Can I use a pdf-file or a jpg as a template?

Scapple
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1

Hi,
I’m looking for a way to use a pdf-file or a jpg of a poster as a template or background for a new Scapple document. I’d like to add notes to this image but it seems that one can only add notes outside the image.
Is it possible to do that? And more important: how can I do that?

2

Use the image as background for the whole canvas.
Open the Inspector, scroll down to Document settings, under Background color you have a button “Choose texture…”. Click on that and choose any image you want as background.

3

Thanks, this is certainly helping.
Unfortunately there is one more issue: the picture repeats itself unlimited times, as if it was wall paper.
Would it be possible to get the background just once (or to select and save just one image)?

4

The canvas is umlimited so I think you have to expand the size of the image and possibly frame it, and then restrict yourself so you don’t go outside its frame

5

I’d like to chime in on this, because I think it’s a feature that would be simple and highly useful.

I want to use Scapple to design my novel around a graphical representation of structure, using a background image as a guide map to filling in the right key scenes at the right places. This seems like a fairly obvious use-case for writers, and is the entire reason I downloaded Scapple.

Currently, there are issues.

You can’t just drag the template map image in because Scapple treats it as a map node and won’t let other nodes rest atop it. The only way to do it is to use View/Show-Inspector/Document/Choose Texture and load in a background image pre-scaled for the screen you plan to work on. That can work, but it’s not ideal.

  1. Scapple offers no scaling option for the background. It’s always treated as a texture and tiled to fill the screen. The only control the user has over this is indirectly and uncertainly via zoom.To use a template map image in this way, it must be large enough to fill the screen.
  2. If I load my template map image as the texture, I can’t load a texture beneath it, so if I want to have a texture, I have to manually add it and tile it in my template map image. This means that instead of a 700 KB template map image and a 300 KB background texture image, I have a single 3.5 MB image–and that might need to be much larger for some projects even just to add blank working space around the edges.
  3. This large image is loaded into, and massively bloats, the scap file.
  4. Because I have to manually combine my template map image with a background texture in a graphics editor, it’s not practical to use different textures with different projects, as I might otherwise like to.
  5. Loading the template map image in this way does work, but Scapple doesn’t notice and adjust the page size accordingly. If my template map image (including border space into which to add content later) is say, twice the height of the screen, there is no way to scroll down to the bottom of the map until I add a node and drag or resize it, bit by bit, enough to nudge the page size up. I can of course zoom out, but then Scapple will tile the template image, which is undesirable.
  6. Finally, I want my texture tiled, but not my template map image. Indeed, I’d really like to be able to tell Scapple to load the template map image into the center of a large work space, then tile a background texture behind it, then grow the workspace beyond that as needed as I add nodes, but without changing the map image. I do not ever want the nodes to interact with the template image, any more than with the texture.

So in summary, Scapple will do what I want, but it’s a Kludge. I the mind mapping feature are as useful and intuitive as I think they will be, I’ll end up using this as a core design tool.

But what I’d like to see is a “background map image” feature in which an external image reference is locked to a fixed (but changeable) location on the Scapple workspace, with the scrollable workspace immediately resized to accommodate it, a separate tiled texture behind it, and the mind mapping elements free to do their thing above an independent of it.

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6

I agree that having a locked image to be able to put notes on top of it would be very useful and I would love if Scapple team develop it. I think it would be best if it wasn’t part of the background, but simply an image that is “behind” the notes and does not get in the way. Apart from the current options for images, would be great having a “right mouse” quick option for lock/unlock and also being able to adjust its opacity.

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