Scaling Software

Started by Artisan, September 25, 2019, 10:26:53 AM

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Artisan

Can anyone recommend any software that will scale a picture to 1:148 so the image can be printed and used as part of a backboard scene. It is important that the software be for scaling and not for resizing an image. The resizing  software I already have only only resizes an image in either a %, mm, inches or pixels
Best regards
Greg

chrism

Quote from: Artisan on September 25, 2019, 10:26:53 AM
Can anyone recommend any software that will scale a picture to 1:148 so the image can be printed and used as part of a backboard scene. It is important that the software be for scaling and not for resizing an image.

What's the difference?

QuoteThe resizing  software I already have only only resizes an image in either a %, mm, inches or pixels

No problem surely? Measure a section of the image that you know what size you require it to be, calculate the percentage change and tell the software to apply that percentage.


njee20

Yes, agreed. Unless you start with a 1:1 scale image then you can't literally scale to 1:148. You just need to decide how big you want the image to be an size appropriately.

Artisan

 Thank you but you lost me with your explanation. Maths not being one of my strongest points I thought that there was a difference.

Thanks anyway.
Best regards
Greg

red_death

Just work out the % for 1:148 ie 1/148 = 0.675%



njee20

What is the image you have, and what size do you want it to be?

Imagine you have a picture of a car. Unless that picture is actually the size of a car you can't literally scale it to 1:148. It's probably already 1:100, say - the car is perhaps 3m long, and the image is 3cm across. You want that to be 1:148, which would mean a 3m car would be 2.03cm long (3/148). That means you need to scale your 3cm picture by 67.6% (2.03/3).

Backboards add a bit of complexity in that you want perspective - so you probably don't want it to be 1:148 anyway, because you want it to appear further away. Unless it's something like a container yard where it is imagined to be immediately adjacent to the foreground actually being modelled.

ntpntpntp

#6
Does your background photo have something for which you would know the real size?  A house front door is often used, or it could be something like a car as suggested above.  It needs to be something that is square on in the photo, not at an angle.

First try a low quality draft/test print of the photo, turning OFF any "auto-resize to fit" option on the Print options.  You need to see how the photo itself comes out without Windows or the printer software fiddling about with the image! If the photo is too big for the paper then you'll need to apply an initial resize or crop to get it to fit.

Measure the car or door (or whatever you've chosen) on the printout, how does it compare with what that thing should be in N scale?  This will help you work out the percentage change you need to apply to the resizing.  If it's too big on the photo you'll need to resize downward (eg. by 50% if it's twice as big as it should be in N scale). If it's too small you'll need to resize larger, but do remember that this may introduce pixelation artifacts which won't look good on your backscene. 

You don't have to be super-accurate with your calculations, just get it looking "about right", and also remember to reduce the size a little if it's something which is meant to appear to be in the distance.
Nick.   2021 celebrating the 25th anniversary of "Königshafen" exhibition layout!
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Artisan

Best regards
Greg

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