Che Guevara effect

[mg.architect]

Hi Mr. Bramhill,

Please forgive my dense moment.

I can copy your steps with the cat, but somewhere in the transition from cat to Elvis I lose the flow.
Could you possibly continue the method using just the cat image?

Something in the following is not apparent to me?
"Do the same with the other colour, but remove the background rectangle shape.
Now you can select all of one colour, Arrange / Add Shapes. Repeat for the other colour.

Select All / Arrange Subtract shapes. You now end up with a great single coloured vector shape."

Why do I want to select all of one color and add shapes (what shapes?) if I've already selected them? Wouldn't I be adding the other color? If so where did it come from? And if I deleted the rectangle was something supposed to be left behind? Is that what's being added?

Too many questions.

Thank-you very much.

mg

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Paul,

After the trace, just Ctrl-click on the background rectangle of the trace and press delete to remove it.

If you just ungroup and delete the rear rectangle, you are assuming that this is the only shape of that colour. in the attachment below I have selected the rear rectangle and coloured it green. You can see that there are other black shapes remaining (53 here). So if you do a select all Arrange / Add shapes, you're losing these shapes.

MGARCHITECT I'll try to answer your questions when I get a moment.

[steve.ledger]

Sorry Egg, I don't really follow all your steps with named colors etc. After the trace, just Ctrl-click on the background rectangle of the trace and press delete to remove it. Then Join shapes with Ctrl-J and then you are free to apply any color including named ones. All the exporting sound a bit too much to do for a lazy soul as myself.

For the lazy soul lurking in us all
-----------------------------------------
Another really easy method using IrfanView

1) Open image
2) Resize if necessary. Ctrl+R
3) Crop if necessary [draw rectangle, adjust lines with mouse Ctrl+Y to accept)
3) Enhance colours. Shift+G
values I used:
contrast: full positive
gamma correction: full positive
saturation: full negative (-255)
brightness: 47-50
press OK
4) Image --> Decrease colour depth --> 2 colours (no dithering)
5) Image --> Effects --> blur

The last step smoothes the jaggies, but if you want a coloured bg, you will be better off omitting the last step until you have the bg in place.

[gnurf]

Egg, I wrote "join shapes" not "add shapes", which should work in the same manner as you have described - only quicker and easier

[haakoo]

This was done with live FX
free effects by XERO
1-Abstractor
2-Porcelain

Gr,Hans

[Egg Bramhill]

Paul,

Egg, I wrote "join shapes" not "add shapes", which should work in the same manner as you have described - only quicker and easier

Sorry, I missed this post and your Join Shapes advice. It works great. Cheers.

[JimToal]

Thanks guys,

My elder son has been on my back to do the same for a while, now my younger son wants the Elvis look, back to the drawing board

[gnurf]

Looks great. And if you place the text and image behind the scratches the black areas will also look worn and torn.

[Tallis]

I read this thread a while ago and just tried your trick, Hans. Wow. I had that plug in installed, but never got around... Thanks!

[gwpriester]

First of all, the photo should have a highlights and strong shadows. A washed out photo won't work.

In this photo of my long suffering wife holding our long suffering cat, I reduced the Color/Saturation setting in Xara Picture Editor to -100 (you have to key this in the text entry box).

Then in the Levels dialog (Xara Picture Editor), I moved the three triangles under the image very close together to reduce the number of colors.

Then I played around with the Brightness and Contrast settings in order to keep some of the hair and the lace curtain.

The color was a solid red orange rectangle added on top of the modified photo with Flat, 0%, Stained Glass transparency applied.

Welcome to the Xtreme Conference, by the way.

Gary