Revit Titles, Distiller not printing rotated PNG images & Gimp masking

In the previous post I was looking at Revit Presentations. The first video showed examples of using Text fonts as elements with some very nice text fonts, both in 2D & 3D. So I thought I’d have a little play, with variable success. Below are some additions I made to my Title block (the MDA on the vertical & a little logo just before Max Drake Architect , also in the top left & bottom left I used some ornamental text fonts.

They are shown below using Greenshot screen capture. No problem. But when I go to print a PDF the decoration and the other fancy text symbols do not show up.

So I thought, no problem, I’ll take a screenshot of them, flick them into GIMP, remove the background via masking and import PNG images. The PNG images allow for a transparent background. So I did that for the Logo and the corner decorations.

BUT!!!!! Adobe distiller went ape and would not print the sheet at all.

So I re-booted the computer and tried again, still no joy. So I thoought I*’d highlight the issue.

It seems Adobe Distiller doesn’t like the PNG image types. If I replace them with a JPG then there is no problem at all. The only issue is that these whiteout/block any details of revit models /views, so not the best solution.

In fact, Distiller will print PNG files. What I’d done was use the same PNG image and rotate it in Revit, that Distiller didn’t like, but after using the image in GIMP and mirroring it, then exporting it from GIMP as another PNG file, and inserting that one into Revit for the lower left corner, it printed fine.

So, moral of that story is do not rotate images in Revit, its tough to print in PDF format.

Gimp and masking

I’ve been watching some Revit presentation videos and a few of the examples flick an image out into Photoshop and fiddle with them there. I’m not a fan of that as its a static image and doesn’t change as the model does, so you have to redo the export and manipulation again.

One thing though that I’ve done a few times is to get rid of the backgound for images so that they are transparent. It seems there is a very easy way in Photoshop. In Gimp, not as easy, as I don’t use the programme that frequently I have to hunt out the tutorialregularly to figure how to do it.

I usually follow this video, which is really good, but for a basic white background, a bit elaborate:

I found this one that cleaned up the corner detailing quite fast as it had a simple while background:

So that was useful.