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| From Wikipedia |
I have to say that doing the research to enable me to write this post, as I was seeking to understand what the different file formats are and how they behave has really provided several light bulb moments! It has also prompted an increase in respect for Brother and how they've chosen to develop and provide Canvas to us for free. It is pretty simple to use (compared to full featured graphics packages) but once you get to know how to use it, it really can do some very sophisticated things!
NB: This post DOES NOT cover how to get hardcopy images into the machine - that's the scanning function and will be written in due course and be found in the Index Section about the Machine itself
I'm in various facebook groups and it's pretty regular that posts crop up asking not only the super basics like how do I get a particular image into the Canvas Workspace but also how to deal with computer files that misbehave. So, hopefully I'm going to cover all bases for those sorts of issues, or at least as many as I can in this section of my blogposts for Canvas, and then I shall cover anything that can't be done in Canvas with whatever solutions I know about for Inkscape. So far Canvas and Inkscape (both are free to use) have met all my needs, so I'm not proposing to go onto SCAL4 (purchase) for some considerable time.
NB: Canvas Workspace is Brother's own browser based software design programme. Inkscape is an open source free to download far more sophisticated software design programme. SCAL4 (sure cuts a lot 4) is a software design programme that costs about £70 sterling to buy as a digital download. You will need to use a software design programme if you want to manipulate images in ways that the machine can't itself, or if you want to check computer files before you take them to the machine for use as cut/draw etc files. A key difference is that Canvas Workspace needs an internet connection and your files sit in their in the 'cloud' and Inkscape and Scal4 are installed on your computer and your files sit in your computer. If you don't really understand any of that, use the same words I have and do a computer search and find definitions and explanations that explain more. I have to assume a certain level of familiarity with computers otherwise we'd never get onto the actual doing!
Ok so, lets start with the really basic stuff about computer files that many people have never needed to learn, but I think it helps to understand how to troubleshoot when things go wrong.
This blog post is about images or shapes that are contained in computer files.
1. What sort of computer files are there? (file extensions)
There are many different types of computer file, but to make it easier for software developers, every single different type within windows or mac computers has a specific format of 'file name' . xxx, that is the file name the user chooses, a full stop or period and then three letters. And it's those 3 letter that we are interested in today - officially called 'file extensions', because it's those 3 letters that determine which method we use to bring files into Canvas.
1a. File extensions for words and numbers
So, there's some we are familiar with to do with words and numbers - for example - .doc or .docx for a word document, .xls for an excel spreadsheet, .pdf is often the extension for a document found on the net that you can't see in the browser, but you download, it looks like a word document but you can't edit it, it's fixed.
However none of those words and numbers files with those extensions are going to work with the ScanNCut or Canvas, because the SNC and Canvas is dealing with images and NOT words or numbers.
1b. File extensions for images and pictures
There's broadly two sorts of files that deal with pictures
- Digital Image Files Also known as Raster or Bitmap Files. These store the image as PIXELS that is little blocks of colour - common file extensions are .tiff, .jpeg, .gif, .png. These files contain loads of information and are generally quite large.
- Vector Image Files These store the image as MATHEMATICAL formulae or as BINARY essentially in OBJECTS (the concept of objects matters in Inkscape more than in Canvas I'll cover Objects and Canvas in another post) and are a series of points connected by lines and each Object is a stand alone entity with characteristics of shape, colour, outline, size and position as well as position on the screen. - common file extensions are .svg, .dxf, .ai, .eps and Brother's own proprietary .fcm or .fcn.
One key difference between the two is that Digital Image files lose resolution and distort and can appear grainy when resized or scaled up or down, whereas Vector Image Files retain their integrity when resized.
Remember above I talked about .pdf files, they can be EITHER Raster or Vector files depending on how they were created. There's always one that's a bit weird!!!!
2. Which file extensions can Canvas handle?
- Digital Image Files - Canvas can use .JPEG and .GIF and .PNG and .BMP The method Canvas uses to handle them is TRACING via the trace icon.
- Vector Image Files - Canvas can use .SVG and .FCM and .DXF. The method Canvas uses to handle them is IMPORT via the SVG icon. Canvas can't use .FCN because this is a proprietary file format that's locked down and can't be edited (more on that later).
Now if i'd just said to you, oh with Canvas you trace jpeg and gif and png and bmp and you import svg and fcm and dxf, that's quite hard to remember.
BUT if you understand first that Digital Image files are huge, can be poor quality when you manipulate them, and experience data loss - well then it makes sense that Canvas have created a specific piece of software that converts those files into Vector Image Files (via the TRACE function), because Vector Image files are not huge, can be scaled and resized without loss of integrity and also don't experience data loss, AND that you can also import different Vector Image Files without data loss - well then (a) suddenly you realise quite how much thought and effort Brother have put into giving us flexibility to choose our own images for free and NOT made us buy their designs (Yay them! and I luffs them for it) and (b) it's far easier to remember which file extensions need which button/icon in Canvas!
MORE ABOUT THE FILE EXTENSIONS THAT CANVAS CAN HANDLE BY TRACING ICON OR IMPORT SVG ICON
3. Digital Image/Raster/Bitmap file via TRACING ICON: I've summarised the characteristics of each file type from this article by Ivan Expert HERE
- JPEG/ JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group (who created this standard). Often used with digital cameras, the format compresses data to a small sized file, which causes data loss, they're generally used to create photo type images and they are a poor choice for line drawings, logos or graphics as the compression makes the lines look jagged, or 'bitmappy'.
One idea occurs to me, which is that the machine saves scanned from hardcopy by the machine images as JPEG/jpg - pure supposition but I imagine they do this because it's a compressed file and generally what is being saved to usb/computer is going to be something that is effectively only cut or draw lines, so should be adequate, however, it does explain WHY people find that the lines from a scan are jagged and not smooth when scaled up - because Digital Image/ Raster/ Bitmap files don't scale well. That's a topic for another blogpost and I will cover it eventually. Anyway, back to file extensions that Canvas can handle.
- GIF - Graphic Interchange Format. This also compresses images, but unlike the Jpeg file there's no data loss, but files can't be made as small. They have a limited colour range so aren't used for photos but look good on the web and are often animated.
One idea occurs to me, that because the SNC is essentially a programme for a cutting/drawing machine, and colours are controlled manually by the user in terms of the colour pen or the colour fabric or paper - so the limited range of colours of gif files is totally irrelevant.
- PNG - Portable Network Graphics. This was created as an open source alternative to the proprietary gif (ie free to use instead of needing licensing fees). It has a better range of colour and better compression than gif. Often used on the web and not for printing.
- BMP - Bitmap. This was developed by Microsoft. It is comprised of pixels (ie a colour block) which uses one block of RGB (red green and blue - each of which can have 256 densities of red or green or blue in 24 bit). They are edited per block of colour, and are therefore ginormous in file size. (Bitmap characteristics info was gleaned from HERE
Frankly, if you want to use a bitmap image, say for example of highly detailed woodgrain, you will need to take it into a graphics programme such as Inkscape or Corel or Photoshop or SCAL4, use that to scale the image to the size of each element of your model that you want, print out a hardcopy and use that (in the same way you would a pretty scrapbook paper) to draw or cut with the SNC using the accurately sized model elements in svg form. Why? Because Canvas is not designed to be able to keep detailed colour based images, it's designed to make cutlines and drawlines, that's linear single lines, in one colour. Again that's a topic for another blog post but I noted it here in case that's what you are trying to do - for example say you have a usb from Cutting Craftorium and want to use a woodgrain effect for the card you are cutting, that's to scale with the model you are making, seriously, you can't do that in Canvas. It's possible, just NOT in Canvas. This is because Canvas can only work with Vector graphics, it can't combine bitmap/raster and vector graphics like full graphics software can.
4. Vector Image Files via IMPORT/ SVG ICON: summarised from various articles online
- FCM - These are Brother's own proprietary file types. There's FCM which is fully editable and FCN which are locked down (pattern collections and disney etc) and may not even be ablet to be resized or otherwise manipulated.
ONLY FCM can be used in Canvas.
All you can do with FCN is download it to your computer or a usb stick or directly to your machine by cable or wifi (where appropriate). I tried but can't find anything else about them online. Maybe it's something only dealers know about.
If you save a file in Canvas or download a file from Canvas that you've manipulated (ie not a purchased pattern collection file) it will ALWAYS be an FCM. These file types load more quickly into the machine and also, are less likely to have problems. For this reason I always take every file that's not fcm into canvas and save/download it as an fcm as it cuts down a lot of potential trouble shooting (more about that in a later post).
- SVG -Scaleable Vector Graphics - are open source and were created by the WorldWideWebConsortium (W3C). They use Extensible Markup Language (XML) which means they can be read by both computers AND by the human eye (this may be why my Windows 10 shows me thumbnails of SVG but not thumbnails of fcm without the need for additional software, because it's been designed to be seen everywhere, not just via a proprietary piece of software, but I digress).
Importantly - SVG allow three sorts of graphic objects - Vector Graphic Shapes such as straight and curved paths and outlines, bitmap images and text. Well! that solves a conundrum for me, it appears Canvas supports vector graphic shapes as straight and curved lines and text, but not bitmap. And that's presumably why it's possible to use the Text Converter to input a True Type Font and use that unedited as a cut file, but you need to divide it with a process function to be able to manipulate it with the other process functions. Interesting! I'm pretty sure that if you tried to import an SVG that contains bitmap into the machine, it just won't work, as it's not supported as part of the fcm proprietary file format and therefore there just isn't the software inside the machine to handle it. This is probably the reason for certain error codes. I'll test that theory at some stage and let you know in due course...
Also importantly, SVG files display at the maximum resolution a device allows. Which means there may be more detail in the file than YOU can see on whatever device you are using to look at a file. I can imagine there would be differences therefore between what you see on screen of say a tablet or a computer and what the machine actually cuts. Yet another reason to convert files to fcm before taking to the machine to avoid difficulties!
- DXF - This is an opensource version of an Autocad (software) file format. The Proprietary format is DWG. DXF was specifically developed to allow files to be shared between designers and draughtsmen plotting plans etc. So, if you design in autocad you can save your files as DXF and import them using the SVG icon in Canvas. However, after a bit of googling, it appears sometimes there is some dataloss. Here's the article I found most useful to understand a bit more about this file type. I don't use autocad, so you're on your own from here with it as I've included it only for completeness. Article by Scan2Cad HERE
In summary if it's a:
- Raster/bitmap file, Canvas needs to convert the data from pixels to objects and it does it via the Tracing Icon function.
- Vector/object file, Canvas can just use it directly so it imports the file without needing to convert anything because the file is already set up using objects.
Well. You need to get hold of the Manual for Canvas. Go into Canvas Workspace, look at the top right, there's a series of icons, there's your account, your projects (you can delete projects if you go into them that way), there's the Exit icon, the HELP ICON and then the link to Brother website.
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| Help Icon is 4th from the left |
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| Help Menu |
- TRACING IMAGES (bitmap/raster files) are on pages 16 & 17. This explains the difference between the types of image detection and the various options you can use to ensure you get a decent tracing and final shapes in the Canvas Manual.
- IMPORTING SVG (vector files) are on page 28 in the Canvas Manual
You want to scan a hardcopy image using the Machine and manipulate it in Canvas:
Instructions for Scanning a hardcopy image using the Machine and saving to USB (or Wifi) are found in the Machine Manual - that came as a CDRom with your machine and can also be read and downloaded from the Brother Support Centre (your model number and country) For my CM600 sold in the UK this is in Section 4 Scanning Functions, Scanning Images (scan to USB) page 54 there's also a tutorial. For the UK CM900 it's page 73 also with a tutorial and an additonal bit of information about Selecting the Area to be saved.
If your machine does NOT have this function of area selection already (it has been added since the first machines were created) you need to update your software for free. See the blog post on updating your software in the Index page for this series. The instructions for the Area Selection can be found in the Brother Support Centre Notifications (release notes) section for your model and country, I would tell you which one but I'm pinned to the bed by the cat, so I'll add that later, or you could just go on an adventure and find it for yourself! You can use the CM900 manual because the software inside every machine (once updated) is identical, it's the hardware that's different). All the changes with the software updates have Release Notes, that is additional manual pages that explain how the update works. It's very useful to print these out as there's a LOT of information about how scanning works etc.
Remember that this saves as a jpeg/jpg file. So you will need to TRACE it into Canvas, and the
Instructions for importing a scanned to usb or wifi to Canvas are found in the Canvas Manual (as above) at page 19.
and Saving and Downloading files from Canvas either by usb, cable or wifi in the Canvas Manual at pages 8 & 9.
And finally, it's worth knowing there's a Troubleshooting section in the Canvas Manual with Error Code explanations at page 31 as well as a List of Functions showing each Icon in Canvas, what it's called and whether it can be used with tablet or computer or not at page 29.
All those people on facebook who post saying they don't understand how something works or what their machine is doing? It's because they don't realise that Brother has put quite a lot of effort into the Manuals and many (not all by any means) answers can be found in them. The difficulty is, knowing the right names or words for the issue and also, knowing where to look! that's where youtube videos and blogs come into their own! Hurrah for fellow users willing to explain stuff that makes no sense until after you fixed the problem!
Anyway, the next post in this little sub series will be about getting a decent Trace and subsequent ones will be about how to check that the trace output and the imported svgs are 'clean and tidy' files that the machine will deal with perfectly.
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