February 2013 Guest Tips and Tricks - Making Surreal Backgrounds with Xara Fractals

[Barbara B]

Making Surreal Backgrounds with Xara Fractals

Stephen (stygg2003 on TG) shows you this month that the sky isn’t the limit. Come see how to use Xara’s fractal fills and transparency in combination with other features to make a surreal sky. Need a background for an awesome foreground shape? Wipe your feet and come on into this month’s Tips and Tricks at Xara Xone. So show us your work! And be sure to thank Stygg2003 for a great tutorial.

[angelize]

A very nice tutorial Stygg, thanks for sharing it with us

[stygg2003]

A very nice tutorial Stygg, thanks for sharing it with us

Thanks very much Francis, learnt so much from Gary and you thought I'd put a little back for appreciation

Stygg

[TXAlba]

Cheers Stygg, not always got time to play but off sick today so thought i would try this tutorial out.
Nice tutorial and good fun, one small thing is to watch out for is the horizontal line when you flip the duplicated image, the duplicated image is offset about 1 pixel from original, i found the blend tool useful at this point.

I came up with this

Attachment 94572

[stygg2003]

Cheers tx, 1 pixel off hey, must get myself new specs. Love the image you've come up with.

Stygg

[TXAlba]

Cheers tx, 1 pixel off hey, must get myself new specs.

sorry Stygg, should have explained why that was important , not too long ago while using Photoshop to do similar reflections, i found the same 1 pixel line........at first i didnt even see it but on the printed 20" x 20" digital painting it was very obvious. I was left a little red faced. Just one to watch for.

[stygg2003]

No problem tx, I appreciate the feedback and glad you enjoyed doing the tut

Stygg

[Gare]

Hi and welcome tx—

That line you, or anyone gets, is due t Xara's native anti-aliasing.

If there is a fractional amount, let's say 95.15 pixels per inch or something with a bitmap you've scaled, the screen doesn't resolve this fractional amount properly at all resolutions, including viewing resolutions.

So if you zoom, that visible line might go away at certain viewing resolutions.

It's Xara, not Stygg's tutorial.

It's irritating though!

My Best,

Gary

[dcahall]

Just had to give Stygg's good tutorial a try.

Of course I always have to "do my own thing" with these so I combined Stygg's tutorial with stuff from a thread about curving a show plus some stuff from one of the exercises in Gary's book and I hope a little from Gar's tut on reflections. So, now you guys have something throw some darts at :-)

[Gare]

You get an A+++ for integrating both what you learn with your resources.

Oh, um Stygg might throw darts, but I'm from The USA, New York specifically. We don't throw darts because we don't have pubs.

Our sport is throwing insults at California.

-g