Using Photos to Show Modifications to Ez-Architect Elevation Plan

It’s easy to add a photo to your plan. This is especially useful if you’re doing some remodeling and you want to see how the remodel changes the look of your elevation(s).

Here’s how to do it:

Take Some Shots

Take some photos of each side of your house (or just the sides that will be affected by the remodeling). Make those photos as square to the house as you possibly can. You might have to go across the street or into your neighbors’ yards. (Maybe that’s a good excuse to meet your neighbors…)

If you can’t get a square shot, you can use an angle shot, but your plan will be more of a drawing than a true elevation. But that’s okay. There are no laws about this!

Take a bunch of shots so you don’t have to shoot them again. (You don’t want to wear out your welcome at your neighbors!)

Choose Your Photo(s)

When you get back to your computer, look over your photos and decide which one you like best for showing how your elevation(s) will change; not that you’ll modify the photo itself in Ez-Architect. But you’ll be making a sketch of it. Modify the photo, if you feel the need, in any photo editing program (like Irfanview, for example). Save your photo as a jpg, jpeg, tif, tiff, png, gif, or bmp. Be sure to remember the name of the folder where you save it.

Bring Your Photo(s) into Ez-Architect

Start a new Ez-Architect plan. Open a second layer. Call it Photo (or whatever you prefer). Use the Library/Image Tool (lower left corner of the left icon group). Drag an outline and a dialog will open. Use the lower dropdown and select the file type of your photo. Then navigate to the folder where you saved it.

Select your photo file to insert it into your plan. Stretch it appropriately so that it has the same aspect ratio as your original (as your house, that is). That means you want to make it look as much like your real house as possible; don’t stretch it too wide or too tall.

Sketch Your Elevation

Create a new layer. Call it Sketch or whatever you like. Then go back to the photo layer and choose Layout/Layers/Disable Selected. This will change your original photo to gray scale. Add the Sketch layer by clicking on Layer 2. You’ll still see your gray scale photo. But when you start sketching you will only be drawing on Layer 2. Draw as much detail as you like. Draw enough detail so you can (next step) change the sketch adequately to clearly show the changes you’re planning Don’t go into too much detail; do just enough so that you can easily modify the sketch and still have useful “before” and “after” sketches.

Yet Another Layer

Now that you’ve got your photo sketched on its own layer, add another layer. Call it New View or whatever. Select Layer 2 (your first sketch), and now disable that layer. It will turn gray. So when you select Layer 3, you’ll see your gray scale photo and your gray sketch. I suggest that you un-select Layer 1 so that your photo doesn’t show up at this point. You can leave it if you wish, but you might want to keep what you’re seeing as uncluttered as possible. So guess what’s next. You’re looking at Layer 2 which is disabled (gray) and you’re about to draw on Layer 3. Start drawing your modifications by using Layer 2 as a guide and take off point.

Let me know how this works for you. Keeping layers separated can be tricky. So if you don’t see gray when you expect to, just select that layer only and click Disable and it will change to gray once again.

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