Type 1: divisions are created by creating 4 new areas, where areas are painted according to the colour distribution.
Type 2: horizontal and vertical lines are created where some areas are merged, and lines are broken into parts. All created at random.

Some of the shape settings (explained hereafter) for both types are the same, some are different or have no equivalent.

Shape settings for Type 1

• Grid size: the size of the minimum width or height of an area, in pixels. The smaller the grid size, the more areas can be created. But also: the larger the painting size, the smaller the relative area size will automatically become. An example is shown below:

• Area: the minimum area size in pixels 'squared' (width x height) in percentage of the total area (width x height of the resulting painting bitmap) that must be filled with coloured areas.
• Pen width: the width of the lines in the painting. The line colour default is black, but can also be defined using the 'General options' button.
• Ratio: the relative placement of new areas as a ratio of the original areas size and where the area will be cut in two parts. For instance: a ratio of 3 will try to cut an area in two parts where the cut takes place at about 1/3 of the original line length. Note: technically the line length ratio of the two new lines is then 2:1, or 1/3 and 2/3 of the original length. The higher this value the taller the (longest) new area can become. An example of the effect of this parameter is shown here:

• Depth: the amount of attempts to cut an area into two new areas. For small dimensions, and for large grid sizes this value will hardly have effect, but for large dimensions and relatively small grid sizes this value will create a very fine mesh of areas. An example is shown below for a 1200 x 800 pixel painting:

• Division: similar to 'Ratio', but this parameter will also check if a area which is split lengthwise will not become too long compared to the new width. In case the new split creates to very long areas (and thus very small width) it will not split this the area, and continues to the next area instead. A low value will therefore force almost identical areas when split, while a high value will create many beam-like areas. An example of the effect of the division parameter is shown below:

Shape settings for Type 2

• Similar to Type 1 for 'Grid size' and 'Pen width' while 'Depth' and 'Division' are both greyed out.
• The 'Area' now means the amount of cells that is merged at random. This value indicates how much (as % of the total area) must be forced into a new area, where lines are now broken, and adjacent areas are created.
• The 'Ratio' parameter is now called 'Surface' where the amount of areas must be coloured using the 5 colours. This includes white, so at first it appears like hardly anything has been coloured. If this value is set to the maximum value (80%) and the relative percentage of white is set to a low value, the amount of coloured boxes is actually (approximately) 80% indeed. See example below (the active colour distribution is added in each picture as a shaded box):

General options

• 'Pre-merge areas: this option will attempt to pre-merge adjacent areas as much as possible. It will only try this in one 'wave', meaning: only one attempt for each area, meaning: only one time per original area after the full painting was created. When two areas merge, the area that wasn't yet merged earlier will then be skipped in a new merge.
• 'Draw edge line': this will also create a line around the edge of the painting.
• 'Cut to grid': when cutting a new line this option will attempt to cut the new line in the same grid as of the original areas. It's not guaranteed however that it will precisely put the new line at exactly the same spot as the line in the adjacent area. This option will however try the best possible.

The colour controls console

There are three buttons. 'Create' will create a new painting with the current settings. Each time you press this button a certain randomisation will ensure that each painting is truly unique. 'Transfer': to transfer the painting to the source file, where the painting is now the new source file for any mosaic creation next steps. The third button is the 'Undo' button of a post-processing action. There are 20 undo steps: when the 21st change is created the first will be deleted. An alternative way to undo is to press the CTRL+Z buttons (a common Windows undo-key combination).

The three radio-buttons at the bottom will allow for three different post-processing actions. They are all managed by pressing, dragging and moving the mouse. Pressing is always left-button, dragging is moving the mouse while pressing the left-button; moving is just moving (but the area that will become active is the area which is currently below the cursor position):

• Cut: this will cut the current area (i.e. the area below the cursor) in two parts, adding a new line. The colours of both new areas will be the same as the original (uncut) area. The default cut direction is East-West (horizontal). When the CTRL key is pressed the cursor will change to a North-South cursor, and a vertical cut is made.
• Merge : two cells can be merged. To merge two cells you need to move your cursor over the first area, press the left mouse-button, and drag the mouse to the second area, adjacent to your first selected area. Then release the mouse button. The two areas will be merged. This only works when two adjacent cells have the same width (vertical merging) or height (horizontal merging). When two areas cannot be merged, nothing will happen. The colour of the new area takes the same colour of the first selected area. You can move the merge movement in any direction: North, South, East or West. You can combine existing and new combinations as much as you want. For instance, the blue box in the picture above can be merged with the two white parts left of it: first merge the two white, then merge the new white part with the blue (or vice versa to make the new area blue).
• Recolour: a cell can be recoloured. The selected colour is selected by clicking on the colour patch at the bottom of the tab. The selected colour is highlighted by the turquoise rectangle around that patch box. You can recolour the same cell multiple times, the undo will repair the last step.

Post-processing cursors. From left to right: Recolour, Cut horizontal, Merge, Cut vertical

Area and line colours

The area colours are shown as 5 coloured lines (below each arrow control). The 5 arrow controls together to determine the relative contribution of the colour to the surface colours. This means: a value of 52% (e.g. white) will try to paint 52% of the areas white. When the sum of the colour contribution values doesn't add up to 100%, the canvas colour will become visible.

The sequence of colouring is from left to right: from red to black, where for Type 1 the areas are pre-sorted from largest to smallest. So, for Type 1 paintings the largest areas are typically red, while the smallest areas are typically black. For Type 2 paintings the application will try to fill the same relative colour contributions, but less accurate as compared with Type 1. The default colours are: red, blue, yellow, white and black. When you click on a coloured line below the arrow control you can redefine that colour. When pressing the 'reset' icon you will reset each of the 7 colours to their defaults.

The other two colour patches are for the line colour (drawing each area) and the canvas colour (the base colour of the canvas before actually placing coloured areas in the canvas.

The functions in the menu bar

There are two additional functions available from the menu bar ('Projects'): 'Save Mondriaan' and 'Open Mondriaan'. These two functions will save the current Mondriaan painting design, or open an existing design. The project will not contain the brick blueprint, only the area size, placement and colour. Upon loading it will set all the Mondriaan specific parameters, and show the Mondriaan painting. You still need to create the mosaic. You can however edit (cut, merge, recolour) as any other normal Mondriaan painting.

Via the 'File' menu you can also save the Mondriaan painting as an uncompressed bitmap (and only as a bitmap format to avoid jpeg compressing colour blurring). This way you will be able to save the Mondriaan painting and use it for other purposes, or whatever is useful to post-process outside Legoaizer.