GFXCards is a plug-in for the GIMP that lets you easily convert a single image into a format suitable for printing on Business and Greeting Card stock or regular paper. You can determine page characteristics such as width and size and printer resolution as well as set the number of rows and columns your card stock contains. You can also get an idea of how big an image to create before you start.
GFXCards works by scaling an existing image to fit into a single cell of a multirow / multicolumn page layout. It then creates a new Canvas window of the specified size. The scaled copy of the original image is sharpened, if requested, and copied to the appropriate cells in the layout on the new image. Borders are added, also if requested, right before the new Canvas window is displayed. All that's left is for you is to print the new image.
Table of Contents
- Getting Started
- The Grid/Image Options
- Saving and Loading Presets
- Using the Page Adjustments Frame
- Using the Adjust Grid Square Margins frame
- Resetting Options To Their Initial Settings
- Applying changes and closing the window
- Possible User Errors
- Finding Out How Big To Make Your Original Source Image
- Tips
- Limitations
Before getting started you should become familiar with terminology used with GFXCards. First, each element in a row/column of the final image is known as a "grid square". Each grid square is essentially one business card or one side of a greeting card. A grid square also has adjustable "grid margins". The original image, also known as the source image, will be scaled to fit into a single grid square and within the specified grid margins. The grid margins are different from the "page margins". Page margins are the areas between the edge of the paper and where the grid squares begin.
Page Options, with Page Adjustments
showing selected grid squares in color (white squares are unselected).
The GFXCards interface is fairly intuitive. First, there are two pages in the opening dialog: Page Options and Grid/Image Options. The first page, Page Options, allows you to configure your page layout. Starting in the upper left corner of this page you'll find the Page Adjustments frame (frames are outlined with a thin, raised line). This frame displays both the current page layout information as well as allows you to interactively update the page width, page height and oage margins. More on using this frame a little later.
To the right of the Page Adjustements are the Page Dimensions fields. You can enter the page width and height here. These values will also be automatically udpated when you make interactive changes to the Page Adjustments frame.
Below the Page Dimensions fields are the Row and Columns settings. Clicking on the arrow buttons will increase or decrease the numbers of rows or columns. Below these are two buttons labeled Select All and Clear All. These buttons are used to select or deselect all the grid squares in the Page Adjustments frame. More on what selecting a grid square means when we talk about using the Page Adjustement frame a little later.
Images destined for a printer need to be created based on the printer resolution, not the screen resolution. Computer monitors use 72 Dots Per Inch (DPI) but printers can use up to 1400 DPI or more. The DPI frame allows you to specify the printers DPI using either the slider or the text input field, whichever you prefer. The DPI setting is used to calculate how large to scale the copy of the original image in order to fit into the grid square inside the grid margins. You can see how large this scaled copy will be by looking at the Suggested Size inside the Source Image frame, which can be found on the Grid / Images Options page. This information is useful because you would, optimally, like to create the original image at the suggested size so that scaling is kept to a minimum. Excessive scaling will distort the original as it will appear on the printed page.
Below the DPI settings is an informational field showing the Projected New Image Size that the new image will be in kilobytes (1024 bytes) when it is created. The default shows an image size of about 2MB - a bit large but this is necessary to get a reasonable print image at the default resolution of 150 DPI. Note that much better quality prints will require DPI settings of 300 or higher.
The image size information is displayed to give you an idea of the amount of memory you will be using to create the new image. Creating a high quality images suitable for printing can be a very memory intensive process.
The last frame of the Page Options page is the Page Margins frame. These four fields can be used to manually specify the margins on the printed page. The toggle buttons are used to select the active margin in the Page Adjustements frame. Again, the Page Adjustments frame will be covered in more detail after the discusson of the Grid/Page Options page.
The second page of this plug-in provides options used to specify configuration of individual grid squares. At the top of the page is a menu for selecting the Source Image to use in each grid. Any image window can be used, be they RGB, Indexed or Greyscale images. The source image need not be the same image from which the GFXCards plug-in was started.
Below this is the preview frame, labeled Adjust Grid Square Options. Margin settings can be changed interactively here. Just below this frame is the Grid Square Margins frame. Like its counterpart on the first page, this frame offers the user a chance to manually adjust margins, though in this case the margins are for individual grid squares.
To the right of the Grid Square Margins frame can be found information on the source image size, both current and suggested. Use this information to determine how large an image you should create to fit into your configured page layout.
At the bottom of the page you will find an adjustment for sharpening the copy of the original image. Sharpening of the image can be used for special effects but it can also be used clean up the image copy when excessive scaling has been performed.
The grid square margins can be used as a boundary around the image copy in the final image. To draw this boundary you need only select the Add Border To Margin Line option, located to the right of the Sharpen Amount adjustment. This border is drawn last during processing, after the image copy has been sharpened but before the final image is actually displayed.
GFXCards can save your current page and grid layout information in named presets. To save a configuration, select File->Save Preset from the menu bar at the top of the window. Provide both a name and a description - both items are required. When ready, click on the Save button at the bottom of the Save Preset window.
To load a previously saved preset, just click on its name in the Load Preset page of the main window. The click on the Load button to activate the preset.
Using The Page Adjustements Frame
You can interactively adjust the page size and margins by clicking and dragging within the framed outline in the Page Adjustments frame in the Page Options page of the main dialog. This frame contains the physical page, represented as the white block, the margins, and the row and column dividers. Additionally, you can interactively select which grid squares in the final image will receive copies of the source image.
In the upper right corner of the white page you will see a small box outlined in black. This is the Page Grab Box. Clicking within this box enables the page resize mode for the Page Adjustments frame. Just click inside the box and drag the mouse around to watch the page be resized. You can see the page dimensions being updated in the Page Width and Page Height fields to the right of the Page Adjustment frame. In order to allow finer adjustments to the page the amount of movement of the mouse does not correspond exactly to the amount of change in page size, so don't be suprised if you find the pointer needs to be moved outside of the Grab Box in order to change the page size a specific amount.
Margins are displayed in the Page Adjustments frame using the horizontal and vertical lines that extend to the edges of the frame (ie beyond the white area of the page). Three of these lines are dashed lines and one is solid - the solid margin line is the active margin. Clicking the left mouse button anywhere within the frame except the Page Grab Box will allow you to drag the active margin up or down (for the top and bottom margins) or left and right (for the side margins). To change the active margin, click on the appropriate button in the Page Margins frame. When you click on one of the buttons the new active margin turns to a solid line and the rest become dashed lines. You can also type in margin widths directly in their respective fields in the Page Margins frame.
Page margins are specified in inches, since this is likely to be how they are specified with the paper stock you will be using. Converting inches into pixels is simple enough - just multiply the inches by DPI. However, you shouldn't need to do such conversions as GFXCards will take care of that for you.
GFXCards can be used to create a complete page of cards, such as business cards, or partial pages, such as one side of a greeting card. Greeting card stock is often broken into 4 squares with printing done on both sides of the card. GFXCards lets you select only those grid squares in which images will be printed. To do this, click with the right or middle (either should work) mouse button inside one of the grid squares. The selected box will become colored (the Graphics Muse rust color). Selected squares will be the ones which have copies of the original image copied into them in the final image. You can disable squares by clicking on the square again, causing the square to be colored white. Alternatively you can use the Grid Square Selection buttons to select or deselect all of the grid squares at one time.
Using the Adjust Grid Square Margins frame.
Using the Adjust Grid Square Margins frame in the Grid/Image Options page is just like using the Page Adjustements frame on the first page. The only differences are that the white page size cannot be changed and there are no grid square selections here. Like the Page Adjustments margins, the Grid Square margins are specified in inches.
Resetting Options To Their Initial Settings.
Resetting options to their default settings can be done by clicking on the Reset button at the bottom of the GFXCards dialog window. This button can also be used to update the Source Image menu in the Grid/Image Options page. This may be necessary, for example, if you have opened new Image Windows after having started the GFXCards plug-in.
Additionally, if you change the number of rows or columns then all grid squares are automatically selected. Note that none of the other fields are reset, although they may be adjusted to reflect the new size of individual grid squares.
Applying changes and closing the window.
Once you've made all the adjustments you need to your page just click on the Apply button at the bottom of the window. This will start GFXCards on its way to creating the new image. Because the scaling and copying process can take quite some time, especially on memory limited or slower processor systems, it is not always obvious that anything is happening. Be patient.
GFXCards doesn't work quite like most of the other GIMP plug-ins you are used to - it doesn't close immediately after you have used it one time. This way you can experiment a few times to find the right configuration for your new image without having to restart the plug-in each time. To close the window, simply choose the File->Quit menu option.
GFXCards can be used with all of its defaults though there are some requirements. At a minimum, at least one grid square must be selected (all grid squares are selected by default). If no grid squares are selected and the Apply button is pressed, GFXCards will not do anything.
Another possible problem is that the currently selected source image, from the Grid/Image Options page, may no longer exist. This might happen if you have closed the Canvas Window before processing it with GFXCards. If this happens, GFXCards will recognize the source image window has gone and rebuild the source image menu. Simply select another image and proceed as usual.
Finding Out How Big To Make Your Original Source Image
Since scaling images can cause quite a bit of distortion you may want to start out by first creating an image that needs little or no rescaling. To do this you can open the GFXCards window and make the page adjustments for your expected output image. Then look in the Source Image Size box on the lower right of the Grid/Image Options page. The Current Size shows the size of the current source image. The Suggested Size is the size the image should be if you want to prevent unwanted scaling distortion. Just make sure your source image is the suggested size to avoid unwanted artifacts in your final image.
- GFXCards will create large images suitable for printing at the specified resolution. Be sure to use the same resolution when printing. Also, GFXCards will benefit from extra system memory. 256MBytes or more is recommended. While slower CPU's will work, a CPU speed of at least 350MHz is also recommended.
- In the GIMP-Print dialog, set the Scaling to use PPI (Pixels Per Inch) instead of the default Percentage. Then adjust the scaling slider to the same DPI you used with GFXCards. This will cause the Print plug-in to not add additional margin space to the printed page beyond what you specified with GFXCards's Page Margins. If you don't do this the Print Plug-In will try to use the page margins it expects your printer to have built in to it.
- To experiment with grid square alignment without having to use lots of memory (and lots of time), set the DPI to 72 or less and the page size to half what you will be using on your printed page. This will create a displayed image that is the same dimensions, but much smaller physically and can be computed much more quickly by GFXCards and the GIMP.
- GFXCards does not currently run in batch mode.
- GFXCards does not produce Postscript output. Instead, it creates a raster image suitable for passing to a postscript printing system such as GIMP-Print.
