I have uploaded the Microsoft Publisher file where I originally designed the gird for my Spot the Ball competitions and it can be downloaded from here if you want to have a go yourself for say your club website or newsletter or possibly as a fund raiser. Follow this link :- http://www.johncoxon.com/spot grid.pub Iy you have Publisher you can open the downloaded file and change the rubric ( My name , the number of the competition and the date. You simply chose a suitable image. Create a spot the ball folder and make two sub folders originals and competitions. Save each image you use as an orginal as a reference should you forget where the ball actually was ! edit out the ball and save the edited picture in your competitions subfolder. With the grip Publisher file open , Go to insert on the Publisher menu at the top of the open document and the picture will be placed somehwere over the grid. You may well need to resize and arrange the image to make sure it covers suffient sqaures to make a challenge. Then you go to arrange on the Publisher menu and select Order and then select send to the back. This places the image behind the grid so it divides the image into squares. You may have to move the image this way or that so that where the ball was is in a whole square. Save the file with a name like "spotball1.pub" Have fun and give me soem feedback if you use it and let me know how, where you use it maybe- PM if you want.
Re: How to make your own Spot the Ball competition for club newsletters etc. BTW , when I am preparing my STB competitions for the forum I do a screen capture of my Publisher documetn when it is open as a quick way of reducing the file size and then upload the capture to my webspace- this saves space on the Forum server and doesn't glog the gallery with images with grids all over them!
cool - thanks John - I need a new club competition for over the summer. what do you use to remove the ball? Clone in Photoshop?
A good place(s) to upload your pcitures to are - www.imageshack.us www.photobucket.org Then use the IMG tags to show it on the forum, or check out keely's guide !
Cheers Craggsy. Hi G. Yes , i use a version of Phtoshop ( Photo Shop Elements - Home Edition ) and yes the clone tool. If you want I can edit and make you a spot the ball- pm if you want any help or me to do it. I have thousands of shots to choose from. Equally I have most of the orginals from the competition here if you want a short cut ! By the way when the ball is on the net I don't use clone- I select, copy and paste a similar area. If the paste isn't accurate I undo paste , resposition and paste again- then a little bit of cloning. When there are specks of water kicked up from the water based pitch I use the clone to dot the splashes on areas where it is obvious I have cloned. I magnify firght up so that when I revert to normal size the crudeness of my shopping can't be easily detected.
Cool John! Now, do you know how to publish the game so the people can get the coordinates (when they point or move the mouse)?? Or how do you manage to have a winner. regards Beto
