OK, thanks.tokumaru wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:24 amIf the pixel aspect ratio is 8:7, you just need to scale the image horizontally by that much: 256 * (8 / 7) = 292.5714iNCEPTIONAL wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:02 am If I draw a SNES game at 256x224 in Photoshop (which has square pixels), what size [in pixels] should I stretch the image horizontally to in order to get a decent representation of what the visuals would look like proportionally when stretched to a 4:3 display aspect ratio?
So 293x224 should be the new dimensions of the image. However, due to scaling interpolation, the result will look very blurry. To get a sharper image, it's usually better to scale the image up by an integer amount, and then stretch it horizontally according to the 8:7 PAR. In Photoshop, this means scaling the image up to, say, 400% in both axes, without interpolation (i.e. nearest neighbor), and then scaling only the horizontal axis by 114% (8 / 7 * 100), using linear interpolation.
It's honestly a real shame I can't just change the pixel aspect ratio directly in Photoshop. Well, maybe you can in recent versions or something, but I'm using ancient Photoshop 7.0, and that doesn't appear to have the option. And there's no way I'm paying a never-ending subscription fee to [not actually] own the newer version. I could try some other package for creating the assets (one that allows changing the pixel aspect ratio), but it took me so long to get comfortable with Photoshop 7.0, which I do really like now, and I'm so slow at learning new things. It's all a bit of a convoluted pain in the ass really. But I guess that's just PAR for the course (pun intended) with making new games for these old consoles. Well, certainly with the SNES at least.