Adding Pictures

[Grillhappy]

I am new to xLights Nutcracker.  I am interested in adding a few picture backgrounds to my two RGB matrixes (95" x 63" and 88" x 63") which will be on my fences to the left and right of my home. I can see the picture icon in xLights and can import pics and place these into a sequence, and I have viewed one video by Sean but after that, I can find little info on this subject. I know that I must resize pics in order to get them to fit on the matrixes and I have done that, but I am looking for advice to get the pics to look their best? Is there any picture gallery that somebody has made to find Christmas pics that work well on their matrixes or megatrees? I have not yet found the quality I am looking for in accomplishing this.  Is quality even possible or I should just skip adding pictures?

[gerry]

Hi ,
I am almost as new and will be doing that too, as have just got my matrix panels working today.

Sean posted a link to an image directory just this week, I will find it and repost.
Also , I have seen Gil comment that we should scale the images to fit the matrix resolution first , rather than use auto scale , this too was posted within the last week.
There is also a video on using movies that Sean posted
I will,dig those up tomorrow.

Found one post:
http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php?topic=7570.0
And the other :
http://nutcracker123.com/forum/index.php?topic=1316.msg7293#msg7293

[Gilrock]

You ask if quality is even possible.  Well quality is in the eye of the beholder.  You mentioned the size of your matrix but the physical measurements don't tell us enough information.  We need to know how many pixels are we talking about.  Do you have 1", 2", or 5" spacing because that will make a huge difference in how nice the picture will look.  Normally I just resize pictures with Photoshop.  For the amount of graphics work I do which isn't a whole lot I'm willing to spend the $10 a month to use Photoshop.  If you don't want to pay then use Gimp.  It can do almost everything Photoshop can do just a little more difficult to accomplish it.

When you shrink an image it's called down sampling.  Each pixel ends up becoming a combination of several pixels.  Once you get down to smaller matrix sizes there is a limit to how much detail any picture will show.  For the sizes you are quoting you should be able to make something that looks pretty good in my opinion.

If you only have a couple pictures then post them and I will attempt to process them for you to the size of you matrix.  Just tell me the height and width.

[Grillhappy]

Thank you both for your comments.  Very helpful.  I am already familiar with the leads aforementioned. My two matrixes will have 650 and 600 pixels, respectively, with 3" spacing between the pixels.  I have only auditioned pics within my sequences and have not settled on any of them yet, because I could not get any quality out of any. I am using simple, not detailed pics that I have found on Yahoo images.  When I decide on what pics to try, I'll post these.  I could purchase stock photos, but that is useless unless I can be assured of quality through this process. I have been resizing using Light Image Resizer 4 (paid version).  Thanks so much.

[Grillhappy]

Since 2" or even 1" spacing between the pixels matters a lot, perhaps I can go that route.  My matrix coro and pixels with controllers are on order but not yet shipped.  Distance from my fences to the street is about 40 feet. Would the smaller spacing make a great deal of difference?  I'd guess yes.

[Gilrock]

If you had planned for 2" spacing I would just stick with that plan it should look fine.  I had a matrix with 4" spacing an it looked pretty good.

[nzlongfellow]

My matrix is 48" x 96". I wanted 4 rows of text 8 pixels high with a gap between text rows so ended up 35 rows by 72 columns. That gives a 1-1/4" (approx) spacing but uses 2520 pixels. Mine is used as a "karaoke" board in my singing shows so viewed from 20ft to 50ft.
Others use strip at 30 per metre to get better resolution but at Gil said his at 4" was OK.

[Grillhappy]

I would bet that a picture would look better on my actual Matrix than on the Model or House Preview screens within Nutcracker.  All my pictures look so DARK, DIM and DULL on the Preview screens.  So you are all saying you have had success with pictures on a Matrix.  I would add, the simpler pic, the better.  The picture Images would not be the major part, but yet an important part of my Matrix display.  I desire Effects and Text, but also Images.

[JonB256]

Take a look at my Elvis picture in "Blue Christmas"  My matrix is 40x30. Not high resolution at all, but looked pretty good from the street.

[http]Http://granburychristmaslights.com[/http]

I just scaled a Google jpg down and saved to a 40x30 GIF

[Grillhappy]

Your Elvis video looks a lot better than what I have seen so far in my Model preview within xlights.  What was the spacing of your pixels?  This tells me that I can continue to go forward with my Picture plans.  Thanks.