Question 1

Full Patterns in Pod Graphics Maker

Accepted Answer

POD Graphics Maker is a quick and easy way to make (mostly geometric) images with only a few presses of a button.

There are multiple modules available:

A rare third type of shape, that isn't in every pack, is the Full pattern.

Let's see what makes this type of pattern so special.

Symbol Options

The Full patterns combine the best features of both the tiles and the shapes. They don't have to adhere to the square tiles of tile patterns, but they also aren't based on a singular shape as the Shape is.

Instead, you have a pattern that can be variated in different ways.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/9xXP3m2K99/Full%20shape.jpg (Full shape)

Some of the options are very obvious. Shape size changes the size of the squares.

Mid-shift moves the mid-points of the lines out or in, turning the pattern into stars or octagons. Sounds confusing, but if you see it in action, you'll understand.

Fluidity is the same as in every other, make the lines rounded instead of square.

Pattern options

The most important option to note here is "Seamless". With this option you can turn the pattern into a seamless pattern.

You can also change the amounts of rows and columns, and the other options regarding color randomisation are also in this tab.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/RF36xQXJim/full%20pattern%20seamless.jpg (full pattern seamless)

Basic Settings

We're once again using a pattern from the Starter Bundle of POD Graphics maker, this time we use 00-7 Shape - Flower. This pattern is, exactly as it says on the box, meant to resemble flower drawings.

There are three flower types, where the main difference is how the bigger petals are located compared to the smaller petals.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/MY9kss7ZF4/Flower.jpg (Flower)

You might find that two of the patterns have lines that don't look quite right. This is easily fixed the moment you start adding colours.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/eUswVLSobn/Flower%202.jpg (Flower 2)

The moment you press "Use Fill Colours" in the colors tab, it will automatically be fixed.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/bi2d14zl5A/Flower%20fill.jpg (Flower fill)

Customising your Shape

Every shape has some unique options on the first tab. For Flower, it's Petal Style, Petal Size, Flower Size, Number of Petals, Shape Size.

Petal Style changes the shape of the petals.

Petal Size changes the proportion of the center of the flower compared to the petals.

Flower Size changes the amount of rows of petals (Standard is 2)

Number of Petals does exactly what it says on the box, it changes the amount of petals per row

Shape Size changes the size of the shape, so the flower, you're creating. This may not have a big effect, depending on your settings in the prior options.

Changing those around, and we get a flower similar to this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/8CQLhF2r90/Flower%20changes.jpg (Flower changes)

Pattern

The colors tab is the same as for the tiled patterns. If you want more information on those, that can be found at our "getting started" tutorial.

The masks and Text Overlay tabs are explained more in the mask tutorial.

Patterns, however, are something that is unique for the Shapes, and something that the tiles do not have. So let's see what the Pattern tab has to offer for us.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/NafzZuxKut/Pattern%20tab.jpg (Pattern tab)

We can change the amount of flowers that appears on the canvas, the way they are scattered across the canvas, rotate the flowers (This definitely shows better when you have less... circular patterns), and of course, the colour options.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/VYfacD6DND/pattern%20options.jpg (pattern options)

A neat detail you may notice, is that the pattern is technically seamless! You can use these in an on-going pattern, if you so choose. The other pattern options are based on tiles, where smaller and larger flowers are repeated in a solid pattern, instead of random.

You can also see there is some rotation, some flowers have a leaf on the very top, some have a gap there.

Masks and Texts

There are two kinds of masks you can use with the Graphics Maker software. Three, actually, but they are hidden under two different tabs.

text masks
Graphic masks

Let's look over them.

Graphic Masks

We've set up a quick and easy pattern with 001, Tile Labyrinth. There is some fluidity, we've added bounding boxes, and some colours. Tips on how to do this are found in the Getting Started tutorial.

There are two ways to set up a graphics mask. One is very similar to masks in any other software from Bookpublishertools. You select a silhouette image and it becomes a mask.

Image Masks

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/vvYKl8uQWl/mask.jpg (mask)

Now, it's also possible to change some settings here, such as inverting the image, recolouring the image to turn the masked image parts to white, and stretching.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/E3MoDeekM8/mask%202.jpg (mask 2)

Built-in Masks

Now let's play with the other option, the Built In masks. These are unique to POD Graphics Maker, and while they are not quite as unique as custom PNG masks, you can still do some amazing things with these.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/RakrjLHHvG/Masking%20Built%20In%20Masks.jpg (Masking Built In Masks)

Pretty interesting, right?

Let's see what we had to do to get these results.

Repeats horizontal and vertical. As you can tell we have both set to 5, for a total of 25 circles. You can also change the size, and their horizontal/vertical positioning.
Pen colour and mask shape. We've set the pen colour to a dark green to go with our colours in the background. We've used a circle cut out, meaning that everything is greyed out except the 5x5 circles. There are multiple mask shapes that come with the software.
Height and Width of the cutouts. We've put these both at maximum so they touch. If you want it even bigger, change the size at step 1, and you get overlap, which can look really good too.

And just like that, we've created a simple background with the built-in masks.

Text Masks

While you can combine Graphic masks and Text overlay masks, we're quickly turning off the graphic masks, so you can better see the results of the text overlay masks.

First of all, let's enable the Text Overlay. The standard word input is "LOVE".

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/d2DZPXy9Kz/Text%20overlay%20standard.jpg (Text overlay standard)

Great. Now let's try playing with the settings a bit to get something that looks better and can actually be used. You can change the text, center the text, change the colour of the text, or even use the text as a mask.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/N7XDXzruTO/2023-11-17_11-13-05.jpg (2023-11-17_11-13-05 (2024).jpg)

Interesting...

Now what we've done here is change the font to something Bold, changed the text, and selected the option to use the text as a mask. You can make the text as long as you want too.

Getting Started

Upon starting the software, you'll see a screen similar to this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/dSTZiNceLd/Graphics%20Maker%20Starting%20Screen.jpg (Graphics Maker Starting Screen)

Let's go over the options one by one.

The preview Screen
The options to change the appearance. We'll go over these tabs and what they can do one by one.
Fluidity. One of the more genius possibilities, this slider will turn the straight lines into rounded lines. Feel free to play around with this option to see how it impacts the result, it's different for every pattern.

Options

In the Options Screen (top right) you can also select some base settings. Let's get these set up first before we start playing with all the other options.

The options screen has two tabs: General, and Size and Tiling.

In General, you can change where the file is saved, what kind of file it saves (Transparent PNG is biggest, but if you want to use transparency options, this is the only format that supports it), and if you want to use a watermark.

In Size and Tiling, you can change the size of the file, and how you want it printed.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Yf5wrQYKra/Graphics%20Maker%20Settings.jpg (Graphics Maker Settings)

If you want a simple repeating pattern, then Paper Style is the choice to make. However, if you want to make a background for powerpoint, or paper, then Paper Style allows you to finetune the sizing more. However, in Paper Style, you may not get a repeating pattern, and the squares on the right and bottom may be cut off halfway through.

For now we've put the canvas size at the standard 5000 pixels, and 4 tiles horizontal and vertical, so we can see what each option does.

Symbol Settings

The Symbol tab is different for every pattern, with unique options depending on what the pattern looks like. The one consistent option is the Fluidity slider.

Using the Labyrinth pattern as an example, let's see what the settings do.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/AkgbHoVD22/Paths%20And%20Box%20Size.jpg (Paths And Box Size)

We've used some arrows to hopefully make the impact of the settings clearer.

The red arrows show the box size. The box is the little square in the top left corner of each tile. By setting that on 3, that means that it is as big as 3 of the lines next to it. Both red squares are the same size, so you can see what this means in actuality.

The Paths option, with the purple arrow, shows how many paths there are next to the square.

We've also turned on the bounding box, which puts a neat line around each square. Not every pattern looks good with a bounding box, and not every pattern looks great without one, so feel free to test what you like.

Colour settings

In this screen you can change all colour settings, from the lines, to using transparency, to using multiple colours. You can also change how thick the lines are.

If you select "use fill colours", you can also change additional colours.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/wQ2TZ7S38V/Colours%20settings%201.jpg (Colours settings 1)

In the example below you can see we've changed the pen colour to a dark green, and changed the width to 20.

We've also set up a base colour of pink. You can also see that there is the possibility to set up a colour scheme. There are multiple ways of handling this. If you know your colour theory, you can set up custom colours.

If you're not the artistic type, don't worry! The software has multiple presets for the colours that tend to give a good result.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/AIDTYCxDHl/Colour%20presets.jpg (Colour presets)

Pattern Settings

Here you can rotate the squares. You can also rotate the entire canvas. The image below explains how the small and large squares work.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/JvzWpX32cM/Rotation.jpg (Rotation)

The red squares overlap with the Rotate Small option. They will rotate one quarter clockwise with each step.

The purple squares are for the rotate large option. This uses the clusters of 4 small squares, and rotates in the same way.

You can also rotate the canvas, if you don't like horizontal lines. Beware, if you use this option, it is possible the pattern is no longer repeating.

Mask and text overlay Settings

If you've used any of our software, you already know how masks work. You simply load in a PNG and it'll automatically become a mask.

However, this software also has a built-in mask option. For more information on how to use the built-in masks, check out the tutorial on using masks in Graphics Maker.

Question 5

How to create a 'Draw' style pattern with POD Graphics Maker

Accepted Answer

This Youtube tutorial shows how to create Draw style patterns with POD Graphics Maker.

Pattern 02-2 - Draw is part of POD Graphics Maker XL Edition and Expansion Pack 02.

Question 6

How to create a 'Simple Shapes' style pattern with POD Graphics Maker

Accepted Answer

This Youtube tutorial shows how to create Simple Shapes style patterns with POD Graphics Maker.

Pattern 04-2 - Simple Shapes is part of POD Graphics Maker XL Edition and Expansion Pack 04

Warning: When you open this pattern, it may seem as if it's not working - the pattern depends on color settings, and will default to white if colors are not set.

Question 7

How to create a 'Labyrinth' style pattern with POD Graphics Maker

Accepted Answer

This Youtube tutorial shows how to create Labyrinth style patterns with POD Graphics Maker.

Pattern 00-1 - Labyrinth is part of POD Graphics Maker Starter Edition and XL Edition.

Question 8

How to Save your pattern in multiple sizes in POD Graphics Maker

Accepted Answer

This Youtube tutorial demonstrates how to save your POD Graphics Maker patterns in multiple sizes.

This works for all editions of POD Graphics Maker.

Question 9

How to create a 'Mountains' style pattern with POD Graphics Maker

Accepted Answer

This Youtube tutorial shows how to create Mountains style patterns with POD Graphics Maker.

Pattern 00-2 - Mountains is part of POD Graphics Maker Starter Edition and XL Edition.

Question 10

How to use the Zoom function in POD Graphics Maker or Puzzle Maker Pro

Accepted Answer

This Youtube tutorial shows how to use the zoom function in the preview window in POD Graphics Maker.

The same options are available in the Puzzle Maker Pro preview window.