The July Tutorial Discussion-Retouching Images

[stygg2003]

That is a fair philosophy I do appreciate, because I am well pleased with my progress up to date and would never have attempted half the things I have learnt in the Zone. Just one more request, more embarrassment, I've deleted your message by mis-take with the link, can you please send again, thank you.

Stygg

[Gare]

I wanted to share an example image I'd created, and actually, "Why not just post it?" occured to me, Stygg!

But I did design it for you, personally, because I see you're learning a lot about this recoloring stuff.

@everyone: if this is too difficult, it takes about 2 minutes to change a texture and render the image again, so please, I'm open to requests, if you're open to more tutorial images.

Right-click to Save As



It's just a Xara "X" (cross? ) made up of marbles. There's no "right" or "wrong" in the image. Use your own innovation and creativity to change the image.

My Best,

Gary

[wizard509]

I did one but I put a little twist on it to make it look like it's buried in some of the others. Have not done the tic-tac-toe one yet.

[angelize]

Well done Larry, it took me a few minutes to find it!

[Soquili]

Just a little change to two of the marbles.

[Gare]

@Bill—

Ambitious and lovely use of color in a situation where the composition really offers no guidance.

Suggestion? There's a live Effect that will create a fisheye lens with shapes and groups of shapes. It might help distort the textures and make them look as photorealistic and the stuff that my modeling program did for me.


@ Larry—

It's flawless, man, from artistic concept through to execution.

I'm very, very pleased that this and other months are proving to be a challenge and a learning experience while still remaining fun.

My Calculus prof in college was absolutely no fun, offered me no entry point to stuff that I occasionally need to know today, but ultimately I think the world's a better place because he was a jerk of a teacher and failed me instead of failing himself.

Because before I fell back on Art as my major, I was going to be a scientist. I'm serious, unlike this video, which is pure speculation:

>>Bouton shows kids Science Lab Safety<<

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

Thanks for the tip Gary. I don't use Live Effects often and forget how many varied effects there are.

[angelize]

I like your effects Bill. I finally had some time to play around with the marbles. I couldn't resist doodling on the paper!

[stygg2003]

Here's my two efforts of X-marbles, the second one being a touch of Johansson (if only)

Stygg

[Gare]

@Stygg—

Very ambitious, very well done!

Folks, now that we aren't afraid to use the Mask tool or themanual method of slicing an are, you already know about ClipViews, so...

If you look carefully at the marbles picture, there's a depth of field going on. The foreground and the background are slightly soft because of the target distance of the "camera" in my modeling program. And this phenomenon does exist when you use a physical focal plane camera.

Entertain the idea of spending a little quality time with a Live Effect—There's a Soften>Soft-Focus Effect you can use to blur either a vector or bitmap selection. Then you use a ClipView to put the blurry object behind an in-focus one.

All of which is easier shown than explained; check out the attachment here.



@ Everyone

This focus thing is just an introduction to Live Effects, and I'm getting the idea I should devote a video, perhaps September, to some of the advanced stuff you can do with Live Effects. I'm digressing here and moving away from this moth's recoloring adventure, but it's all about image retouching.

And the truth is: unless you want to be a hobbyist for the rest of your life, an artist of any skill level needs to keep pushing their innate talent and expanding their skill set. Back in the early 1990s, right after I had a grasp on CorelDRAW, I took on Photoshop, one a vector, the other an image editor. Why? Because the world takes photos, shares photos, and publishes photos.

And unless you're rich, you're not going to buy Photoshop tomorrow, and even if you did, there's a learning curve. When I cover retouching stuff, it's to get you up and running with tools you already are familiar with. Live Effects came with Xara when you bought it. So there's no reason not to experiment with them, is there?

:)

My Best,

Gary

P.S. @Frances-Use Stained Glass transparency mode at partial opacity to make your flower blend into the paper. Right now it sort of looks like it's floating on top of the page. Sorry! :)