Enables you to take any bmp or tiff image and repeat it any number of times in horizontal and/or vertical direction with or without offset, creating a pattern of any size that can be treated as any other image. This comes in handy in textile printing where you can create large area patterns to fill your textile materials without having to store gigabytes of image data for Jobs spanning hundreds of square meters. Instead, you can simply create a single tile of your textile pattern, import it into the JobComposer and repeat it as many times as needed, either by number of copies or by area to be covered. All in just a few clicks!
To access Step and Repeat, open a new Job in the JobComposer and import an image in bmp or tiff format. When the image is selected, a new option Step&Repeat should become available in the Image Properties on the right side of the JobComposer window.
To add an existing Step and Repeat configuration to an image, select the image in the Job and go to Properties & Actions > Step and Repeat. Select a Step and Repeat Preset from the dropdown menu that suits your requirements and click the Apply button. The preview will instantly reflect the Step and Repeat settings.
Alpha Channels in images are generally treated as transparent and will allow overlap between each other.
For Grayscale BMP or TIFF images that should be printed in Black and White, make sure to select the data type Step&RepeatMono from the filetype filter when importing the image to ensure that they are not printed with color mixtures.
To customize the Step and Repeat settings, select -Custom Settings- and adapt the settings for the function as desired.
Once you are done with the settings, you can either leave the setting on Custom Settings, or you can click the Add button to create a new Step and Repeat Preset. This will save the current settings as a Preset and allow you to apply these exact settings to any image with just two clicks by selecting the Preset from the dropdown.
You can also change the Preset setting to None at any time to remove any effects of the dialog and return the image to its original state.
Lets you set the amount of repetitions in horizontal(Width) or vertical (Height) direction. Repeats can be specified either by entering a desired width, e.g. entering 150cm in Width will automatically calculate how many copies of the image are needed to fill this width and add them down to four decimal points. You can also specify repeats by number of repeats, e.g. entering 4 in Width/ Count will add 3 copies in horizontal direction. Whichever variant you choose, the other field will always automatically be calculated and filled, giving you the accurate value for both entry variants.
Lets you specify an offset in between repeats. Say you want to drop every second copy by half the image length to create a more varied pattern, this is no problem using the ½ Offset option. Available drop options are ½ , 1/3, ¼ and Advanced. Each drop option will drop every second copy by the specifed amount, always referring to the image dimensions, so 1/3 will drop the copy by 1/3rd of the image height. Advanced will open another dialog window with further options to customize repeats and offset to suit your requirements.
The Preview segment will also constantly show you what your current Step and Repeat configuration looks like, even before applying it. This way, you can make fine adjustments to your Step and Repeat settings without having to Apply and Undo your changes every time, instead you can make sure you have your repeats and edits just right before committing them to the image.
To access the advanced options for Step and Repeat, select Advanced from the Offset dropdown menu and click the Edit button next to it. This opens the Advanced window that has additional settings for repeats and dropdowns. You’ll quickly notice that the repeat settings are exactly the same as in the main dialog, but settings applied in Advanced will overwrite the current settings in the main dialog.
The Offset options however are much more customizable here. You can change the Offset in Percent from 1-100 Where 25 would be the ¼ Offset, etc. or in custom fractions as x-th part where 33.33333 would be 1/3 offset, etc.
Grid Width specifies a distance between individual repeats in percent of the image size. So e.g. a Horizontal Grid Width of 150% will add a distance of 50% of the original image width in between each repeat.
Mirror lets you mirror every second repeat horizontally and/or vertically. Note that the small thumbnail at the bottom will show a visual representation of how repeats will be mirrored using your current settings.
Once you are satisfied with your settings, click Ok to confirm the advanced window and Apply to have you settings applied to the image.