Drop Photo

Drag and Drop Photo, Image, Bitmap

There are several ways to bring an image file into EazyDraw. The EazyDraw menu command Open accepts many photo, image, or bitmap graphic file types. The open method creates a new drawing of the exact size of the import image. Drag and Drop is the best method to add a photo or image to an existing drawing. Copy and Paste works too. This help page explains how to add convenient control to the drag-and-drop process.

To bring an image into a drawing, drag the image from the desktop, file system, web browser, or another App to an EazyDraw drawing window. When the drag-cursor comes over the drawing window, you see a green plus icon tracking along with the cursor; this indicates that EazyDraw understands the transfer format and can accept the image.

EazyDraw provides enhanced functionality for the image drop. The added functionality is indicated visually by the drop target, as seen to the left on this help page, that appears at the center of the drawing view. If the image is dropped on the drawing, away from the center drop target area, no adjustments or modifications are applied to the image. Dropping the image over the drop target provides automatic image processing and size adjustment to match your needs for a crisp, optimal image with good viewing quality and minimal data storage.

If you find this documentation tool long and detailed, let EazyDraw do the complex parts for you: move the cursor over the drop target while avoiding the two gauges on the left and right of the target. When the red-X disappears from the drop target, lift your pointer (mouse or tack pad) control, and EazyDraw installs a nicely sized image with quality that matches the drawing content.

The drop target central rectangle represents the size and aspect ratio of the incoming image. The surrounding white area represents the current drawing view. A red X indicates acceptance of the image without adjustment. Move the cursor away from the target and see the red X appear; move the cursor near the target to remove the red X and accept the modified image.

Often, the incoming photo or image is quite large. The processing might take a few or several seconds. EazyDraw performs the analysis on a parallel processing thread, so your user interface remains responsive while the image analysis proceeds. Wait until the removal of the progress bar to accept the processed image.

Use the drop target gauge on the right to adjust the inserted image size. Pass the cursor over the gauge rectangle to engage adjustment. EazyDraw has limited control over the dragging image, which comes from the source end of the drag-and-drop process. Therefore, you may need to move the cursor to the right to monitor your adjustments. Adjust the size value by moving the cursor along the top-bottom axis. The gauge and the center image preview rectangle show the approximate size as adjustment progresses.

The drop target has another gauge on the left, which manages the pixel size of the incoming image. Interact with this gauge in the same manner as the sizing gauge on the right. Settings at the top provide more pixels and settings toward the bottom have fewer pixels. It is a discrete gauge; each step is a power of 2 (divided by half) for a number of pixels across and down. This results in a decrease of 4 in total pixels with each step. The pixel size is shown in the top area of the drop target, showing the width and height of the modified image in pixels. The width and height of the incoming image is show just above the cursor.

The target size from the right gauge and the number of pixels from the left gauge combine to provide the pixel density, commonly measured in Dots (pixels) - Per - Inch, DPI. The DPI value appears in the lower portion of the drop target. DPI is the whole point of this feature. A good value for DPI is 72, which is 72 pixels per inch on the drawing.

A high-definition, or Retina-like, display has approximately 144 DPI. Higher values of DPI are rarely needed. For example, high-quality glossy magazine graphics might utilize 300 DPI. Higher DPI probably does not provide any visual improvement, but it requires significantly more memory and CPU power when working on the project design.

The number of pixels in the image determines how much computer memory stores the image and how much memory is needed in the drawing file to save the image. The internal memory size is shown just above the drop target, and the file size value is just below the drop target. The full saved drawing file is larger, the number shown is the contribution from the incoming, modified image.

EazyDraw uses PNG image representation for file storage. PNG is lossless, meaning the compression algorithm loses no quality. PNG supports transparency, and these two factors make it a good choice for the persistent representation of the image.

JPG is another format that can provide compression and smaller size for file storage. JPG does not support transparency. JPG compression does not precisely represent the image; there is some loss of quality. However, JPG typically requires a smaller storage space than PNG. Hold down the Command Key to have EazyDraw compute JPG data; the file size result is below the drop target. Hold down the Shift and Command keys for more aggressive compression; the drop target shows the resulting file size. Lift the mouse button with one or both of these modifier keys down to use JPG for internal representation of the image.

The top position on the left gauge chooses the raw incoming image. This image may be in JPG compressed format. The first stage resampled image shows the file size (4 times fewer pixels) for PNG representation. This size may be larger than the JPG file size; this is normal because PNG has the exact full quality of the resampled image. The JPG representation for the top stage, the incoming image, has compression and an approximated image. The top stage accepts and resizes the full image.

The resampling analysis provided by EazyDraw provides a different workflow than that usually used by pixel painting apps. Our drop target analysis is altering the original image and losing information. It is impossible to return precisely to the original image with its full quality. Pixel painting apps typically retain the original image and apply modifying computations to the image to generate an output. The concept of layers describes this workflow (which differs from layers in a vector drawing app like EazyDraw). The EazyDraw workflow necessitates saving the original image if needed in the future.

Resampling is often needed when the drawing design and layout involve several images. It is not uncommon for each original image to be large enough to require a lot of computer memory and CPU power. If the EazyDraw drawing contains ten or more photos, the internal memory and file size can become too large for responsive editing. Typically, the ten images are reduced in size, appearing on a single page. The reduced viewing size means that resampling to fewer pixels does not impact display quality and can be used to keep saved file size and CPU memory load reasonable.

The drop target resampling optimizes for quality and not speed. EazyDraw takes the CPU time to compute the best-resampled image possible. The computation is performed parallel on multiple CPUs. The resampling drops image size by a factor of 2 for width and height. Each new pixel derives from a weighted average of nearby pixels across and down dimensions. The next resampled image step uses the same algorithm. EazyDraw computes a few of these resampled images in the range of 2 to 5 or 6. You, the user, manipulate the two gauges to arrive at a DPI in the range of 30 to 200 or 300, as the project needs dictate. OR - accept the mid-range default that EazyDraw initially presents.

You might think the approach is too simple, or you only have a crude and coarse adjusting capability with this tool. But that is not the case because the first input is the zoom of your view on the screen. If you just let the force be with you, zoom and pan the drawing in preparation for the drag and drop of the image. Remember you can change window size too; this also enters into all the calculations. Imagine your image nicely sized in the center of the drawing window and view. Then, drag the image onto the drawing, move the cursor toward the drop target, approach from the top or bottom to avoid the gauges, and move onto the target; when the red X disappears, lift the mouse. You are optimized with a high-quality image and have not generated a bloated drawing file. The only other point is to keep the original image for a future edit or revision.

The file size may get large when a drawing contains several bitmap images. Huge file size is unavoidable because bitmap image size grows as the square of the dimension of the image. A bitmap differs from vector content, saving geometry information and not a square array of colored pixels. If the file size becomes large, consider not saving a Quick Look preview of the drawing. The macOS Quick Look information is in the drawing file, generally as a PDF element. The additional PDF means all the bitmaps are in the file two times. Use the Properties panel to turn off Quick Look, found in the lower left area of the panel.

When the internal drawing size grows, there are two impacts on performance. The internal memory needed for each image places a load on the system, and the time to prepare and save the drawing adds to the load. Modern operating system technology works to avoid any possibility of data loss by frequently saving information to caches and private system storage. Frequent background saves are unavoidable; in earlier times, auto-saves were under user control, but that is no longer possible. To further impact the situation, the system may likely be logging into cloud storage via a network. These issues make this drop target capability worth studying and utilizing.