How can I resize a photo in SU?

Morning All,

Another newbie question. Can I resize a photo that I scanned into SU? I have tried to Scale the image, all I get is multiple photos of the scanned image.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

TropicalGuyCns.

What exactly do you mean by “scanned into SU”? How exactly did you insert the image? It can be resized but it depends upon how you imported it.

Sorry, I should have uploaded the image.Lazy Rocker.skp (389.1 KB)

TropicalGuyCns.

You’ve imported the image as a texture so you will have to resize it in the Materials edit window.

When I open your file I can right click on the image and resize using the texture/position tool (drag green icon), you then have to move the bounding lines of the image with the move tool to include all of the resized image.
If you want to size it to a particular size for modelling, you can draw a line on the image of a known distance with the pencil and then use the tape measure to measure that line, after the second click on the tape measure enter the size with your keyboard and you will be prompted to see if you want to resize the model, click “yes” and the line will be that size and subsequently so will the image.

Yes. That’s another way.

Since the image is really intended as a reference instead of a texture, it would probably make more sense to import it as an image instead of as a texture.

As Dave says, there are many ways to accomplish the same or similar results in SU. We all develop our means through habit. This is one of the great things about a forum such as this is that we will often come across alternative methodologies that we can adopt.
On point with Dave’s response, the imported image can always be “exploded” or right clicked and “used as a texture” at a later date. ( I am in the habit of exploding to make the image/texture more quickly available for thea to use)

I also automatically explode AND group the images right after import.

Explode creates the material, group keeps the image handeable like any other image. You can scale the group easily using the scale tool.

No point in making a texture if the image is only going to be used as a references for drawing the model, though.

Am I right in thinking, you can simply drag an image into the Sketchup window from a folder rather than importing?

Yes. You can do that if you wish.

That depends on how you reference them. I like to have my reference painted in the model itself.

Then it’s easy to view every detail and even use the texture instead of geometry if you want.

When you explode the image it gets projected into the rectangle face and you can cut off main shapes immediatelly and position them at will, effectivelly, like this:

airplane_blueprint.skp (395.2 KB)

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This image is only being used as reference for drawing the model, still, it’s a reference attached to the model. It’s not going to be part of the final model necessarily. It’s a part of the process.

Of course with this process, the image itself might be part of the final model.

Anyway, I use this process for modelling from reference all the time and I thought it would be cool to share it in this post. You can’t split an imported image, but if you explode it you can split the textured face after as the image becomes a textured material on a face.

There is a free Plugin that will allow you to scale independently of the Sketchup model. Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse
It also give you access to thousands of free Dynamic components.

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