more of an art thing than a xara thing

[chris8186]

Hey guys!! i need some advice on a banner im making. In the image attached the facemask on the helmet is black. I need it to be white. Whats the best way i can go about doing that without making it look like its been modified. Ive tried a few things but the end result comes out crappy and very fake looking. any advice, tips or hints?

[gwpriester]

My advice? Leave it as it is. It looks great.

[ss-kalm]

Agreed .... Why is it important that it be white?

[HayTay]

Chris,

I'm neutral on the whole white/black guard issue. Gary and Keith are right, it does look great just the way it is. On the other hand, Keith asked, "Why is it important that it be white?" And the answer is, because on all of the Longhorn helmets I've seen (except this one) the face guard is white. So, to that end, I offer the following suggestion to convert the black guard to a white guard. Clone (Ctrl+K) the original graphic and convert it to a negative (Live Effect Tool (Ctrl+F5) > Color Filter > Negative) and then perform some combination of vector masking, feathering, and 0% Brightness Transparency to isolate the face and mouth guards. A crummy, extremely inexact, example is shown below.

Just a suggestion (if you want to pursue this),
HayTay

.

[ss-kalm]

Convert to negative, than cut it out with the shape editor and paste it over the original.

If all the face guards are white, how did this one get to be black?

[steve.ledger]

Try drawing the lines in dark grey, convert to shapes, feather a little then clone in white and feather a little more than the grey. Group both and clone, colour black then draw a linear transparency from the bottom upwards.

Here's a quickie parboiled example,

[chris8186]

you are correct HayTay! The team facemask is white and thats why i needed it white. Thank you very much. This is very helpful!! The helmet was a stock image and the facemask came black with it.