The files list

This is a pane where you can organise the images that you will be interleaving to create your lenticular. They should be organised in left to right order. When you select an image a small thumbnail will be shown in the preview window below the list. Lentikit only takes jpg and png images at the moment.

To add images to this panel you can drag them from your file explorer, or you can click on the open file icon and use a standard file window. Note in the file window you can select several files at once for adding.

The order of the images can be changed using the move up , move down , remove and sort (1..9) buttons - the sort button will re-order the images alphabetically (or reverse if you click again).

Clicking on the preview button will bring up a new window with the selected image in it. You can scroll around the image using the scroll bars (if its big enough) and zoom in/out by right/left cli cking with the mouse (be sure to hold it very still while doing so).

Fields

Frame Based/DPI Based

Lentikit can work in two modes - in frame based mode you specify the number of images that are going to be used to produce your final image, and lentikit simply interleaves these images to produce the output. This is the mode to use when your printer is reasonably high resolution cmpared to your lenticular and the number of frames. For example 10 frames on a 4800 dpi printer for a 60 LPI sheet would mean that each frame gets 4800/60/10 = 8 printer pixels. The final image is scaled up to the desired size by the printer.

In DPI mode lentikit will attempt to calculate which image should be displayed for each printer pixel. This is the solution you might use with a full colour 600dpi printer. The output image size is an exact one for one match image pixel and printer pixel. This mode is not extensively tested.

Frames

when working in frames mode you enter the number of frames you want in the output image. This field is disabled in DPI mode as Lentikit calculates it for you.

LPI

The number of lenticular lenses per inch - used in frames mode when calculating the output size, and possibly the image height and width. Used in DPI mode to calculate how many frames fit in a single lenticular lens.

DPI

The Dots Per inch of the target printer - disabled in frames mode as it isn't needed. In DPI mode used to calculate how many frames fit in a single lenticular lens.

Sizes

In this combo box you can select some standard output sizes, and also select Custom - where you can specify the size of the output image in pixels and not inches(mm). In a future version of Lentikit you will be able to add more choices to this item.

Size px

If you have selected Custom in the Sizes field you can enter the desired size of the output image here. If you have selected one of the standard sizes these fields will show you the calculated image size in pixels.

Keep Aspect Ratio and Scale Images

Currently under consideration.

Output Size

This is quite an important field, it shows you the size that you should print the the output image at. Lenticulars are very sensitive to alignment, and it is not always possible to exactly match the requested output size in the Sizes field. This area tells you what size you should use in the program you use for printing.

The Alignment Borders

Lentikit can add black and white lines around your interleaved image that can assist when putting the lenticular sheet over the image. More detail on this to come.

The Interleave and Quit buttons

Pressing the Quit button simply closes the window - take care at the moment you are not prompted to save your project.

Pressing the Interleave button performs the interleave process, a progress window will be displayed, and when it has finished the interleave preview window will open. Described below.

The Status Bar

Actually this section doesn't have a lot of useful stuff at the moment. The thingy to the right is a memory monitor for debug purposes - because of the way java works you will see this go up and down wildly. If you right-click on it it will try to recover as much memory as possible, right-clicking again usually reclaims all available memory.

Preview Buttons

Save

Pressing this button will bring up a file chooser so you can save the image as PNG or JPEG. Always use PNG, there is a mode of JPEG that will allow you to save the image without the annoying JPEG colour resolution reductions, but it's not yet implemented.

Print

The Print button is an experimental feature that you can use to print the image directly to a printer without saving it first. It should print at the size noted in the Output Size field previously described. Please note it is experimental at the moment.

All, Frame Preview, Anaglyph

These buttons allow you to choose to view a particular " frame " of the output image, the idea is to let you get a feel for how the lenticular will appear once finished.

The Frame Preview radio button will select the frame indicated by the " number spinner " . You can see what resolution the final frame will appear at.

The Anaglyph radio button will select the two frames selected in the " number spinners " and produce a (not very good) anaglyph of the two frames for viewing with red-cyan glasses. This feature is SLOW, but it is intended to give you an even better idea of how the finished lenticular will look.

Close

The close button will dismiss the window.