
bb-coon-tail-pointer.jpg
bb-coon-tail-pointer.jpg [ 4.11 KiB | Viewed 18147 times ]


Now let us trim it a bit to where it just MAY look like a mouse pointer with an arrow head without an arrow...
Attachment:
bb-coon-tail-pointer-edit1.png
bb-coon-tail-pointer-edit1.png [ 25.19 KiB | Viewed 18147 times ]


Shall I continue with this? :)
I hope that you do not mind that I rotated the tail image but it just seemed that the wrong end of the tail, as positioned, was the wrong pointing end.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:02 am 
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jaylach wrote:
Sorry but I have to 'LOL!'. You did REALLY well as to isolating the tail but I doubt that you want a mouse pointer that has a width of 1024. ;)

Shall I continue with this? :)[/b] I hope that you do not mind that I rotated the tail image but it just seemed that the wrong end of the tail, as positioned, was the wrong pointing end.

At least you were kind in your LOL. Obviously, I do struggle when trying to crop, rotate, and reduce an image. I'm not exactly artistically inclined.

By all means continue with your corrected image.....it looks great and would definitely suffice as my coon tail cursor if you can make it about 1/2" long. You absolutely have it pointed correctly.

Thanks..........

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:19 am 
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Rather hard to make it 1/2 inch as that is dependent on the screen size and resolution. ;) I'll see what I can do after work.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 7:32 pm 
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Try this BB and let me know what has to be done as to size. I sized the tail as 64X64 pixels (dots on the screen). Let me know if too large or small for you. As a pointer it works fine, I'm using it right now. It measures right at 1.2 inch on my larger monitor but, depending on your screen size resolution, it may appear larger or smaller on yours. The 'Hot Spot' seems to be pretty close to right on. The Hot Spot is the individual pixel within the pointer that is active. Active relates to the part of the pointer that actually interfaces with the screen, the rest of the thing is just ornament.
http://jaylach.com/downloads/raccoon-ta ... -64x64.zip

So why is the pointer size 64X64 pixels when the tail isn't even close to square? Except for one bit difference in the information of the file there is zero difference between a mouse pointer and a desktop icon. Have you ever seen a 'normal' desktop icon that is not square? Yes such icons exist but are not the normal case. The same could be said for a mouse pointer as someone may be a snake lover. In such a case a pointer could be made that was... say 64X128 to allow for the length of a snake. The point is that only the desired object is displayed as the rest of the image is set to be transparent.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 8:32 pm 
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Jay, that is GREAT......much appreciated. On my 27" screen it measures 5/8", which is very acceptable. And it looks good.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 8:44 pm 
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You are quite welcome. :) Doing pointers is really pretty easy. The hardest part of the project you did yourself, that being cleaning the original image to leave just the tail. If you want I can easily resize to 51X51 pixels which should give you the 1/2 inch you wanted. ((64/5)*4) is where I get the 51 pixels; Actually, if your 5/8 inch measure is accurate, the proper pixel size for 1/2 inch would be 51.2 pixels but let us not quibble... :mrgreen:

This project has reminded me of a pointer I thought about doing years ago and forgot. That thought was to make a normal pointer out of an image of a scope gun sight with the cross hairs with the hot spot being the center of the cross hairs.

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:02 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
You are quite welcome. :) Doing pointers is really pretty easy. The hardest part of the project you did yourself, that being cleaning the original image to leave just the tail. If you want I can easily resize to 51X51 pixels which should give you the 1/2 inch you wanted. ((64/5)*4) is where I get the 51 pixels; Actually, if your 5/8 inch measure is accurate, the proper pixel size for 1/2 inch would be 51.2 pixels but let us not quibble... :mrgreen:

This project has reminded me of a pointer I thought about doing years ago and forgot. That thought was to make a normal pointer out of an image of a scope gun sight with the cross hairs with the hot spot being the center of the cross hairs.

No resize necessary, Jay......I like the 5/8". I was just sorta guesstimating when I asked for 1/2", and I like the slightly-larger size.

A cross hairs pointer sounds neat, but it would probably not work for me. I'm a pretty lousy shot (except with my pistols), so I could never get the hot spot lined up and I would be forever clicking my mouse. :cboy1:

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:18 pm 
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LOL! Actually you could turn your desktop into a game with a cross hair pointer. While I have never done I see no reason that you could not have animated desktop icons. Have the icons animated with mostly fully transparent settings and here and there have them become visible. When they become visible the goal would be to 'shoot' them with the cross hairs. :mrgreen: Not sure as to the exact programming code but I'll bet I could even keep score.

Actually, as to making the desktop a game... This is REALLY old but cute. Anyone remember Icon Wars?
[youtube]Ac7rIyZYOtg[/youtube]

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 10:50 pm 
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What do you do with the file?

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 Post Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 11:09 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
What do you do with the file?

I'm not sure what you are asking... You set the raccoon tail pointer as your 'normal' pointer under your mouse settings. You use browse and navigate to where you have saved the raccoon tail pointer.

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 10:10 am 
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OK. Didn't know if you had to put it in a specific directory or not.

Ha ha... what a riot! :) Love it!

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 10:45 am 
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Yea, I love my new raccoon tail cursor. After downloading and extracting Jay's zip file, I just left the 'cur' file in my Downloads folder and browsed/navigated to it. So it is now listed as one of the available cursors in my mouse settings......I called it 'coon tail'.

Patty, have you downloaded and tried the coon tail cursor yet?

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 1:08 pm 
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I keep my 'custom' cursors in a folder named Cursors on my data drive.

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 2:03 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
I keep my 'custom' cursors in a folder named Cursors on my data drive.

Jay, when I was a kid, my grandmother would take me to a cafeteria and I would always get more food than I could eat. She would tell me "your eyes are bigger than your stomach". :shock:

Well, I guess the same thing holds true with cursor size. My 5/8" cursor is proving to be just a tad too large to move around the screen and activate. So if/when you get a chance, could you send me one a little smaller......maybe 1/2" (plus or minus a pixel) like I originally estimated? Thanks.......

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 3:06 pm 
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See if any of these do better for you. The ZIP file contains 4 cursors; 16X16, 32X32, 48X48 and 64X64. They all display the same size on my screen but that is likely to be a 'locked' size set by the theme I'm using with my Stardock software.
http://jaylach.com/downloads/raccoon-tail-cursor.zip

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 4:04 pm 
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bbarry wrote:
Patty, have you downloaded and tried the coon tail cursor yet?


Yes, am using it and loving it. :)

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 Post Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:42 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
See if any of these do better for you. The ZIP file contains 4 cursors; 16X16, 32X32, 48X48 and 64X64. They all display the same size on my screen but that is likely to be a 'locked' size set by the theme I'm using with my Stardock software.
http://jaylach.com/downloads/raccoon-tail-cursor.zip

Actually, they all display the same size on my screen also (5/8"). The only difference is that the 16x16 is not nearly as crisp as the others. Any suggestions for decreasing the length & size just a little? If not, don't worry as I can live with what I have (I am currently using the 48x48). I really like my coon tail cursor.

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 1:10 am 
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I'm not surprised that they came out the same size for you. I had a thought that Win 10 might be locking the cursor size but didn't really think that was the case. Still I tried them in my XP and 7 virtual machines with the same results. My guess is that it is a fault within the software I used. I wanted to use freeware software so you could do your own cursors in the future without cost and had not used this software ever before.

Not to worry as I can still lessen the size even with this software without issue. I'll just paste the image on a larger canvas and go from there... OK, you may not have followed that... What I mean is that I will use PaintShop Pro to adjust the size. I use the base image as I cropped to give the point for the cursor. I will start a new canvas in PaintShop Pro that is larger than the image. Say I used the 64X64 pixel image; I would create a new canvas of a size of say... well you want to drop from 5/8" to 1/2". That is a 20% reduction. I make the new canvas to a size of ~77X77 and paste the 64X64 image on the new canvas centered. Resize back to 64X64 and the visible image is smaller even though the actual cursor size is the same. Set the 'hot point' to the point of the actual image and all should be fine. Setting the hot point is super easy as I just have to click on the image as to where I want the thing. Not going to happen tonight though. I closed the store tonight and have to open in the morning. AHHHhhhh! A week from tonight I'll be looking at 12 days off work... I'm READY! :shock:

I know that this sounds all complicated but it is really very simple. I don't just mean simple for me as I've done a lot of stuff that is similar. I mean that it is REALLY simple and, to be honest, rather fun to do. Mayhaps I should do a little tutorial in the 'How To' section of these forums. LOL! Of course I'd do a more in depth search for free software to possible cut a few steps that I will be taking.

Right now I'm thinking that the following could be a decent cursor. :mrgreen: On my screen probably about half the size.
Attachment:
PB040082.JPG
PB040082.JPG [ 10 KiB | Viewed 18076 times ]

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:20 am 
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Nice. That's about 2 inches on my screen. I'm at 1920 X 1200. 25.5 inch screen.

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 6:51 pm 
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Try this BB. It looks a bit smaller on my screen.
http://jaylach.com/downloads/adjusted-raccoon-tail.zip

@ Patty: I took a look at doing the Blue Angel jet as a cursor and it isn't going to happen. The size isn't the issue as I said probably about half the size. On my large screens a 1" or so cursor would be nothing. The problem is that I wasn't thinking. The background is not just blue, it is the sky. It would take me forever to clean it up to one solid color so I could make it transparent. I know that PaintShop Pro has tools to do such things but I'm no good with it, I'd have to go pixel by pixel and it just isn't gonna happen. ;) I'm at 1920X1080 on 42" and 32".

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2016 9:38 pm 
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I totally understand, Jay. No problem!

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 Post Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:04 am 
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jaylach wrote:
Try this BB. It looks a bit smaller on my screen.
http://jaylach.com/downloads/adjusted-raccoon-tail.zip

Jay, after I download and extract this adjusted file, it keeps showing as an Adobe Acrobat file rather than a cursor file. So I can't get to it as a mouse pointer. What am I doing wrong? I did not have this problem with the other raccoon tail zip files that you posted.

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 Post Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:03 pm 
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I don't know why you would be having an issue BB. I just re-tested the download and all was well. Since I know that the download file is good it MAY have just been a glitch in the download.

Just to cover the simple stuff, even though I'm sure that you did things correctly, I assume that you are actually sure that you extracted the cur file from the zip. I also assume that you used the mouse applet in your control panel to attempt the change.

Regardless I just went ahead and added the adjusted cursor as an attachment to this post so you might as well just download the attachment. There is no need to extract or anything. Make sure to use 'Save as' so you know where the thing ends up. :mrgreen:

Attachment:
adjusted raccoon tail.cur [26.42 KiB]
Downloaded 231 times


Attachments:
adjusted raccoon tail.cur [26.42 KiB]
Downloaded 219 times

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 Post Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 8:57 pm 
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Got it this time. It measures 1/2" on my screen, so I think I will keep using it rather than the 5/8" tail. Thank you kind sir.

Any snow yet up your way?

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 Post Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2016 10:09 pm 
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Well I guess I must have done OK on my math if it measures 1/2" on your screen. :mrgreen: I'm happy that you seem pleased.

Snow? High today was about 82, mid 70s expected over the next few days. There has been snow in the mountains but I'm not there. I'm in the High Plains, the start of the foothills before the mountains.

I doubt that any are really interested but here is how I adjusted to get the desired size...

1) Establish a base image.
Attachment:
adjusted raccoon tail.gif
adjusted raccoon tail.gif [ 7.55 KiB | Viewed 18037 times ]

2) Make the background a color NOT included in the image. This is so the background can be set as transparent while not putting any transparency in the actual tail.
Attachment:
bb-coon-tail-pointer-edit1.gif
bb-coon-tail-pointer-edit1.gif [ 7.03 KiB | Viewed 18037 times ]

3) Make a new 'padded' image with an area around the original. Note that the green around the previous image is the padding. This allows for the finishing software to make a cursor as it likes but what appears is smaller as the padding will be transparent.
Attachment:
Image1.gif
Image1.gif [ 7.55 KiB | Viewed 18037 times ]

4) Can't have two transparent colors so use your image editor of choice to do a 'flood fill' to make all the background the same color. The result would be something like the following.
Attachment:
sample1.gif
sample1.gif [ 7.13 KiB | Viewed 18037 times ]

Please notice that we now have an image with a LOT of empty space around. This 'empty' space allows for the visible cursor to seem to be smaller even though the output is exactly the same size as the one that was too large.

The point is that the same image was used as when the cursor was too large. It was a matter of creating an area around the wanted image that was then made transparent.

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