I want to mock up something similar to the design here: http://www.reallygood.uk.com/bright-side-wedding-guest-book-guests-p-2941.ht...
Specifically, lots of individual characters (in various fonts, sizes and colours) jumbled around a bit.
I had a quick play in gimp (because it was installed) but that got me nowhere, which could well be down to me. Before I start installing lots of different tools does anyone have any suggestions? Assume little or no graphics competency.
On 16 Oct 13:00, Mark Rogers wrote:
I want to mock up something similar to the design here: http://www.reallygood.uk.com/bright-side-wedding-guest-book-guests-p-2941.ht...
Specifically, lots of individual characters (in various fonts, sizes and colours) jumbled around a bit.
I had a quick play in gimp (because it was installed) but that got me nowhere, which could well be down to me. Before I start installing lots of different tools does anyone have any suggestions? Assume little or no graphics competency.
Do you mean vector graphics or do you mean DTP...
For vector graphics, I believe the app de jour is Inkscape.
For DTP I'd say Scribus.
On 16/10/12 14:06, Brett Parker wrote:
Do you mean vector graphics or do you mean DTP...
As long as I can export to PNG when finished (yes I know that PNG isn't vector, but it'll need to work in a vector format until I'm happy) I just want whatever is easiest! (The end result will go onto a t-shirt.)
For vector graphics, I believe the app de jour is Inkscape.
I expected to have trouble with Inkscape to be honest (been a while since I last used it) but I just installed and tried it, and it seems pretty much perfect for what I need.
Things it seems good at are: - selecting loads of individual chars and changing all their fonts in one go, without changing other attributes (size, colour). - allowing me to move characters around easily as objects. When I tried this in gimp I got into a right layers mess, in LibreOffice Draw it worked but you have to click the surround of the text box (not into the text box) in just the right place to move something. - easy to change the colour of any character in a single click.
For DTP I'd say Scribus.
If I get stuck I'll come back to Scribus later but for now Inkscape does what I need, thanks!
On 16-Oct-2012 13:19:02 Mark Rogers wrote:
On 16/10/12 14:06, Brett Parker wrote:
Do you mean vector graphics or do you mean DTP...
As long as I can export to PNG when finished (yes I know that PNG isn't vector, but it'll need to work in a vector format until I'm happy) I just want whatever is easiest! (The end result will go onto a t-shirt.)
For vector graphics, I believe the app de jour is Inkscape.
I expected to have trouble with Inkscape to be honest (been a while since I last used it) but I just installed and tried it, and it seems pretty much perfect for what I need.
Things it seems good at are:
- selecting loads of individual chars and changing all their fonts in one go,
without changing other attributes (size, colour).
- allowing me to move characters around easily as objects. When I tried this
in gimp I got into a right layers mess, in LibreOffice Draw it worked but you have to click the surround of the text box (not into the text box) in just the right place to move something.
- easy to change the colour of any character in a single click.
For DTP I'd say Scribus.
If I get stuck I'll come back to Scribus later but for now Inkscape does what I need, thanks!
-- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER
For something like that, I would simply go for groff (installed on all Linux systems) using, in particular, its 'pic' component.
Executive summary: With straightforward textual input, you can place arbitrary marks at arbitrary positions on the page (though you might have to define the "arbitrary marks").
Later, I'll have a go at emulating the Wedding thingies on that website, to demonstrate how to do it.
Till later, Ted.
------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@wlandres.net Date: 16-Oct-2012 Time: 16:09:04 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------
On 16/10/12 16:09, (Ted Harding) wrote:
Later, I'll have a go at emulating the Wedding thingies on that website, to demonstrate how to do it.
I look forward to seeing that, as it sounds way more techie and way less designy than the way I did it!
One thing to note: I found that I needed to stretch random characters to get the right effect, as opposed to just scaling them. Also I lied in my last email: changing the font of several chars does also change their sizes, so either I did things differently the first time or I wasn't paying attention. But it wasn't too hard to mock something up that I was happy with.
As an aside: I decided in the end to go with a black t-shirt, and therefore white lettering. I couldn't see a way to get Inkscape to work with a black background (I found where to configure it in the image properties, but it didn't seem to change anything).
Mark
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Brett Parker -
Mark Rogers -
Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net