Create a 720x480 image (or any other resolution with 3:2 ratio) using the 8-bit palette shown. Only the first 20 entries have constant color (the other entries are camera-specific).
The cropmark image will be stretched to 3:2 and will cover the entire LiveView image area.
Color 0 and 16 is transparent. Color 20 is semi-transparent.
You can also use this feature for custom composition grids. See CHDK grids page for ideas. You need to convert the grids to 720x480 BMPs, of course.
There may be tools available for converting CHDK's grd files to plain image formats.
You may use remap.py for converting any image to the correct palette. The script converts pure white to transparent and pure black to semi-transparent black.
for the attention of Michael MartinDear sir,I am wrnitig to ask for your intervention at the contemptuous treatment of a close friend of mine by the social welfare.Orlagh Cassidy was in gainfull employment when she suffered a back injury that left her not able to work for an indeterminable period. Her doctor suggested that she let her back heal after an operation so she had to claim sickness benefit.She has never claimed any benefit before and in order for her to minimise the time she was not working she decided to gain further education to qualify for a less active career, prior to this she worked as manageress at a nightclub. she approached the claims office and was told everything was fine and she could do the course and continue to be paid by the government. A willing candidate to work she is now at college studying to be a graphic designer since september 2005 and is achieving the required targets set by the course. what a great thing to do on her part we all agree and just the sort of person neeeded in this country. December 23rd she recieved a comunication from the social welfare stating that her disability benefit was being discontinued on 31st december. After a worrying Christmas Orlagh returned to college on 9th January not knowing what was going to happen, She visited the social welfare and has been told that all she can do is to sign on for unemployment benifit but of course has to be available for work, should she wish to continue at school then she is required now to pay for all the fees her self half way through the course ( we assume out of all the savings she has from her disability allowance) and in that case will not be available to work and not eligable for benifit. On top of this the comunity welfare officer has informed her that the welfare department do not pay full time students. what a fantastically run country this is a. where it pays to not be dishonest. Is the governments policy to keep the prolitariate dumbed down. Thank you for your attention in this matter and I hope you can do something about this for her soon.kind regardsGeorge Patterson
This is done from Apple OsX (Snow Leopard/Lion) using Photoshop but I think that it could be done with any other software or operating system (with the right corrections).
Create a new document with these settings (and consider saving them as a preset):
Pixel size 720x480 resolution 72 pixel/inch;
Color Mode: RGB Color, 8 bit;
Background Contents: White;
ADVANCED
Color Profile: Don't Color Manage this Document
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels
Edit your document and draw your cropmark, white will be transparent, 95% black will be semi-transparent black,
NOTE: For 4:3 screens, try to avoid 1-pixel lines and 50% patterns, as you get aliasing and moire on the bitmap overlay, 3:2 screens don't have this problem;
Before saving it as BMP you need to convert it to "Indexed Color" mode: Select from Image->Mode menu "Indexed Color", NOTE: this will flattern your levels and if you are already in indexed mode to see the Color Table window go to Image->Mode menu and select "Color Table..." ;
On the new window chose "Table: Custom" in the drop down menu and press "Load..." to load the ML color palette (download .zip) (you can make your own extracting it from a screenshot bmp made from ML);
Set Dither: None
NOTE: colors can have been changed now specially if your cropmarks if fulll of shades of grey or colors. So now it's time for a color check and correction.
Click on File-> "Save as..." and select BMP for the Format, then use this settings for the BMP options:
File Format: Windows;
Depth: 8 bit;
uncheck Compression (RLE);
uncheck Flip row order;
To have a usable RLE compressed .bmp (required only for 60D and 1100D, but good for saving memory on all camera) we need to use the Sztupy's tool (convertrle.rb ). NOTE: the compress RLE function in photoshop don't make an usable cropmark (it will hang your camera)
From Terminal write: "sudo chmod +x " without brackets and then drag convertrle.rb in Terminal's windows (this is needed only the first time to make the .rb file executable. Without this step you will have permission denied error);
to compress the bmp image we made just drop convertrle.rb into Terminal and then drop the image you need to convert, you will end up having: path/to/convertrle.rbpath/to/imagetocompress.bmp
hit enter to confirm and you will see a new file with extension .rle in the same folder of the original uncompressed .bmp
copy it to your cropmks folder on ML card and remove the .rle extension so to have filename.bmp
NOTE: Last step is done from Apple OsX, on other system the procedure could not be the same. Ruby is required so check first to have it installed (I suppose it's installed by default on OsX).
ScraxIT 17:20, May 21, 2012 (UTC) UPDATED GUIDE, added a zip with ML color palette for photoshop and executable converterle.rb (to skip step 1 and 2 when using the script).
Question: I have been unable to convert a B&W cropmark BMP using convertrle.rb. The converted image (on a Mac) looks fine but when I load the cropmark image into cropmarks/ the cropmark is completely wrong (ie. shades of pink and other colors show up). Steps followed: 1) create B&W horizontal gradient image and use 256 color indexed color mode 2) use convertrle.rb 3) copy & renamed the resulting *.rle image. I have also tried the same thing using an image with only 2 colors (black and white). Any ideas?
Here are some selfmade cropmarks with the procedure described previously , I've used the aureas.png from the 550 repository and a lot of ispiration came from the CHDK grids pages.
All the files can be downloaded from here or you can use the png posted here to make your own if the link is down.
The central cross has a meter scale to help in measurement for macro photography. NOTE: It is still sperimental, i'm thinking on how better divide the scale.
Intersection points fo thirds lines is show with little red crosses.
Aureal proportion lines are in a dark pink (sort of...).
Edit
Added by Autopilot
