Create a 720x480 image with 0.9 rectangular pixels (in which direction?) using the 8-bit palette shown. Scan lines 0-40 to 370-480 are will not be drawn.
HDMI output must use a 960x540 image. This is not fully supported or tested and will change depending on which information is being displayed on the image. While recording it will switch back to 480p, so separate images must be created.
Color 0 is transparent. Color 3 is semi-transparent black.
If using Adobe Photoshop; create a new document
set width to 720 pixels and height 480 pixels with resolution 72 pixels/inch
Color Mode: RGB Color, 8 bit
Background contents: White
Advanced settings
Don't Color Manage this Document
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels; selecting D1/DV NTSC (0.91) will result in a narrower image.
After completing your custom cropmarks select Save File as... BMP as OS/2 24-bit
550D / 60D / 600D /1100D
Create a 720x480 image using the 8-bit palette shown. Only the first 80 entries have constant color (the other entries change according to the skin used; in Play mode, the palette is almost the same as on 5D2). The entire cropmark will be drawn, and aspect ratio is 1:1.
Color 0 is transparent. Color 3 is semi-transparent black. Color 20 is also semi-transparent, but more opaque.
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.
Notes 60D
The same things apply as for 550D. However there is less free memory avialable on the 60D, so you should make your cropmarks smaller (some reduced-resolution cropmarks are included). Later builds added RLE compression to conservere memory, but you might still encounter Err70, when loading a more complex cropmark.
Photoshop step by step guide
This is done from Apple OsX (Snow Leopard) using Photoshop but I think that it could be done with any other software or operating system (with the right corrections).
cropmarcks settings for photoshop
Create a new document with these settings:
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, black will be semi-transparent black;
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;
On the new window chose Palette: Custom... and load the correct color palette (you can make your own extracting it from a screenshot bmp made from ML)
Set Dither: None
bmp options for cropmarks
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 we need to use the Sztupy's tool (convertrle.rb ) NOTE:
Download the file from ML repo;
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);
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 will not be the same. Ruby is required so check first to have it installed
ScraxIT 15:55, August 18, 2011 (UTC)
NOTE: 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.
Aureal proportion and Cross Meter
Golden rule and measurement cross, little cross at third intersections
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...).
Simple Cross with 1/4 points
Simple center cross, with 1/4 red intersections
A simple central cross with little red marks at 1/4 of the screen.
Cross Meter Only
CrossMeter only
A central red cross with a meter scale in black.
Cross Meter X(treme)
A test with some different colors and a 45° crossmeter more.
Just a test to see how complex I can go without problems...
Passport (new version, ISO/IEC 19794-5 compliant)
A passport portrait help for having the correct sizes.
This is a guide for tacking correct passport portraits with min and max heigth, eye level etc.
It has an ideal black outline to center the subject and a red rectangle where eyes need to be placed.
