FAQ

Questions

Answers

How do I get started?

The first thing you will need is an image.  If possible, this image should be resized to a workable range – 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768.  The larger the file, the longer the processing time, so smaller images are better.

Next, you will want to upload your image.  Simply click on the “Select Image” button, select your image in the pop-up dialog that appears and click “Select.”  Once the image is processed, you will see your mural preview in the center column.

There are several ways to tweak the look of your mural:

Once you are happy with the look and size of your mural, click on the “Print Mural Instructions” button and follow along.

Where can I buy sticky notes

Here are some links to buy sticky notes

Pastel
Sweet Pea
Neon
Aquatic
Ultra
Sunbrite
Classic

Do I need to use sticky-notes?

No, there are other mediums for creating great murals with Heavy Mural, like Magnetic Pixels.  Check out this post for more details.

How do I change the size of my mural?

To change the size of your mural, move the Size slider.  Move to the left to increase the size, and move to the right to decrease the size.  Note: The larger you make the mural, the longer it will take to process.

How do I tweak the color selections?

One way of altering the mural’s color selection is to use the Color Tolerance slider.  Moving this slider changes the color sampling tolerance of the application and can create some interesting results.

You can also turn colors on/off, and even add custom colors.

How do I turn colors on or off?

The colors in the palette are automatically selected by Heavy Mural depending on what colors the application thinks are the closest approximation to the actual color.  The selected colors in the palette will appear with a black border around them.  To turn the colors off, simply click on them.  Deselected colors will appear with a crosshatch pattern over them.  To turn them back on, click them again.

How do I enter in custom colors?

Custom colors are below the main color palette on the right sidebar of Heavy Mural.  When you click on the “+” sign, you will be prompted for two values: name and color.  The name will be used when the instructions are printed to identify the color.  The color is the hex value of the color itself.  Once the two values have been set, click the “+” sign again to set the color in place.

How do I get the hex value for my sticky note color?

The Custom Colors palette of Heavy Mural requires the user to enter color values in hexadecimal (hex) format.  To get the hex value of your sticky note, you can do two things:

The quick and easy way:

Open any application you have on your computer (or find one on the web – see examples below) that has a color wheel.  Select the color that you believe is the closest to the sticky note color that you have.  Once selected, take note of the color’s hex value.

The slow and (more) accurate way:

You will first need to capture the color so it can be sampled.  You can do this by either scanning the sticky note, or taking a picture of it.  Once you have the image, you can open it in most photo editing software applications (like Photoshop, Picassa), or online photo editing services (like Photoshop.com, or Aviary.com).  Below are a couple of utilities that may be useful.  Hex values are almost always represented by a # sign followed by 6 characters.

Instant Eyedropper – Windows only

Colorzilla – Firefox browser extension

You can learn more about hex web colors here.

How do I view the instructions without printing them?

There are several applications available that allow you to print to PDF.

Simply install one of these applications, depending on which operating system you are running, and when you go to print the instructions, you should now see a PDF option.  This option will create the instructions in a PDF file that you can open on your computer.

How do I keep up to date with the development of Heavy Mural?

At the bottom of every page there is a link where you can get the RSS feed to our development blog.  If you subscribe to this feed you will know when we make updates or call out to the community for ideas to make the application better.

How do I tell you how much I love/hate/am indifferent towards Heavy Mural?

We have a development blog where you can post comments.  The only thing we ask is that you register first, so we can tell you are a real person instead of a pharmacutical advertisement.

How do I register?

You can register for the site here.  Fill in your information (don’t worry, we don’t use your information for anything other than registration) and you will receive an e-mail with your password.

How do I change my password?

Once you are logged in, click on the Profile link in the upper right to go to your profile management page.  Scroll to the bottom, and update your password in the fields provided.  Click on the update button to commit the change.