Cutouts - Use cutouts to add a "scrapbook" effect to your printouts.

When an image is printed, it is normally printed as a rectangular print like the one below.

Cutting out a portion of the image can add personality to your prints. An oval cutout was used on the print below.

Access: To use cutouts, you must apply the cutout to the image(s) using the batch filter. As with all batch filters that you choose to associate with originals, you are using a mask which is placed on top of the printed image. To use a particular cutout on an image, the image must be in the queue, so it is most efficient to add all image and place them where you like on the page first. Then, to use cutouts on the images, perform the following steps:

1. Using the preview page on the top right of the main window, double click on a print to bring that print into the batch filter.
2. In the "Image Effects" box, click the dropdown box to select a cutout by name or click the "Cutout" button on the left to select a cutout by viewing thumbnails. Note: if no thumbnails appear after clicking the cutout button, click the third button at the top of the "Cutout Preview" window to regenerate the thumbnails.
3. After selecting a cutout, the screen will update to show you what the effect looks like.
4. Note that cropping and cutouts go hand-in-hand so if you crop off an area, you'll see how the cropping affects your cutout area.
5. Close the batch filter screen and apply the filter on your way out of the batch filter.

That's it. The images will remain in the selected cutouts for both display (in the slide show) and on printouts until you remove the associated filter.

The Power of Cutouts!

Note that although some cutouts are provided with Qimage , there is no limit to the cutouts that you can design yourself. Cutouts are a very powerful feature and once you understand how they are created, you can create your own designs. The section below described how to create your own cutout designs.

The simple story: Cutouts are located in your Qimage folder under a subfolder named "cutouts". If you accepted the defaults when installing Qimage , your cutouts will all be located in the "c:\program files\qimage\cutouts" folder. To add a cutout to the list of available cutouts in Qimage, you need only create an image file (in any format) and copy it to the "c:\program files\qimage\cutouts" folder.

How to create a cutout image: To create a cutout, just use your favorite image editor and create a new image in 24 bit color format. The image can be anything you like, only there is one special color to be aware of; the color (1,1,1) is transparent. In other words, the original image will "show through" the cutout for any pixel in your cutout that has red value 1, green value 1 and blue value 1. Given this, if you look at the cutout above, it is no more than an all white image with a circle in the center filled with RGB color (1,1,1). 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!

Complexity: It doesn't take long to realize that you can get pretty complex with your cutouts. Just be aware when creating new cutouts that they are always stretched to fit the image and THEN stretched again to fit on the paper. For this reason, always create cutouts of high enough resolution for the application. If you create a circle cutout that is only 50 x 50 in resolution, obviously the cutout itself will look jagged when printed (but the underlying image may not). Cutout resolutions of at least 1000 x 1000 are recommended.

Creating copyright notices with cutouts: Using your photo editor, simply create an image that is filled with color RGB(1,1,1). Then, in the lower right corner (or wherever you like) add text at a different color (green, yellow, black, white, etc). For example, if you regularly work with images that are 2048 x 1536 resolution, create an image that is 2048 x 1536 that is filled with the color RGB(1,1,1). Then, in the lower right corner, add white text that says "Copyright 2001, Your Company Inc.". Save that image in your cutouts folder and apply it to a batch of images. When applied, you will see the copyright notice where you typed it. It's that simple! And remember, although you can associate the cutout as a filter to be applied to originals, you can also (with any filter) apply the filter to create new images so that the images can be used on the web, etc.