I'll be out when Terry surfaces but will pick up this thread first thing tomorrow
I've now surfaced for a little while
There is a good guide to cutouts and frame in the Help: Contents-Listing of Major Functions-Cutouts.
Here is some of the info':
How to create a cutout image: To create a cutout, just use your favorite image editor and create a new image in 24 bit (16 million) color format. The image can be anything you like, however, Qimage treats all shades of pure gray as a transparency level: 0,0,0 is 100% transparent and 255,255,255 is opaque and will show as white on the printout. In other words, the original image will "show through" the cutout for any pixel in your cutout that has RGB value 0,0,0. A gray shade of 128,128,128 will show your image "half faded" to white. A value of 255,255,255 in your cutout will show as white in the resulting image (none of the original image will come through). All other shades of pure gray can be used to specify how much of the original image makes it through to the result, with 0,0,0 showing the original image and 255,255,255 having the original image completely "blocked" (white). Given this, if you look at the first oval cutout above, it is no more than an all white image with a circle in the center filled with RGB color (0,0,0). Why is the image above an oval cutout and not a circle? Because the cutout is always stretched first (distorted) so that it fits over the target image exactly. This is handy because if you look at the oval cutout supplied with Qimage (which is actually a circle), the top, bottom, left and right edges always touch the edge of your photo giving you the maximum possible area inside the oval! The second, faded oval, is a cutout with 0,0,0 near the center, fading through 1,1,1, 2,2,2, 3,3,3, etc to the edges where the 255,255,255 completely masks the original image.
Because you want to vignette to black (or any other colour including grey), Help tells you how to do it:
While neutral colors from 0,0,0 (transparent) to 255,255,255 (opaque) have special meaning in that they dictate the amount of transparency, it is possible to fade to colors other than white (the default fade color). Simply add the fade color enclosed in square brackets as part of the file name. For example, fade-oval.tif fades from transparent in the center to white at the edges. The same file with the name fade-oval[0,0,0].tif will fade to black at the edges instead of white. Naming the file fade-oval[0,255,0].tif will cause a fade to green at the edges, and so forth. Note that regardless of the fade color, 0,0,0 still indicates 100% image and 0% fade color and 255,255,255 indicates 0% image and 100% fade color. Also note that if you would like your prints to fade into the color set as the page background color, do not use the file name fade override as it will override the fade color without considering the page background color.
I've attached a sample that fades to black. NB. the original was a tiff. Also note the [0,0,0] in the file name to indicate it fades to black.
Looking forward to more info on cutouts, especially the name of Terry's program.
The program I use is Serif Page Plus.
http://www.serif.com/pageplus/ which is a desktop publishing program. They also do DrawPLus but PagePlus has many of the drawing features.
It's similar to programs like Corel Draw but costs much less, especially if you buy last years edition. Other programs like Photoshop or Corel Paintshop Pro should be able make cutouts and frames too.
Terry
Qimage registration expired? New lifetime licenses are only $59.99!
