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Written by:

Igor Gorovyy
DevOps Engineer Lead & Senior Solutions Architect

Auxiliary tools for wood carving. The Devops approach

helpers tooling image

🛠️ Wood Carving Helper Tools

A collection of useful Python scripts for image processing and PDF creation for wood carving projects.

🧰 Available Tools

  1. remove_background.py — automatic background removal from images, saves alpha mask.
  2. apply_mask.py — apply an edited alpha mask to the original image.
  3. image_to_pdf.py — convert an image to PDF with exact physical print size.
  4. poster_splitter.py — scale image to desired size, split into A4 sheets, generate PDF poster with marks and coordinates for assembly.

🖤 Manual Transparency (Alpha Mask) Editing

  1. Run background removal with mask saving: 
    python remove_background.py your_image.jpg -a --save-mask
    This will create a file like your_image_no_bg_mask.png.
  2. Open the mask in a graphics editor (Photoshop, GIMP), fix details (legs, thin elements), and save.
  3. Apply the edited mask to the original image: 
    python apply_mask.py your_image.jpg your_image_no_bg_mask.png -o your_image_final.png
    The result will be a perfect PNG with transparent background.

The apply_mask.py script is included in the project!

🖨️ Splitting an Image into a Multi-Page Poster Template

The script poster_splitter.py allows you to scale an image to a specified physical size, split it into the required number of A4 sheets, and generate a PDF for printing a large template.

Key features:

  • Proportional image scaling (no distortion)
  • Adds white margins if aspect ratio does not match
  • Splits into A4 sheets
  • Adds alignment marks (lines in corners)
  • Adds page coordinates in the top left corner (e.g., Row 2, Col 1)

Example usage:

python poster_splitter.py IMG_5989-removebg-preview.png -w 40 -t 30 -o IMG_5989_poster.pdf
- -w — template width in cm - -t — template height in cm - -o — output PDF filename

Each PDF page will have a label in the top left corner with coordinates (row, column) to help you assemble the template correctly.

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/igorgorovoy/woodcarving-helpers-it-tools.git
cd woodcarving-helpers-it-tools

# Create virtual environment
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

Example Workflow

# 1. Remove background from carving photo
python remove_background.py IMG_5989.JPG -a

# 2. Convert to PDF with 10 cm size
python image_to_pdf.py IMG_5989_no_bg.png -s 10 -o carving_10cm.pdf

📚 Detailed Documentation

🎯 Typical Use Cases

For Wood Carving

  1. Photograph your work - take a photo of your carving
  2. Remove background - use remove_background.py for cleanup
  3. Create template - convert to PDF with desired size
  4. Print - print for use as a template

For Portfolio

  1. Process photos - remove unwanted backgrounds
  2. Create catalog - make PDF with uniform sizes
  3. Professional presentation - clean look without background

🔧 Technical Requirements

  • Python 3.7+
  • Minimum 2GB RAM (for background removal)
  • Internet connection (for first background removal run)

📦 Dependencies

  • Pillow - image processing
  • reportlab - PDF creation
  • rembg - AI-powered background removal

Українська версія

🤝 Contributing

Source code

If you have ideas for new tools or improvements, create issues or pull requests!