What am I going to learn to do?

You will use photo and graphics editing software to make an image that can be cut on the vinyl cutter.

What software/tools will I use?

Web browser

http://GIMP.org

http://OpenOffice.org

What are the ideas I will work with?

High contrast images work best with this process.

Adjusting the brightness and contrast with the threshold tool.

Free and open source software can be useful and accessible

Making a shape in open office draw

importing your picture into draw

How do I do it?

Find an image that you will work with.

Your picture should not be incredibly complex, and should have a decent amount of contrast before you start.

Set up a place to save the project

Make a folder on your computer for this project

Modify the picture to increase the contrast

Save the image in a place that you will be able to find it.

Open the image with GIMP

Use the threshold tool

When you click on the image, it will turn to black and white, and high contrast.

Adjust the brightness and contrast points on the slider so that your image is readable and high enough contrast not to have a million islands of white and black.

Save the image with a descriptive name.

Make the ouside border for the sticker

Start Open Office, make a new Drawing document

Make a box that is the size of the sticker you want to make.

Adjust the size of the box with the position and size menu/dialog

Open office has an accuracy of hundreths of a measurement increment, so if you want to be more precise, use millimeters as your measurement unit.

Round or angle the corners

Add the picture

Import your picture

use the menus to select Import Picture

Find your picture image (it should have a descriptive name)

Your image should appear in your file.

Resize your image so that it fits inside the shape.

Make your box black

Open office usually has a default setting of light blue for the box.

You want your file to have high contrast, so you will have to make it black.

Use the paint bucket tool to adjust the color of the box

Set it to black.

Line up your image with the box

There are good alignment tools in draw.

Select both the image and the box.

Go to Alignment, choose horizontal.

Go to alignment, choose vertical.

This will have your picture even inside the box.

Export your image

Save your file in your project folder with a descriptive name

go to the file menu, choose Export

From the pulldown, choose jpeg from the list

save it into your folder for the project

Make a background border

Select the outside border of the image.

copy it

Make a new draw document

paste the background image into the document

Resize it so that the background image is smaller than the outside border, but larger than the picture

Export this image as well.

Zip up your files

Go up a directory so you can see your folder

Right click on the folder

Choose send to, then Archived/zipped folder

Send the file

Open up your email account

Start a new email

Attach the zip file to the email

Checklist

• a picture of high contrast made by you
• A descriptive file name for the picture
• An open office document with the image file imported
• Rounded corners on the open office image
• black background on the open office shape
• your picture is imported into the rectangle
• picture and image are aligned vertically and horizontally.
• exported picture of the sticker and border
• zip file emailed