ImageMagick Editor Update

An update to the ImageMagick editor is released. The IM editor provides a way to modify FiG effects or develop your own. Command line instructions are sent directly from the editor to ImageMagick with results immediately visible on-screen.

Latest changes include updates to many of the effects, a brief explanation of each special effect and ways it can be altered in the editor, and a pop-up list of the macro keywords that can be used to reference colors, font, font size, etc.

When the editor is visible, all special effect toolbar commands are loaded into the editor before execution. This allows you to make changes to the commands sent to ImageMagick. In addition, the IM editor holds a list of library effects. These are effects that have limited use or limitations such that they dont deserve space on the toolbar. If the editor is closed, toolbar effects are executed immediately.

Freehand Draw - Preview site

An upcoming release of Font Image Generator will provide a freehand draw tool that can be used to draw or annotate onto images that you generate.

Here is a link to the preview site

To use the feature, generate an image and then click the draw button and draw with mouse or graphics tablet if you have one.

To merge the drawing with the original image, click the "create" button. If you want to apply the drawing under the original image click the "over/under" button just right of the create button to toggle the target of the merge.

It uses a Flash overlay which generates a .SVG vector image which is then composed into the underlying image by ImageMagick.

Release is delayed by a bug in ImageMagick which should be fixed in the next ImageMagick release due soon.

The bug is that ImageMagick fails to recognize unfilled paths and always fills them with black. You will see this on any curved line that you draw. This makes the feature pretty useless in FIG. It works well with straight lines, stipples, etc., however.

In 2009, expect a full suite of vector graphics tools that can be used with FIG generated images.

Please give the alpha site a try and post your comments and observations.

New FIG text Engine, Stroke Settings, Image Dims.

All FIG images are now created with ImageMagick giving new features and more robust performance, especially with larger font sizes. Previously, text generation was done by PHP/GD.

The new features include stroke color/width and the ability to set an image width independent of the height. Word-wrap also behaves much better with this change. Stroke settings are found on the control panel. To achieve transparent fill with strokeoutline, clear the hex value from the fill color box.

Now, setting the image width by itself controls the point where text wraps to the next line. Image height expands automatically to contain the text that was entered.

Setting both width and height does the same thing except that any text that overflows the dimensions you set will be clipped.

Arc Distortion Effect

A interesting new effect is available in the IM editor effect library. Arc distortion lets you bend text or any image into an arc.



Command: -rotate 0 -virtual-pixel Background - background \#ffffff -distort Arc '120 0'

The background color in the command is the color IM uses to fill the empty space created when the effect is applied. 120 is the number of degrees in the ARC. Set it to 360 and text is bent into a full circle.




Command: -rotate 0 -virtual-pixel Transparent -distort Arc '120 0'

Starts with a transparent image. In this case, the empty space is filled with transparent pixels



Command: -rotate 180 -virtual-pixel Transparent -distort Arc '120 180'

To reverse the arc apply some rotation applied:

Pattern Filled Text

This effect is found in the ImageMagick Library. Fills the current font/size/text with the current foreground image adding a border of the current foreground color.

How to use:

• Build a text image on the foreground. A Fat solid font works best.
  
• Set the foreground color to the desired border color.
  
• Expose the effect in the ImageMagick library.
  
• Build a foreground image you want to use as fill. Anything can be used. Try some tiles from the "tiles" category in the clipart section of the dimgmapper.
  
• Apply the effect
  

Example:

Glitter, Edge Effects.

Added some new effects in the ImageMagick library.

- Glitter fill: Fill a GIF image with blue glitter. In the next few weeks, this feature will be expanded with additional fills and better interface. Consider this just a preview.

- Torn Edge, Soft Edge, Vignette: Some edge effects. Note that currently, some of these require a PNG format image. You can convert to PNG with the function on the effects toolbar. Converting back to JPG will kill some of the effect because transparency is lost.

I'll try to improve these effects in the future.

Convert image to PNG / JPG. negative image

Added 3 new functions to the effect bar.

The first two enable conversion of file format to PNG or JPG formats. These are useful as some effects require alpha transparency available in PNG format.

Use of GIF images is not recommended. Transparent GIF has been disabled because of poor image quality. PNG image is a much better alternative.

The thirsd is negative image which changes colors of the current image to their inverse. Black to white, white to black, etc