Here is a miniature tutorial that I originally typed up for NoZ's WarZoNe Custom Portrait Thread: it gives you the general gist of how to go about editing an image for Mugen 1.0's strict 256 color index method. Considering how there are countless ways to go about indexing, this is easily the best way to describe and summarize it, step by step:

**Consider the fact that this process can apply to any formatting that you may wish, which comes down to a matter of an image's size if you break things down to their most basic extent.**

1: Test resize your image to see what you're going to frame. This becomes handy because:
A: You get a clear idea of exactly how your final product will look like framing wise.
B: You don't have to waste time erasing what's not going to be needed.

2: Erase what you don't need from the background on your full size image. Don't resort to the Magic Eraser right away. Rather, zoom all the way in and use the basic eraser tool for precision. Mugen's indexed format does not allow for feathering, so you have to make sure everything looks sharp and clean by hand.

3: Resize your image to what you desire size wise, which is pretty much the same thing as step 1, but official. Resize your image with the Transform Tool with either holding down the shift key or clicking the chain to keep your proportions in check.

4: Clean up anything further, if necessary. When you resize an image to a smaller size, you often get distortion than needs to be given attention. This is especially evident in edges and lines throughout your image.

5: Index your image. This is the most popular method that is used in PhotoShop:

Index/Mode/Indexed Color with the settings of Forced/None, Matte/None and Dither/Diffusion.

6: This step is the single most important aspect of perfecting your image as you see fit: Post indexing, you're going to end up with a lot of distortion from indexing an image from 1,000's of colors to 256 colors (255 plus the background color, usually Mugen's hot pink). As a result, colors will look distorted and pixelated. This needs to be fixed in order to end up with a clean looking image. I feel that this step is necessary, but the amount of time you wish to spend is entirely up to you and your standards.

7: Epic win.
 
Other small tips that will help you:

Do NOT rely on a single toolset to make your image shine. The best results come from painstaking accuracy through editing with the brush tool. Use tools only to augment your image, not define it. If you rely on the easy way out, your final images will show through, quite frankly, shit quality.

Avoid filters. The only one who I have seen using filters correctly would be Big Boss through his Mugen/Metal Gear Solid Screenpack. Only use filters if the screenpack actually calls for it.

Work efficiently through knowing all of the shortcuts that you can. Off the top of my head, PhotoShop has these shortcuts:

CTRL+N: Make a new image
CTRL+O: Open a file
CTRL+S: Save your file
CTRL+W: Close your image
CTRL+Q: Quit Photoshop

Z: Zoom Tool
B: Brush Tool **Holding ALT while in Brush Mode will bring up the Eyedropper tool
E: Eraser Tool
V: Move Tool

Holding SHIFT while pressing E cycles through your eraser tool types. This also works for every tool that has multiple styles/types of the same tool.

**These are somewhat arbitrary as you can view a keyboard shortcut by rolling the mouse over the icon of the desired tool you wish to use. However, these are the most important ones, so I figured I'd mention them.

Holding down the Spacebar activates the Hand Tool, which is usually accessed by pressing H. I mention this because this important shortcut allows for very quick movement of your image by just dragging it around with the mouse, without having to roll your pointer over the hand icon, or without switching out of zoom mode. Trust me on this one, this is one of the best shortcuts for those of us who want efficiency at full zoom without interruption. I use this all of the time.

CTRL+ALT+I: Image Size
CTRL+ALT+C: Canvas Size

**These are great for resizing your image quickly. The Canvas Size will make your overall image's background bigger or smaller, exactly like a canvass would. The Image Size will make the image itself larger or smaller, which is integral for steps 1 and 3. I always work with a large canvass with a small image inside it as another layer. Which reminds me of this shortcut:

CTRL+SHIFT+N: New Layer.
**I always have a clear background layer with my image as the foreground layer.

Know your shortcuts!! This allows for you to work faster and be more efficient. But remember, efficient should not be confused with finishing something faster. Instead, look at is a way of getting more work done in less time so you can focus your efforts and make better quality stuff. Everyone asks me how I make such high quality and clean looking images; It's simply a matter of patience and time.

Again, that's up to you and your very own work ethic. And your personal view on quality.

I can't stress how happy and proud I am to share this set with the community. I've had Melty Blood as part of my Mugen roster for years but I never had matching art to properly represent those characters with killer style. What you have here is the embodiment of many early 4:30am mornings for about three months with The Dark Knight Rises playing in the background, in the dark for gamma purposes. Every single inch of each portrait you have at your fingertips is the result of anywhere from 6 to 12 hours a piece to ensure definitive quality using only 256 colors. Some portraits were a little simpler to get right, like Aoko's flowing reds and Neco Arc's bold colors. Others, like all three of Akiha's variant's hair, and Roa's white gradients and White Len's subtle blues and whites were a fucking bitch to edit. But I pulled through to deliver you exceptional quality work that Melty Blood rightfully deserves.

This pack of 30 portraits includes:

• Akiha Seifuku
• Akiha Tohno
• Akiha Vermillion
• Aoko Aozaki
• Archetype Earth
• Arcueid Brunestud
• Ciel
• Dust of Osiris
• Hisui
• Kouma Kishima
• Kohaku
• Len
• Mech Hisui
• Michael Roa Valdamjong
• Miyako Arima
• Neco Arc
• Neco Arc Chaos
• Nrvnqsr Chaos/Nero
• Powered Ciel
• Red Arcueid
• Riesbyfe Stridberg
• Ryougi Shiki
• Satsuki Yumiduka
• Shiki Nanaya
• Shiki Tonho (2 Versions: With and without Glasses!!)
• Sion Atlasia
• Sion Tatari
• Wallachia
• White Len

And of course, here are some screenshots of what you're getting.

The Characters are really archaic and kinda boring. Their move sets and sprite sheets are overly simplistic. And quite honestly, they don't even play very well while compared to today's standards (Billy Kane doesn't even jump!!). And in a way, all of that is kind of... endearing. Which is what makes them fun to have in your roster, and is the very reason why I decided to make a full portrait set for Fatal Fury. As in the original Fatal Fury.

This release was really more of a test to see how old, dated artwork converts under strict 256 coloring methods. And as you can see with the screenshots provided below, results are visually pleasing and give 32bits a literal run for their money. Yup, these portraits are only 256 colors and 8bits!! With artwork that is older and simplistic with a rougher style, indexing does not result in huge losses of clarity that requires a ton of time to clean up. The hardest thing to get right, besides some small corrections here and there, was making sure edging was clean and smooth, along with making sure those small face portraits also looked presentable as well. While not shown in screenshots, I did include 25x25 portraits to go along with them if you should want to update those for your Mugen's Select Screen/Lifebars.

While I was working on both of Street Fighter II's portrait sets, I became a little fried with spending so much time on them. So a quick release on a completely different art set (These took no longer than a week and a half to fully complete) helped improve my morale and got the ball rolling pretty quickly. Here are a few screenshots of what is included with this Retro Fatal Fury set:

Here we have Michael Max and Richard Myer


Here's Terry Bogard and Tung Fu Rue



Here's Geese Howard and Raiden... who looks extremely creepy...


Lastly, here's Andy Bogard and Hwa Jai


You could say that I am on an old school streak here. I think this art is fantastic and is rarely seen in Mugen these days; everything is now about flashiness, over-saturation of color and filters out the yin-yang. I love to go against the grain and present the community with more obscure, lesser known stuff that hasn't been done before. I also have plenty of more retro art in store, so expect plenty of releases soon.

This monstrous set of 404 portraits contains multiple formats, including:

24 portraits for Kyokano's Street Fighter X Tekken Screenpack in these three formats:

• Select Screen Portraits
• Small 'Face' Portraits
• Versus/Winner Screen Portraits

24 portraits in my high quality, signature standard 240x280 resolution. Also included are 25x25 small face portraits.








Conversions for Big Boss' Nexus Reborn Screenpack.










Lastly, this pack also contains all of my Marvel VS Capcom II portraits converted to SFxT's format

Here's another release I'm excited and proud to share with all of you. 

As you guys already know, I really hate it when portraits are all across the board with art direction. I love it when portraits are all unified and matching in style, making your Mugen roster shine by appearance. Here you have two bundles based off of Capcom's Marvel VS Capcom III.

What makes me proud is the amount of time it took to convert these images: With Capcom's decision to go bold and simple with plenty of primary colors utilizing their 3D in-game character models, shrinking down massive, high quality .PNG files to Mugen standards resulted in a MASSIVE amount of editing time. Thor in his particular three forms (His small face portrait took a minimum of 15 minutes) took over a solid 16 hours spread across all three formats. Most of that time was spent editing his cape so it looked presentable. When you have such clarity and shrink it down, you get massive color loss as a result regardless of what filters you may use. So yeah, all of these portraits are a literal labor of fighting game love. No time was spared in making sure that all of these portraits looked great for the community.

It was also great knowing that characters like Ghost Rider, Thor and Dormammu received proper portrait attention since their characters are now official with excellent, dedicated artwork.

I would also like to thank Big Boss once again for releasing his Nexus Screenpack. His idea of having three versions of one portrait is great. It's also the catalyst for such hard work!! 

As with my previous MvC2 Marvel pack, you have these two awesome formats.

NEXUS REBORN FORMAT

All included 16 portraits are ready to apply to Big Boss three stylish formats. Here's some previews:

Here is Deadpool and Ghost Rider in the Select Screen:


Here is Iron Man and Wolverine:


Shuma Gorath VS Dr. Doom


Wolverine VS Sentinel


And I'm really porud of this one. It's Dormammu's victory screen portrait!!


Ghost Rider


And my pride and joy as a sharp result of editing: Thor


Every single image you have at your fingertips is a summarization of being careful of stray, mis-colored pixels, uneven lines/curves all while making sure clarity rivals higher resolution offerings within the comminity. I highly recommend just indexing a quickly converted image without editing anything: You will see that plenty of attention was spent on detailing.

STANDARD FORMATTING

The rest of you standard Mugen users were not forgotten. Here is my trademark high resolution style that includes 16 portraits for your MvC3 style pleasures. With this 240x280 formatting size, BE SURE to set your Fight AND System.def's "p1/p2.face.scale to "0.5." That's the only way these can be viewed correctly. If not, they will appear blown up. Also, I simply refuse to release lower resolution standard of 120x140 at this point as quality takes a HUGE dive. I'm not one for shit quality. Here's some previews of what's included:

Here is Storm VS Thor:


And Deadpool VS Ghost Rider:


NOT shown is Taskmaster ans She Hulk. Yes, I went ahead and made two portrait sets for both of these characters as they are currently WIP's at the time of this release. Consider these as a nice surprise bonus if these two characters should ever see the light of day. Zox, I'm looking at you!!

Lastly, I am already starting on my MvC2 Capcom side of things. MvC2's style will be released first, and then following with MvC3's style. I have the same formatting in mind.

Nothing like a release before cramming in for finals. 

And here you have it. The remaining 28 portraits to round out my Marvel VS Capcom II collection. I'm very proud to finally release all of these as MvC2 has some very striking artwork that Mugen badly needed: There are some very good characters out there that had plenty of mismatching portraits. Also, rare yet excellent characters like Amingo, Tron Bonne, Jill and ServBot never had proper attention with designated artwork. So here you go.

I would like to thank Big Boss for releasing Nexus Reborn to us, allowing me to format in his manner. If you haven't tried out his awesome screenpack, I highly recommend you finally do. I hear he is also working on a very hot looking lifebar update. 

I would also like to thank MaxBeta for being an all around nice guy who pointed me in the direction of these lovely high resolution pieces of scanned artwork. If it wasn't for this guy, the quality you have before you wouldn't have been possible.

Of course, you get two snazzy fomrats to work with in the form of both of your Standard Mugen users and Nexus Reborn Mugen users.

STANDARD MUGEN USERS

My standard formatting for portraits is 240x280 resolution, twice the size of your standard portraits (but much better). Therefore, BE SURE to set your Fight AND System.def's "p1/p2.face.scale to "0.5." That's the only way these can be viewed correctly.

Here's some preview shots of what you get in the Standard Package...

Here we have Morrigan and ServBot:


Here's Amingo and Dhalsim:


And lastly, Jill and B.B. Hood:


Once again, I'm really happy to get these out due to the fact that nobody has ever given these obscure characters any portrait love.

NEXUS REBORN FORMAT

All of these 28 portraits were also formatted to Big Bosses three size standards. This marks the last portrait pack I will be releasing in Nexus Reborn's format. From this point on, I will always resort to making templates for every portrait pack that will be released in the future. I'm looking to possibly format releases for NoZ's WarZone Screenpack release. More as time progresses.

Here's some previews of what's included in the Nexus Package:

Here is Amingo and Hayato on the Select Screen:


Here is Tron Bonne and Hayato on the Versus Screen:


And here we have Akuma's Victory Screen Portrait:


Once templates for all of these portraits were created, formatting each of them to 4 renders was quite a pleasure. Big Boss deserves lots of credit for making an all around well done screenpack. I certainly enjoyed spending lots of time on every single pixel to ensure high quality portraits. I would like to add in that each template took 4 hours on average to create. Yeah, this set of releases was truly a labor of love for Capcom's classic fighter.

Here's a release that I'm really excited to share with all of you!! 

I was originally going to save all of these for one gigantic release, but I figured what the hell, let me start the weekend off right.

What you have before you are mostly all of Marvel VS Capcom 2's (more on this below) portraits for both of your Standard Mugen users and Nexus Reborn Mugen users. Marvel VS Capcom 2, in my opinion, has some of the most beautiful sketched artwork I have ever seen. I also feel that MvC2's art never got the attention it rightfully deserved in Mugen, so here you go....

I would also like to thank Big Boss for releasing Nexus Reborn to us, allowing me to format in his manner. Also, MaxBeta for being an all around nice guy who pointed me in the direction of these lovely portraits.

STANDARD MUGEN USERS

My standard formatting for portraits is 240x280 resolution, twice the size of your standard portraits (but much better). Therefore, BE SURE to set your Fight AND System.def's "p1/p2.face.scale to "0.5." That's the only way these can be viewed correctly. Here's some preview shots of what you get

Here's Thanos and Blackheart


Here's Venom and SpiderMan


Spiral and IceMan (Nobody ever gave Spiral a nice portrait before  )


Lastly, here's Captain America and Omega Red


NEXUS REBORN FORMAT

That's right. All of these 26 portraits were also formatted to Big Bosses three size standards. Here's some previews of what's included:

Here's Sentinel and Shuma Gorath on the Select Screen


Here's Cable VS Psylocke


Gambit's Victory/VS Screen Portrait


Lastly, Sentinel's Victory/VS Portrait


At the last second, I realize that I made Sentinel, Juggernaut and Thanos a little too big. At this point, just crop them. It's that easy. This is a side effect of starting off with a new format: I made Sentinel first, and thus, he's a little too big.

So, I'm sure most of you are going to ask "Saikoro, where the hell is Magneto and Storm in all of this?? I WANT MY TWO PORTRAITS!!" Well, Magneto and Storm do not have super high quality scans anywhere on the net, therefore I couldn't make portraits for them. Instead, I have you guys covered because I'm awesome like that.... 

Here's a second portrait release, but this time, for all of you standard resolution Mugen users. 

Every version of Mugen (Win, Plus and 1.0) utilize the standard 120 by 140 portrait resolution. So here you have a complete, universal looking collection of all 21 Street Fighter III: Third Strike Characters along with all 24 of SvC: Chaos Characters. These portraits actually sat on my HDD for about three years, so I blew the dust off of them and uploaded them for fans of matching and quality looking artwork. Specs for these portraits include your standardized Mugen Settings:

• 120x140 resolution
• 72dpi
• 8-Bit Color Depth

While not as sharp as my previous Capcom VS SNK2 portrait pack release, I feel that these portraits still hold up to standard resolution quality. Plenty of time was still spent making sure that edges and gradients looked cohesive and smooth for an overall polished look. I also went with what I felt was the sharpest art style possible. If I remember correctly, each portrait took about an hour or more since they are smaller and less detailed than higher resolution offerings. Here's a small preview of what you get:

Here's Zero and Red Arremer


Here we have Vega/Balrog and Sagat


Yun and Elena


Lastly, Oro and Ryu

Here's a release that I'm proud to share with all of you.

With all of Mugen's countless releases, artwork for each character is usually out of place or all across the board. I'm all for matching, high quality portraits for each group of characters you may have on your roster. So here you go.

With this type of detail, each portrait took 90+ minutes a piece to touch up as each picture came from a high resolution source (My source was Kawaii Art Zone). I tried not to leave any messy random pixels, jagged and mis-colored edges or a lack of cohesive, gradient style edges in any of these. Also, portraits at the tail end of this project (E-Honda, Rolento, Sakura, Vice) came out a bit better than portraits at the beginning (Ryu or Akuma look a bit rough in comparison as evidenced by a few grey pixels here and there) as I got a better hang of how to work more efficiently.

Due to higher resolutions, please set your p1.face/p2.face scale to .5 in your fight.def's select screen, vs screen and victory screen denotations. If not, these will all appear extra large as they won't scale on-screen properly. With scaling mentioned, I am uncertain if these will work on WinMugen Plus as I have not tested them (nor do I have reason to).

Here are some preview shots of what you get.

I felt that Killer Instinct needed a little Mugen love, so here we have some soundtrack goodness in the form of a genuine rip straight from the Arcade Game itself.

Even with Rare's awesome Killer Cut's soundtrack, there were plenty of tracks missing, so I figured what the hell?? Let me fire up Audacity and MAME to sample what has been missing for far too long. In my opinion, Killer Instinct had some very well orchestrated tunes that sounded amazing for their time. To this day, I feel that that opinion holds true. There are also plenty of KI stages available for Mugen that utilize the SNES low quality audio, so you can now utilize music straight out of the Arcade.

Tracks that are included within the .Zip file are:

• Canyon Bridge, Chief Thunder's Theme
• Ice Temple, Glacius' Theme
• Arena, Riptor's Theme
• Tiger Shrine, Jago's Theme
• Castle Interior, SabreWulf's Theme
• UltraTech's Industries, Fulgore's Theme
• Desert Rooftop, Cinder's Theme
• UltraTech Rooftop, Orchid's Theme
• Castle Rooftop, Spinal's Theme
• Back Alley, T.J. Combo's Theme Remix
• Underground Lair, Hidden Theme

Each Track was recorded with a 128kbps Bitrate, timing in at 1:59 long with Full ID3 Tagging (Track Number, Title, Artist, Year, etc.).

More information is found within the readme file I included in the provided .zip file.

Yes, that Spoiler is right: I'm responsible for collaborating with Two4Teezee to help update BrokenMugen to run on Mugen 1.0, minus graphical hiccups, back in late September of 2011. What I did here was simply quote our original thread:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Presented here today for your enjoyment, brokenMUGEN1.0 by two4teezee and Saikoro, a port complete evolution of brokenMUGEN v0.99 as it was published for WinMugen.

Readme content pasted below, with installation instructions (please don't feed my pet peeve):

Code:

--------------------------------------------
 BrokenMUGEN1.0 Screenpack v1.0
 by two4teezee and Saikoro
 [two4teezee@yahoo.com, sa1k0r0@yahoo.com]
--------------------------------------------
 
 What's New in v.1.0:
	- Full MUGEN 1.0 support
	- Nearly every sprite redrawn
	  for 640x480
	- New loading screen
	- New intro
	- New win quote screen
	- New continue screen
	- New credit roll
	- What the hell... everything!

 Details of this release:
	- Includes the following:
	   - brokenMUGEN1.0 Motif
	   - Broken98SP Lifebars
	   - SF3SP Spark Set
	   - brokenMUGEN Icon
	- To install: extract this
	  archive into your MUGEN 1.0 root
	  folder. Nothing should be 
	  overwritten. In your root folder,
	  you'll find four .bat's. Click on
	  any of them to start up MUGEN with
	  the select screen specified in the
	  .bat's name.
	- To add characers: edit 
	  brokenSELECT.def found in:
	  [MUGENroot]/data/bM1point0/
	  That's it. Really.
	- The brokenMUGEN icon is found in:
	  /data/bM1point0/brokenMUGEN/z-bonus
	  You can use this icon to customize 
	  links you have to your MUGEN. 
	  Enjoy.

 Inspired by:
	- KOF 98 (thanks SNK)
	- Even Badder Mofo (thanks 
	  Christopher Hansen)
	- VF5LBs (thanks Zedzdead)
	- SF3LBs (thanks matmut)
	- Messatsu's idea engineering

 Two4teezee's Credits and Thanks:
	- Saikoro for getting me back in the
	  game. You had done great work with
	  the coordinates... I thought it
	  was only appropriate we kick it up
	  a notch.
	- Cybaster, laquak, ahrimanes: thank
	  you for contributing to the credit
	  roll!
	- The thanks below are from v0.99
	  and still plenty valid!
	- Neo-Kamek and Messatsu for the 
	  .cns code that enabled the in-game
	  announcer.
	- Neo-Kamek for the MVC2 announcer 
	  sounds.
	- Zwei Fuss for ripping SF3.
	- DJ-VAN for providing ideas and a 
	  sound sample from his EVE SP, as 
	  well as for letting me use his 
	  plug-in.
	- And more... thanks to you all.
	- Mugen Infantry for hosting this.
	- The following MUGEN communities:
 	  - Mugen Infantry
 	  - Randomselect
  	  - Mugen Guild
	- The following MUGEN creators for
	  providing their portraits for the
	  universal ending:
	  - iTorres
	  - catinbags/LILTandStrick
	  - (yber])ragon10]{
 	  - omega_black1990
 	  - DJ-VAN
 	  - haruko
 	  - and more...
	- The following MUGEN creators for 
	  inspiration:
	   - Chunky with his TV stages
 	   - Vyn for his characters
	   - POTS for his characters
	   - DJ-Van for his screenpack
	   - zedzdead for his screenpack
	   - ahuron for his characters
	- The following people or creations
  	  for inspiration:
  	   - The feature film Grindhouse,
             particularly Planet Terror
 	   - Christopher Hansen for his
             font, "Even Badder Mofo"

Saikoro's Credits and Thanks:
	- Two4teezee for EVERYTHING since day
	  one. Working with him has been an
	  absolute pleasure. You rock man!!
	  I really can't thank you enough as I
	  am proud to have contributed something
	  so great to everyone who loves Mugen.
	- MugenGuild for being such an awesome
	  community. Lets keep it going strong!!
	- All of the top creators, including:
	   - Two4teezee
	   - DJ-VAN
	   - Cyanide
	   - Cybaster
	   - P.o.t.S.
	   - Sean Altly
	   - Dcat Power
	  These authors have too much to be
	  thanked for, but their works will
	  forever be among the greatest and
	  most talented, inspiring creations
	  within the community. Long live Mugen
	  and the 2D Fighting Game!! Shoryuken!!

Screenshots:

Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty

And sooooo much more that's not captured in these screenshots...

I'm looking for a more official place to host this, but in the meantime, feel free to download it from here; also, mirrored here.

Please post comments, criticism, etc. in the thread.

Anticipating the following questions/issues, please read before posting question/issue  :

Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty

Quote

two4teezee, why is teh SP sooo beeg?

And if anyone has any qualms about the filesize... sorry, I don't care   

Quote

two4teezee, I want the old lifebars bak, nut teh mesh 1s?

Go into the systemXXX.def file you are using at [MUGENroot]/data/bM1point0/brokenMUGEN/def. Look at line 37:

Code:

fight = ../../broken98/fightM.def

and delete the "M" so that it reads:

Code:

fight = ../../broken98/fight.def