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help with artwork cropping
jamesacPostSeptember 26, 2020, 09:18
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September 26, 2020, 13:12
Normal topichelp with artwork cropping

Hi, i found this piece of software and it looks just the job, i have a number of mp3s that have artwork that is not square. ive found by using the copy / scale artwork and click crop square and this give great results, however i would like to run this for several hundred tags and have looked in the action manager to do this and it seeems to be a missing option in the settings

is there a way i can enable this feature?

thanks in advance
2MR2PostSeptember 26, 2020, 10:13
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Normal topicRe: help with artwork cropping

If you want to do this automatically you have to do it in an action. The Manipulate Artwork action statement has a Make Artwork Square setting.
jamesacPostSeptember 26, 2020, 11:01
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September 26, 2020, 13:12
Normal topicRe: help with artwork cropping

Hi thanks ill give this a go,
jamesacPostSeptember 28, 2020, 02:21
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September 26, 2020, 13:12
Normal topicRe: help with artwork cropping

so i gave it a go and there is no option for squaring artwork that works the same way as in the context menu.

the options are for a trasparent fill/black fill but this just makes the original image smaller with padding boxes around it.

the option for making square in the artwork context menu seems to zoom in on the artwork until all four sides are the same, which gives me the result i need.

i did work out that by setting the offset of 280 on left or right will make it about square but i dont seem to be getting that working atm.

2MR2PostSeptember 28, 2020, 07:50
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Normal topicRe: help with artwork cropping

Correct they are two different algorithms. The action method is lossless while the UI based method is lossy.

The Manipulate Artwork statement will actually make the image larger when squaring if no other parameters are set other than the 'square' setting. It squares the image to the larger of the x-y dimensions and fills with the specified method. A 2560x1440 image will become 2560x2560.

The Crop Square method in the Crop/Scale Square Artwork panel does the opposite. It crops the artwork to the smaller of the x-y dimensions. It then centers the image for you and allows you to fine tune the adjustments by sliding the image. There is no intelligence here ... the image is centered. Quite often, especially when combined with other tuning, this is a superior method ... but it entirely depends on visual verification of the result. I've used this extensively and while the squared centered image often looks great, there are times that text is cropped or that the result is not as intended.

I could add a center-crop option to the action statement but I'm not sure that I would trust it myself.
noforkerPostJuly 29, 2023, 02:03
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July 25, 2016, 01:03
Normal topichelp with artwork cropping

I'm jumping in with a +1 vote for adding an option to the action "Manipulate Artwork" to crop to square that functions similarly to the UI Crop to square with a placement option. It seems like it could make sense to add to the check box "Make Artwork Square" with a drop-down option "by crop" with maybe another option that offers a left/top, center, or right/bottom switch, or perhaps a % where 0% is left/top, 50% is center, and 100% is right/bottom. Setting a % would offer something similar to the UI crop via the sliders.

I know I could use this for processing PDF files from DGMlive, where I crop to the trim marks they include in their PDF files. This would allow me to crop to square instead of trying to get it right with the offsets in the "Crop Artwork" option.
2MR2PostJuly 29, 2023, 08:40
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Normal topichelp with artwork cropping

I get it although I'm not sure how using a percentage will help you align to trim marks unless the trim marks are at a known percentage.

From an implementation point of view it would probably be easier to put it in the Crop Artwork statement by adding a Crop to Square by Percentage option. Manipulate Artwork is already ridiculously overloaded.

Crop to square: Top/Left, Center, Bottom/Right, Percentage .... where the percentage could be supplied at runtime. I know percentage covers the first three but I can already predict the comments I'll get about forcing the use of numbers.

By putting it in the Crop Artwork statement I would only have to convert the percentage (explicit or implied) to offsets at runtime.

Will the above do what you want?
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