Bitmap Knockout

[StevenWWinters]

Charles,

I'm not a professional graphics artist, but I have created an few web pages and print documents. I've been using Xara for a number of years now and it is by far my favorite tool for both bitmap and vector. One thing that I've used Xara for is cutting out portions of photo's by drawing area to isolote and using the slice command. Works great, but very tedious. I've read reviews of the Corel Knockout plug-in and have also read that Photoshop is capable at extracting images but haven't used either. It is such a common task that (IMO) if it worked well, a feature to simplify cutouts in Xara would make it very appealing to those who have never used it (and more so to those of us who do).

Questions for others:

How effective is Photoshop at this?

Has anyone used Knockout and will it work in Xara?

I've got a project with about 90+ web graphics to do, so I need to find a solution that will speed things up.

TIA!

Steven W. Winters

[StevenWWinters]

Charles,

I'm not a professional graphics artist, but I have created an few web pages and print documents. I've been using Xara for a number of years now and it is by far my favorite tool for both bitmap and vector. One thing that I've used Xara for is cutting out portions of photo's by drawing area to isolote and using the slice command. Works great, but very tedious. I've read reviews of the Corel Knockout plug-in and have also read that Photoshop is capable at extracting images but haven't used either. It is such a common task that (IMO) if it worked well, a feature to simplify cutouts in Xara would make it very appealing to those who have never used it (and more so to those of us who do).

Questions for others:

How effective is Photoshop at this?

Has anyone used Knockout and will it work in Xara?

I've got a project with about 90+ web graphics to do, so I need to find a solution that will speed things up.

TIA!

Steven W. Winters

[molucca]

I didn't think Knockout 2 did as well as Xara X. It is good for things with fuzzy edges on occasion. I have never tried using Xara X as a host. I use Photoshop and KO requires a host. KO extractions are full of extraneous pixels where Xara X makes a clean transparent area. Ko relies on the differences between foreground and background. If there is a good difference, it will work. With Xara X, it is easier to draw an object even if there is very little difference. I use clipview. From what I have seen in PS extract, the examples have good differences.
I have spent more effort correcting KO extractions than just drawing an object in Xara X.
I would stay with Xara X. Rich

[Scotty]

Hi,
I have used Knockout the first version and found it quite tedious to use. The strong area of this program (my opinion) is for fine detail as you can create a 'shadow' area for example around Photos where the subject hair is blown by the wind and the backround shows a bit you can capture the fine detail.
Jim

[gwpriester]

My guess is that Knockout is good when you have strong differences in contrast between areas.

One thing you can do with Xara, which works really well, is to apply a small amount of feathering to soften the edge using the Change Size of Feather Region slider on the top right area of the Infobar.

Welcome to the Xara Conference, by the way.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person


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www.gwpriester.com </a>


<a href="http://www.xaraxone.com">
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[Mickie]

Steve, have you tried using the Freehand/brush tool method for cutting out portions of a bitmap? I find it much faster than the draw/slice method. Ross talks about this method in a guest tutorial he did for the XaraXone. You might want to check it out...it's on page three of this tutorial.

Mickie

[StevenWWinters]

Thanks all. Looks like I stick with Xara and keep plugging. ;-)

I guess edge detection is more of a black art better left to the human eye.

Regards.

Steven...

[fritz23]

Has anyone had experience with using KnockOut as a Plugin with PhotoImpact XL? I know that it did not work with the PI 8 version, but maybe now it does?!
Regards.
Fritz

[Jackie]

Knockout doesn't work with PhotoImpact XL either - the problem is PIs object architecture is not compliant with the layer architecture used by Photoshop, PhotoPaint, Paint Shop Pro and Serif Photoplus(all of which work fine with KO).

Although I own all those apps (hey - everyone needs a hobby), PI is my least favoured. It has one or two nice features, but generally is so different from the normal workflow and functionality of bitmap editors that I find it almost impossible to work in without building frustration.