The zoom factor can be adjusted, increased for more visibility, and reduced prior to screen grabs that are planned to be further processed in Gimp. I prefer 20 X20 or more when working with small repeats. To start, create a table, making certain that cells are square and equal in size, height, and width. The produced image will be twice as long as the original design, not desirable for keeping the aspect ratio as close to the original as possible, but a necessity in creating some alternative types of fabrics. The dbj color separation that knits in each color for each design row twice begins with preselection from the right and continues with color-changing every 2 rows.

The first preselection row is from the left to the right, the first color knits once before colors are changed every 2 rows. It is always a good idea after isolating the repeat to tile it in order to get a sense of how multiples line up I was lazy about doing that with the first version of the colored repeat in Numbers and got the result in this swatch due to a missing black cell The second try, see edit below to amend another missing cell Beginning with the long method to create the design repeat in the color separation suitable for elongated dbj: the built-in color separation in most Japanese machines for DBJ (179 and color reverse in Passap) will knit each color in each design row only once, as happens on the single bed in knitting fair isle, which in turn is far quicker to knit in that setting than by using slip stitch with color changes every 2 rows. These are 2 more samples from Barbara Walker’s book on mosaics, offering the repeats in both 16-stitch wide and 24-stitch versions. The process as described here assumes that there already is some comprehension of GIMP and a spreadsheet’s basic functions. Mosaics and Mazes came on my radar once more recently, Numbers and Gimp have both been updated, and a few more ideas have occurred to me for managing the necessary color separations. I shared some working methods to achieve these color separations in 9/mosaics-and-maze…numbers-and-gimp/.

Please see the post Gimp Update for Mac 3 written in December 2022 for a simpler and quicker method of color separating maze/mosaic repeats using only Gimp and related swatches.

Gimp2 2