Lesson 4: Saving your personal set

You can create your own dataset of beads. The best way is to start from the set you use the most, e.g. Artkal, like shown in lesson 1. Now open the Editor (press the 'Edit table' button). A window opens (the 'Colour table'). Check or uncheck the colours you want in or out. See picture below.

As you can see in the picture above we have deselected a couple of colours. When you are done, press the 'Update table' button. This will only copy your selected colours to the current table. Then finally use the menu in this window to save the table: 'Colour table' 'Save table as...'  and select a new name for the table. Be careful not to overwrite the pre-installed tables! Now you are done, and next time you start you can now select your pruned and personal colour set. It's irrelevant if this table is a combination of any of the 4 colour sets (Artkal, Hama, Perler or Nabbi) because the colour code is unique for each manufacturer. You simply need to remember which code belongs to which manufacturer.

But there is an easier way to save a beads colour set. If you have a Standard Colour dataset available, such as provided with the application, you can simply right-click on the dotted graph, and then select 'Save as dataset for beads', and choose a set name. That will be all. This set will appear as a new dataset, and can be read from the main menu 'Colour table' > 'Open table'.

Lesson 5: Creating transparent sources

In many cases you will start with a 'normal' source image, i.e. an image with no transparency. Especially for beads, shaped fusion beads are preferred. Also shaped beads typically are created for children, by children. For instance, a funny cartoon figure as a source should lead to a cartoon fusion only, excluding the background. We will demonstrate how we can use transparent sources (already at start) and how to create a new transparent image using Legoaizer. We will start with the most common situation: we have an image that is not transparent (typically a .JPG image). In the next lesson we demonstrate how to work with transparent sources. You find the transparency controls via the main menu 'Special functions' > 'Colour filters', the middle section ('Filters') has the transparency controls at the bottom. To open the dedicated transparency panel, click on the white box on the right. This white box represents your selected chroma-key (or: pixel that must be made transparent).

We have a cute dinosaur image, which we will use for creating a nice (evenly cute) fusion bead result. The 4 images below show the four steps we are taking to create a perfectly balanced cut-out of the background colour.

Step 1. Click with the colour-picker (now showing when you move your mouse over the left - original - image) on the colour you would like to make transparent. We selected of course any white pixel. The result is immediate: the image on the right is now made transparent where all pixels of that colour are made transparent. You can see the transparency as the gray background. The lower slider 'Background' can be used to select your background colour from white to black (gray is the default). This is a very convenient way to see the effect of transparency.

Step 2. Although at first sight the transparency seems ok, it's actually not so good. When looking at the (blue) edges of the dino, it appears to be rough and pixelated. So, we need to expand the bandwidth of the pixels that have the colour for transparency. Conveniently, the two sliders, 'Tolerance' and 'Feather', can help to finetune the transparent parts. We increase the tolerance just a bit, and if this helps we don't need to use the 'Feather' slider. In some cases also the feather is required: it smoothes the edges of the transparency, and also it creates a small band where the transparency starts from fully transparent to fully opaque: the larger the feather value the wider this transition band will become. The 'Feather' is the last resort. We simply increase the 'Tolerance' until the edges are smoothed out.

Step 3. When taking a closer look, you can see that also the white parts from the eyes have become transparent. The way the transparency works is that is takes all the pixels of the selected transparent colour (this approach is also knows as 'chroma-keying'). To exclude the eyes from taking part in the transparency, you need to select an area where the pixels are not affected. Now you have to use your mouse again, and click on the image on the right to create the area that must be excluded from chroma-keying. You need to click several times, shaping a kind of circle within the head. With every click a new line will be created, and by double-clicking the last clicked point is connected with the first point. Now the exclusion area is closed. In the image of step 3 you can see we have only selected an area in the head of the cute dino. All other parts are ok. Tip: to select multiple areas: you can add to the previous areas by pressing the SHIFT key while creating a next area. After double-clicking the areas are now all shown (keep the SHIFT key pressed until you are done!).

Step 4. When you are done, then again click in the picture on the left, to select the transparency pixel. Now your selection on the right is inverted, where all the pixels are selected except the pixels that you just outlined. As you can see the white parts of the eyes are now correctly kept white, since these are excluded from the chroma-keying action. Finally, press the 'Done' button, tol bring you back to the previous window. Now tick the 'Apply transparency' checkbox, and create your (partly) transparent mosaic.

The final mosaic is shown below. As you can see: the eyes are part of the bead mosaic, while the white background outside the cute dino was omitted from the resulting mosaic. The inset shows the pegboard, demonstrating that these outside parts indeed have no beads, and is therefore a direct result of the transparency steps.

Finally, to complete this lesson, we will demonstrate the effect of the resize approach. The result above was made where the source images was reduced to the indicated mosaic size, using the 'smart' resize engine. This approach is very useful for transparency, since it excludes the transparent pixels in the bead colour analysis. Any ordinary resize method will assume that transparent pixels are white (!) and the edges of the transparent parts usually have white pixels. The resize algorithm is selected via the 'Tools' > 'Preferences' > 'Other settings' panel. The effect is explained in the image below:

The left result is created using the 'sharp' resize method ('nearest neighbour' approach), the middle is the 'smart' resize method, while the image on the right is the result of a very widely used 'balanced' (a.k.a. 'bicubic') resize algorithm. As clearly outlined, the sharp approach creates dotted pixels (it forces to make a selection of existing pixels), the balanced approach seems a bit blurred and whitish pixels along the transparent edges. The 'smart' creates a result that is the closest to the original colours. But it's all a matter of taste, so there is no winner here, just different methods creating different results. The 'sharp' however should better be avoided for transparency, but is perfectly suited for preserving straight lines in the source image (e.g. the Mondriaan images).

Lesson 6: Using transparent sources

In contrast to lesson 5, you can also use source files with already transparent parts to create a bead mosaic. The source file must be of the .PNG file format, and must have a true alpha channel. Some .PNG files have a strange transparency channel and might not work. In case you have doubt: simple open the file in the interface of Legoaizer and do a test run. If the background gets weird colours your file doesn't have a proper alpha channel (the 'alpha channel' stores transparency data, in addition to the red, green and blue channel data). In that case you need to prepare the source image, e.g. with Photoshop, to repair the transparency channel of the image, and save it again as a PNG image.

We will use a famous animation figure to show the elegance of transparency. The .PNG has a proper alpha channel, and when do a first run you will immediately notice that only the figure is taken into the mosaic, and the rest is left out.

This is a simple run, with just 40 beads on the horizontal, so we increase the size bit: 80 x 159 beads. This would normally mean a grand total of 12720 beads, but since large parts are transparent we only need 5384 beads. The cost is therefore also quite lower: 13.50 euro instead of 31.80 euro (estimations of course).

Below a snapshot of the spreadsheet and the detail bitmap are seen. The spreadsheet blueprint is fully updated with the amount of beads and the building blueprint.

Epilogue: What else is there to do?

Basically you can do anything else that can also be done with a brick. The beads approach fully follows the brick approach, except the beads are considered a 1x1 brick. So read the brick tutorial... and enjoy the other possibilities!

Warning 1: if you accidently overwrite a pre-installed beads colour database, there are two options: download the installer and be warned not to do it again. Or practice yourself in using the 'Standard colours'. In the folder of the Standard colours also a copy of the 4 beads databases is found. Use the Standard colours approach to convert that table into a new beads database. Just make sure you only keep the 1x1 bricks because there are no other possibilities.