Use the Crop & Skew tool to identify the area in which you want to work.

If you are not the reading type, please also check our training video here or take a look at this example video here.

In many cases, the scanner will generate an image that contains excessive information. This scanned image may include labels, wrinkles, a crooked image, scratches, and lint. Additionally, the background of the scanner will not contain any fabric.

Before you begin tiling, it is important to remove all unnecessary parts of the image. The smaller the image is, the easier it will be to work with, and the faster the maps will be generated. Whether you plan to tile the image yourself or if someone else will do it, cropping and cleaning the image is always a beneficial practice.

The basic crop

Once you've uploaded the image into Textura, look for the CROP icon in the lower area of the screen and click it. Once the tool is active, left-click on an area on the image and drag to create a selection. Here are some of the things you need to take into account before cropping your image:

• Get rid of all the unwanted parts of the image, such as the scanner background, staples, labels, or marks.
• Always select an area that contains the minimum repeat plus extra space around it. Try to capture at least 20% more space than the minimum repeat. You will need it.
• Avoid wrinkles and large areas with obvious gradients.
• Avoid deformed and warped areas.
• Use the edges of the selection to modify it until you are happy with the selected area.

In this example, the selected area is larger than what we need, it's clean, and it has a size that will allow us to generate maps quickly and easily.

IMPORTANT: At this stage of the process, the repeat is not yet optimized, so don't be concerned if the preview does not match your expected final result. Other tools, such as the tiling assistant, are better suited for achieving that.

Rotate

While selecting the area you want to work on, the crop tool can also assist you in rotating the image for better manipulation. If the image was captured and rotated, you should use the rotate tool to align the warp and weft direction of the fabric with the edges of the scanner. Aligning it horizontally will improve your workflow.

To accomplish this, select the desired area of the image. When your mouse hovers over one of the corners of the selected area, the rotate icon will appear. Utilize this icon to rotate the entire image. As you do so, you can use the preview to align the fabric accordingly.

Taper and Skew

Scanning a perfectly flat image with no deformations is highly challenging, especially when it comes to fabric, which can be soft and prone to deformations. Consequently, the repeat may not always fit within a perfectly square selection. In many cases, the real-life perfectly square area will be distorted and scanned as a non-perfect square, with slightly off corners. To account for these deformations, we can utilize the Crop tool.

When selecting the crop area, you can hold down the "control button" while dragging one of the corners of the selection. This allows you to adjust the shape of the selection and compensate for any distortions caused by scanning.

This will allow you to select non-rectangular areas of the image and adjust your selection to follow miss-aligned yarns. As you can see on the preview, Textura will apply a correction to the image and make sure that even if the original selection area is not square, the cropped version will be.

The crop tool is a powerful tool that can assist you in cleaning your image, improving your tiling experience, and optimizing the time required to generate maps. While combining crop, rotate, and skew features may be useful in achieving a final repeat in simple cases, Textura offers other powerful tools specifically designed for that purpose. Therefore, don't expect to obtain the perfect tile in the preview when using the crop tool. Cropping is just one of the initial steps. Additionally, always remember to select an area that is slightly larger than what you intend to work with.