Image Tool
This is the 1st step in providing us with a long desired and sorely needed tool. It is very basic but it serves its purpose
beautifully. A very special thanks goes to the 3 developers who have provided us with this tool
How to use the Image Tool:
Open a new file or an existing pattern file.
Click on the Image tab and select Import Image.
Navigate to where you have saved the image that you wish to load.
And click on Open.
Take not of the message that says that your image will not be saved & click on OK.
Your image will be positioned at the position of the base point in your drawing board.
You can click and hold on the image to reposition it to a preferred position and you can drag the side dots to resize the
image until you’re happy with it.
If you right-click on the image, a menu pops up with the Properties, Lock, Order and delete:
Once you have the image to your liking, you can add more images and these will overlap the other images in the order
that they are added unless the order is changed in the Order tab.
It is best to Lock the image once you’re happy with it and wish to start drafting over it. This way, it won’t inadvertently
move.
And when you’re done with the image, you can delete it using the Delete option, or you can save & close the pattern
and the image won’t be there when you reopen the pattern file.
If you are working with an image which shows all the details that you want to draft, I suggest the following:
Create a box using an across measurement and an up/down measurement from the measurements file. Here, I’ve used
the across back measurement and the back height to waste measurement:
Add your image to the drawing board and match the sides of this box on your image using the side controls:
I’ve made the test lines blue so that I can see them and not confuse them with the images lines. You can see that the
centre neck back is matched to the image and the chest line is matched to the image.
Scrolling down, you can see that the chest line is still matching the image and the waist line also matches the image:
And here you can see the zoomed out image with the control points to adjust the image. They are grey dots when you
are over the unlocked image and when you hover over a dot, it changes to red so that you know you are about to start
adjusting the image from this point and the cursor changes to an appropriate arrow to show the directions that moving
this dot will adjust in:
A corner dot:
NB. - At the moment, rotations can only be done in the Properties.
Before locking your image, I’d suggest taking a screenshot of the properties (or make a note of them) so that you can
replicate them if you need to close the pattern before you are done:
Once you’re happy with the image, you may lock it down and the adjustment dots change to grey locked locks to show
that it’s locked:
At this point, you can delete your guidelines that you created earlier and start drafting.
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Shortcuts:
Import an image – Alt/I
Holding down the Ctrl/Cmd key while resizing will resize the image from the centre of the image.
Holding down the Shift key while resizing will resize the image uniformly both horizontally and vertically,
maintaining the aspect ratio.
NB. – The dots are the same size regardless of how far in or out you have zoomed so that you can see them easily at all
times, while the locks do increase/decrease in size according to the zoom.
