Functions

Legoaizer - Help

Functions

These functions are only shows when a button on the left of the GUI is pressed. A dedicated window is now opened with a certain set of features, settings, checkboxes, etc. Each time a new function-set is selected this pop-up window is refreshed with the new functions. There can be only one of these windows open.

Mosaic size

Picture above: the mosaic size pop-up window. The following functions are available:

Number of horizontal and vertical studs (for Ministeck® there is no such thing as a stud, but the same reasoning apply). This value is a good and practical measure of the size of the mosaic. For brick the stud size is appr 8 mm, for the Ministeck® appr. 3 mm. The size is reflected in the status bar.
Automatic vertical size: when checked the application will automatically calculate the number of vertical studs that matches with the aspect ratio of the source picture.
Automatic crop to size: when checked the actual part that is rendered as a mosaic follows either the aspect ratio of the source picture (when 'Automatic vertical size' is also checked), or when the user has decided to indicate the number of horizontal and vertical studs manually. In that case the aspect ratio of these two values is used. Alternatively, the user can manually crop a part in the source picture. Depending on the settings of automatic size and crop the cropped part is adapted when the user selects a cropped part, or resizes an existing part. When the user starts cropping, a crop window is shown. To select the original again, simply click somewhere outside the cropping area. Note: cropping does not work for sideways placed bricks (like a wall). Also using plates to stack up as a sideways wall won't work with cropping. You need to pre-crop (e.g. in Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Irfanview, etc.) your picture before attempting to create a sideway wall mosaic.
Apply (base plates): both bricks, Ministeck® and Beads have fixed sizes for their baseplates. The user can apply these standard sizes to set the size of the mosaic. In case that base plates are applied the mosaic size follows the fixed size increments of the selected base plate.
Bricked like a wall: both bricks and duplo bricks can be placed sideways. This way the studs are stacked on top of each other, like building a wall of bricks. The amount of bricks will increase because the height of the stone is smaller than the duplo 2-stud wide bricks, but will decrease compared with 1-stud wide bricks are selected. There is a special tutorial for sideway bricks.
Rotate source: the brick-fitting engine starts to detect and place bricks from left to right, from top to bottom. In most cases the pattern will look like a kind of bricked wall, with clearly horizontal layers. In case the user wants to have vertical layers the picture must be rotated.

Colour matching

Picture above: the colour matching size pop-up window. The following functions are available:

Colour engine: the choice of engine how the colours of the bricks must be determined. There is two kinds of engines: colour engines and black and white engines. The following engines are available:
- Full colour: the source picture is analysed for available colours from the brick palette. When matching colours are found the corresponding bricks or Ministeck® colour will be selected. In some cases when a colour is required but no matching palette colour is available it will select the best possible alternative from the available palette.
- Colour dithered a colour dithering pre-processing step is made. Then the 'Full colour' approach is followed.
- Grayscale: the source picture is first converted to grayscale. Then the 'Full colour' approach is followed. In this case also coloured bricks can be selected.
- Black and white (auto): a standard black and white filter is applied (the black and white dithering with automatic level detection). Then the 'Full colour' approach is followed, where only two colours are required.
- Black and white (max): a standard black and white filter is applied (the black and white dithering with maximum level detection). Then the 'Full colour' approach is followed, where only two colours are required.
- Black and white (dithered): a standard black and white dithering filter is applied (ordered dithering). Then the 'Full colour' approach is followed, where only two colours are required.
- Floyd-Steinberg (B&W): a standard Floyd-Steinberg (black and white) dithering filter is applied. Then the 'Full colour' approach is followed, where only two colours are required. For more information about black and white dithering there is plenty of it on the internet, for instance on Wiki.
Dither-mix: the colour dithering can be blended with the original colours. This way the effect of dithering can be somewhat softened, while still using the strength of the dithering pre-processing step.
Threshold of used: when this value is larger than 0 the application will try to limit the amount of bricks used to this value. There is however no guarantee it will reach the exact amount. It will try to create a brick mosaic with no more than the indicated amounts for all bricks. This value is active for all bricks of all active sizes and colours. So: when a 1x1 brick yellow is used 25 times, but the 1x2 brick is used 5 times, and you want to only used more than e.g. 10 pieces of each brick, only the 1x2 is discarded from the selection. But, in case also the 1x1 is used less than 10 times, the entire colour will be discarded, irrelevant if in a new try this colour can be used more frequently. The approach is iterative, meaning: it will try several times to recalculate the colours and bricks, until it satisfies the indicated target values. And: once a brick or stone is discarded, it will not return back to the selection!
Limit to # of colours: when this checkbox is active the application will try to limit the amount of colours to this value. There is however no guarantee it will reach the exact amount. It will try to create a brick mosaic with no more colours than indicated with this value. The default maximum value is 56 colours. When more colours are needed it will show a warning: the excel blueprint file cannot hold more than 56 (= 54 + black and white) colours. You should then reconsider the amount of colours you want to have. This option can be useful e.g. to keep the colour variety low (cost effective) or to create artistic effects (e.g. just with 4 colours). In some cases the result is not quite so good, and the user is better off to keep this value equal to 56 and manually edit the end result. In most cases it will reach a lower amount of colours with the default 56 maximum. Finally, the colour reduction is different when using the Mosaizer Pro engine. In lesson 6 of the bricks Tutorial more details are provided.
Speed to iterate to target: When a limit of colours is set ('Threshold', 'Limit'), the application will redefine the amount of colours in one action (using colour dithering). This step is not so very accurate, however still quite a good start. To make the iteration loop more sensitive for small colour reductions, you should activate this iteration option as well. It's an alternative way, and can be much slower, to reach the (almost) exact amount of colours. This approach will iterate down from the unrestricted amount of colours, by stepwise skipping the colours with the lowest count until the target amount is reached. It can take quite a while when a large number of colours and mosaic sizes are to be iterated down (from seconds to even minutes). The value indicated on it's right (in the above example: '5') is an extra control to set the Iteration speed. A low number is a low speed (small steps down); while a high value will increase the speed, but will also be less accurate. The difference is small, but nevertheless this control parameter can be of geat help when you have to get down from e.g. 120 to 16 colours.
Use cartoon colours: this will perform a similar limitation to the indicated amount of colours, but in a faster way, and less subtle. It only uses the colours that are found in the image that are most used, hence the 'cartoon' naming. It will e.g. only look at 25 colours at most, and therefore this option in only suitable for cartoon-like images with just a few colours.
Photo mosaic: these settings are explained in another chapter.
Colour sorting: select one of the four sorting options, or return to the original sequence. The sorting sequence is not stored, but is just temporary. In you wish to keep this sequence you need to save the sorted colour database. This is done in the usual way: via the menu 'Colour table' 'Save table as'. In the status bar the name of the dataset is changed to '<name> (Sorted)' to indicate that you are using a temporary colour database table. Sorting options:
- Hue colour tone, ranging from 0° to 360°), slightly affected by the saturation to create a logical colour sequence.
- Windows RGB: 256*256*Red + 256*Green + Blue, all colour values between 0-255, basically starting with black, ending in white; this sorting scale may also be used to evaluate the grayscale value).
- Perceptive: the Cr-value in the Y-Cb-Cr broadcast/TV colour system (Cb-Cr = reds and greens, see here for more details).
- Alphabetical: the sequence when a colour name is used for sorting (therefore alphabetical). Can be useful to find a certain colour by name or code.

Picture above: the 5 colour sorting options. From left to right: Original sequence (actually following Bricklink sequence), Hue, Windows RGB and Perceptive, Alphabetical.

Because the sorting is not easy to explain in the example above, we also show the result from a series of 500 random colours, sorted according to the first 4 methods:

From top to bottom: original (random), Hue, Windows RGB and Perceptive.

Colour filters

Picture above: the colour correction filters and colour overview pop-up window.

The following functions are available:

Colour weights: here you can emphasize a certain colour of the source picture. In most cases this is not needed, but in other cases e.g. the blue channel is too dominant and too many blue bricks are selected. To counter this, the user can lower the influence of the blue channel, by reducing the RGB ratio. The effect is instantaneous, and can only be discarded by resetting the values to 0 again.
The filter box is used to correct the overall colour of the source picture. The effect is immediately applied in the window of the source picture.
'Apply photo filter' activates the filter effect.
The white rectangle is the colour of the filter. Click on this swatch to change the colour.
The Filter transparency is the amount of filter that is applied to the source picture. Default is 50%, it ranges from 0 to 100%.
The Filter box has a selection of 43 different filters. Some are too weird to use, but fun to look at. Others can be very helpful to make the colours crispier, sharper or to correct a certain colour haze.
Apply transparency is a great way of getting rid of background in images. The transparent parts will not be used in the brick/bead mosaic, and you will be able to create image shapes, rather then full rectangular baseplates/pegboards (and considerably cheaper to create). For instance, when a cartoon image is used, the background is usually white (or any other solid colour). By clicking on the colour patch a pop-up window is shown, in which you can click anwhere in the left image, while the right image reflects the part that will be made transparent. A few controls for feathring and sensitivity are provided to tune the transparent part. In the tutorial lesson 5 for beads more information and examples is provided.
The Colour requirements box on the right is the graphical representation of the colours of the source picture, and the available colours in the brick library. The picture colours will be live-updated when Colour weights are changed. In the current version it does not yet respond to changes in the filters.

The filters van be used for several purposes: to correct a colour cast of the source picture, or to make the colour more crisp, or to emphasize a certain colour, e.g. 'gold' Ministeck® mosaics (some colours are very suitable to create warm-gold mosaics). The two example pictures below show some of the effects that can be made.

Example picture 1: the photo filters and their transparency settings

Example picture 2: the RGB filters for several different settings

Ministeck settings

Picture above: the Ministeck® price & mosaic rendering settings pop-up window. The following functions are available:

Minimize use of 1x1: in some cases it's useful to limit the amount of 1x1 because there are just 2 in each commercial colour sets, while the other parts (1x2 etc) are commonly available. This might not always be very useful because also sets of 1x1 pieces can be purchased where 20 parts per set are available.
Use L-shapes: some users don't want these to appear in the mosaic. Also the availability of L-shapes is not very high, just 4 per commercially available set.
Optimize for cost: depending on the previously explained settings, the application can optimize the use of all the pieces in the commercially available sets and limit the need for purchasing many sets, where just a few parts are needed. This is not always a real optimum, it's a computer generated mosaic and in some cases not optimal to the utmost. This is typically an area we still improve a lot.
Cost: the actual cost in your currency of choice (here: 15 euro cents per set). Simply edit this box and fill in your own value. These values will be stored in your table when saved.

Bead options

The beads colour settings are simple (left part of the above picture): indicate wich combination of colour set is required, then press the 'Update colour set' button. The current colour set is immediately replaced with the new selection. The new selection is only temporary, and when closing the application this selection is not remembered. Be careful: not-stored changes in the old set are discarded when changing the colour set for beads this way.

On the right side a different feature is shown: using shaped pegboards. These pegboards are pre-installed, and should not be removed from your system (they will be removed however when you uninstall Legoaizer). To make a pegboard active, check the 'Apply pegboard' option, and select one of the boards in the miniature viewer. Then create the mosaic. The output picture is complete, but the excel spreadsheet is not suitable for building. You should use the 'Special printing' pdf-printing get a good building map for colours, positions and amounts per colour. This output applies the peg-board settings to visualise each bead (in the GUI and in print), but in some cases the peg size is too large or small, showing a pegboard mosaic result where the beads seems too large or small to fit onto the shaped pegboard. The 'Peg size correction' can change this: a positive value will make each bead larger in the print-out, while a negative value will decrease the bead shape (but only in the interface and the 'Special printing' blueprint). This tweaking parameter is only useful for making the result look more realistic, and has no effect on the bead mosaic creation.

Finally, the 'Paint tube' icon in the middle opens a dedicated window in the interface to actually 'goo' and draw with a pencil/brush. Since this feature requires quite some explanation, this is described in detail in the tutorial on pegboards (link), and therefore not explained in this paragraph.

Preferences

Picture above: the preferences pop-up window. The following functions are available:

3D options are used for simulating 'real' bricks in the blueprint output. When no library of photographs is used for bricks, the entire mosaic is computer generated, where the brick colour is taken from the colour sets, and the 3D stud is created by overlaying a real built-in picture a of a brick stud. The top and bottom shades are also computer generated. When this option is checked, the studs are used for the mosaic end result in the viewer.

Depth intensity: the thickness and colour of the computer generated edge of each brick. Below you see the differences in values. The four on the left are with bricks, the two on the right are for Ministeck®.

Shade colour depth: similar to the width of the shade lines, also the colour of the shade can be set. This minor control is merely a fun-factor aspect and does not add real value. Nevertheless, in some cases you might want to create deeper shades for e.g. printing purposes.
Output size multiplier: since the entire mosaic is generated by computer code, the size of a brick must be indicated. This multiplier sets the size of a 1x1 brick in pixels. A value of 20 is pretty much ok, larger requires more RAM, smaller makes smaller pictures, but still fine.

The save options are used to assure there is always a picture of file at the end of the mosaic creation.

Automatic save (of) the result: when checked also one of the 'PNG', 'JPG' or 'BMP' buttons must be selected. Since jpg is a compressed format, some users prefer the uncompressed format (png or bmp). In addition, the 'XLS' option will also generate the excel spreadsheet output. This is a complete overview of the brick parts, codes, colour, positions, amounts, etc.
Rimless spreadsheet (if possible): in many cases you want to have the full build data available. The application creates an excel file where all the relevant data of bricks, sizes, cost and amount is shown. You must have an instance of Excel or an Excel Reader (freeware from Microsoft) available on your computer to read that file. It will be generated anyhow. In case the width of the mosaic exceeds the number of available columns in te spreadsheet (256) a new page is added. Until all pages are printed. There is hardly a limit to the height, so all pages are printed in full height. To create a page of exactly 256 columns (so: 256 studs wide) you should activate this option. In that case the horizontal stud numbers will be placed below the blueprint, while the vertical stud numbers are skipped, leaving exactly 256 studs on one sheet. This is particularly useful to create multiple sizes of 32-stud baseboards.
The little black (or white) rectangle indicates which colour the excell cell-edges will have: black or white. By clicking on this little square it will toggle between these two options. In most cases black will be fine, while for very dark mosaics white may be a better choice.
PDF save type: there are two possible output format for pdf save (Menu bar: 'File' > 'Print special'). The type 1 will save the build data for that page on a next page, type 2 will save the build data on the same page as the blueprint. Type 1 will therefore avoid that for large amounts of different bricks and colours the build/amount data gets printed off-page. Type 1 is the default, and this setting is also remembered next time you open Legoaizer (as with most of all general settings).

Other settings

The currency and unit you want to use for cost and price information. The number on the right is the granularity of your prince and cost information. In this case the currency is Euro, but each value in the Colour table should be divided by a factor of 1000 to get the real cost. For instance: the Ministeck® price of a set of 20 pieces is 15 cents, or 0.75 cent per piece. When we use the value of 75 in out tables, we actually mean 75/1000 euro.
Check for updates at startup. When ticked, each time the application is started, it will check if a new version of Legoaizer is available. You need to be connected to the internet. Only when a new version is found you will be notified.
Show guidelines in overviews: the 'Amount' and 'Cost' overviews can sometimes be hard to read by the sheer amount of data. When this option is checked guidelines are added in these two overviews which makes it easier to read.
Keep sharp edges. This option is useful to keep the sharp colour changes in a source picture. When the picture is used for colour matching some averaging is done: when smooth averaging is done the colours will gradually change over the picture, but this will also lead to unnatural (unwanted?) brick colour to cater for the change. When this option is active the colour is sharply changing, with hardly any 'weird' brick colours to make the transition. The two examples below shows the difference: left the normal colour extraction, right when sharp edges needs to be maintained.