Ink Weight guide

Every control

Every control in the panel, top to bottom.

Load and save

Image AButton: Your picture. Press it to open one from your device, or drop one on the frame; two at once fill A and B. It is kept on this device, never uploaded, and every lab tool that takes a picture opens with it until you press × on its corner. A picture longer than 1400 pixels on a side is read through a copy of that size. If the browser cannot open the file, a message says so and the picture you had stays.
SwapButton: Changes which tile Ink Weight uses, so a picture you added as B in another tool can be written here. When the other tile is empty, the sample comes back.
Image BButton: A second kept picture. Ink Weight writes one picture at a time: the tile it is not using is dimmed and says Not used here.
Try the sampleButton: Loads the sample the page opens with: a portrait on a dark ground.
Save PNGButton: Saves the picture as ink-weight.png, at twice the size it is drawn (a very large one is kept under 16 million pixels), on your paper or a clear background. See PNG.
Record videoButton: Saves one take of the motion you picked, 5 or 10 seconds, as ink-weight-<motion>-<length>.mp4 (for example ink-weight-write-5s.mp4), 1920 pixels on its long side, at 60 frames a second where the device draws fast enough, else 30. A browser that cannot write MP4 gets a WebM. The frames are drawn one by one and the page is still while it works. See MP4.
Copy textButton: Copies the characters to the clipboard as plain text, with no colour, in writing order. See copy as text.
Save .txtButton: Saves the same characters as ink-weight.txt. See text file.
Save SVGButton: Saves ink-weight.svg, every character kept as live text in its colour and place. See SVG text.

Words

The script and the words the picture is written in, then the characters in use, light to heavy, and a line that counts them.

ScriptPick one · Kanji · Devanagari · Tamil · Latin · Symbols · Your own: Which script the picture is written in. Each script brings its own word sets, its own fonts and its own spark character.

Kanji: Japanese kanji, the script the page opens with: seven sets of 21 to 25 characters. See kanji.

Devanagari: Devanagari, with Sanskrit words: Elements, Mantra, Light, Night, Water. A syllable with its vowel sign is kept whole as one character. See Devanagari glyphs.

Tamil: Tamil words: Sea, Light, Night, Wind and fire, Hill and rain. A letter with its vowel sign is kept whole.

Latin: English words in capitals and small letters, with a few marks for the light end: Raven, Water, Light, Stone, Forest.

Symbols: No words: shapes, box-drawing lines, shade blocks, stars or arrows, each set sorted by its ink like the rest.

Your own: The characters you type, in any script or a mix of them. The word sets hide and a box opens: spaces and repeats are dropped, up to 200 characters are kept, and the tool sorts them by their ink itself, so the order you type does not matter. See glyph coverage.
WordsPick one · Crow · Water · Fire · Forest · Rain · Light · Stone: The word sets of the script you picked; this row changes with the script and hides for Your own. Each set holds words about one subject, spread from light strokes to dense ones. The line under it shows the characters in use, light to heavy.

Crow: Kanji: crow, wing, feather, black, night, wind, branch. The set the page opens with.

Water: Water, wave, sea, current, tide, a drop.

Fire: Fire, flame, heat, smoke, ash, a lamp.

Forest: Forest, tree, leaf, root, moss, pine, bamboo.

Rain: Rain, cloud, mist, thunder, hail, an umbrella.

Light: Light, sun, star, morning, bright, white.

Stone: Stone, rock, mountain, peak, sand, jade.

Tone

Which cells get ink, and how heavy. Brightness and Contrast change the picture's tones before the characters are picked; Ground and Haze decide the empty cells.

BrightnessSlider · 0.3 to 3 · starts at 1: Lifts or lowers the picture's middle tones before the characters are picked. Above 1 more of the picture is bright, and gets heavier characters. See gamma.
ContrastSlider · 0.5 to 3 · starts at 1.3: Pushes the tones apart from the middle, so the subject separates from its ground. See contrast.
InvertOn or off · starts off: Swaps light and dark, so the heavy characters go where the picture is dark. See invert.
GroundSlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 18: Cells whose tone falls below this stay empty. Raise it until the background falls away; lower it to bring dim parts back.
HazeSlider · 0 to 100 · starts at 22: Of the empty cells, the share that gets a light character drawn faintly, at about a quarter of the ink. The same cells keep it as you change other settings, so the haze never flickers.

Layout

How many cells, which way they run, and which font draws them. The line at the foot counts the cells, the written ones and the ones in the haze.

ColumnsSlider · 20 to 200 · starts at 96: How many cells make one row. The rows follow from the picture's shape. On phones and touch screens it stops at 120.
Vertical writingOn or off · starts off: Writes in columns from top to bottom, the columns from right to left, the way Japanese is written by hand. The columns stand a little apart. The text and the SVG follow the same order. See tategaki.
Serif · Sans · MonoPick one: Which style of type draws the characters and measures their ink. Each script has its own serif, sans and mono fonts. See typeface.

Serif: The serif style: for kanji, Mincho, the one the page opens with. See mincho and serif.

Sans: The sans-serif style, strokes of even width: for kanji, Gothic. See gothic and sans-serif.

Mono: The lab's own monospace face for Latin letters and digits, with the script's sans behind it. See monospace.
SizeSlider · 6 to 24 · starts at 12: How big each character is drawn, in pixels. With Columns it sets the size of the PNG and the SVG. See font size.
SpacingSlider · 0.8 to 1.6 · starts at 1: Room around each character, as a share of its square: 1 is shoulder to shoulder, higher leaves gaps. See em square.

Ink

The colours, the paper, and the one accent character.

Ink on paper · Picture colour · Two tonePick one: How the characters are coloured.

Ink on paper: One ink on one paper, the two colours below.

Picture colour: Each character takes the colour of its part of the picture; the paper stays.

Two tone: The subject in the ink, the haze in a second, fainter ink.
InkColour · starts #eee8da: The colour of the characters.
PaperColour · starts #0c0b0a: The colour behind them, on the page, in the PNG and in the SVG.
Haze inkColour · starts #6c8196: Shows in Two tone: the colour of the haze.
Clear paperOn or off · starts off: Leaves the PNG and the SVG without a background, so they sit on anything. The frame shows checks where the paper is clear; the saves never carry them. See transparent background.
SparkOn or off · starts on: Draws the single brightest cell with the spark character in its own colour. Just one.
Spark glyphText: The spark's character, one character. It follows the script: 日 for kanji, ॐ for Devanagari, ௐ for Tamil, O for Latin, ★ for symbols.
Spark colourColour · starts #e3a63c: The spark's colour, gold until you change it.

Motion

Space presses Play, the lab's one keyboard. See loop.

Write · Gather · Rain · BreathePick one: How the picture moves when you press Play, and what Record video saves. Each motion is worked out from the time alone, so the video is exactly what Play shows.

Write: Written by hand: a pen moves along each line in writing order, rows from the top or columns from the right, in short bursts with lifts between them. The newest character lands at full ink and a little large, the ones just before it settle, and the haze primes the page first.

Gather: The characters stream in from one side along shared curving paths, faint while they fly, and land with a brief brighten, the dim ones first; the picture is whole three quarters of the way through. Play sends them back the same way and gathers them again.

Rain: Bright heads fall down every column at their own speed and light each cell they pass; faint heads keep falling once the picture is written, and the haze twinkles. The motion the page opens with.

Breathe: A band a quarter of the frame wide crosses the finished picture once a take and makes the ink up to three steps heavier as it passes; the haze glows and fades and the spark pulses. The take loops.
LengthPick one · 5 s · 10 s: How long one take lasts, for Play and for Record video.

5 s: Five seconds, the length the page opens with.

10 s: Ten seconds.
PlayButton: Plays the motion over and over, and stops it. Space presses it too. The picture is drawn again by hand each time, so it plays as smoothly as the device can.

Reset

ResetButton: Puts every control back to how the page opened: Kanji and the Crow words, the opening tone, layout and ink, the spark on, Rain and 5 s. The picture and the words you typed stay.