This month, it's version 8 and some image retouching.
Image Retouching with Xara Designer
Lets' talk.
You go second.
-g
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This month, it's version 8 and some image retouching.
Image Retouching with Xara Designer
Lets' talk.
You go second.
-g
That was really quite interesting I never knew about filling in the sliced out hole with the shape tool and backspace. Although I think you gave up on the colour select/erase too easily. You can mask out an area using the mask layer and the colour erase/select will only select pixels within the area you define on the mask. Here is the squirt gun image masked, colour selected, and hue changed.
Attachment 90881
Guilty, Frances! :)
But it wasn't that I gave up too easily. I covered the Color Select/Erase tool too quickly; I needed to cover a lot of ground this month, and wanted to give the alternative (and harder) method some time. So I short-shrifted the Color Select method, now to my regret.
Next month is Part 2 of Image Retouching, and I promise I'll try to give some time to the Mask tool. You and The Lone Ranger would like that. :)
And you did take something new away from July's tute, right?
My Best,
Gary
I much prefer the "hard way" of changing the color of the water gun.
I'm more confortable using vector techniques than raster like features.
Hi, Bill—
I try to include something for everyone in the tutorials. In fact, I was flipping a coin this month because you have to have version 8 for the water pistol tutorial (but not the tic tac toe tutorial).
Out of habit, I do retouching in Xara "the hard way" by manually and accurately tracing an area I want to change. Xara's selection methods are entirely vector, seeing as we don't have a true "Brush Tool" yet (hint, hint!:)), but I not the ease of using variations on the Freehand tool for photo editing methods, and let's face it: design life isn't all vector shapes—every mobile device these days seems to have a camera, right?
Bill, your water pistol you recolored to bright red is a little "hot" in your post; some of the detail is lost in the color. You might consider dialing back the Strength slider, or playing with Levels to let the highlights and shaded areas become more apparent.
I'm sorry members have to deal with my idea of photography! That bucket of toys was taken on a bright day and I had my choice of too m uch contrast in direct sunlight, or not enough in shaded areas of our back yard.
My Best,
Gary
I changed the transparency of the shape I used to cover the squirt gun from Stained Glass to Hue.
I would not know about mobile phones and cameras. I don't own a mobile phone.
Nice effort Francis, unfortunately I have still not upgraded yet but must do, so I'll just do the tic-tac toe for now. With regard to using the mask layer and the colour erase/select, did the video by NarrenzunftKalbach cover this topic?
Stygg
@Stygg—
If you use the second part of the image recoloring tutorial, you can follow that part along just fine. That's why I did the recoloring two different ways.
I don't know whether I've covered features exactly as someone else has previously. But that's kind of unavoidable now and in the future, isn't it? :) I can't be Jimmy Olsen and scoop everyone else all the time. I'm just trying to explore unexplored stuff with Xaraists (and being defensive in the process :))
@Bill, use the Contone feature! You don't have to put an object over the selected area to recolor it. And I've been a devout "Vector Guy" for years.
My Best,
Gary
I used the contone feature on the two extra alligator squirt guns. One green and one blue. :D
Got it. It looked so natural, I'd forgotten which water pistols I'd put in the bucket!
Now, does anyone know ho to make a "candy cane" water pistol? Red and white stripes? Consider this a challenge.
Or do polka dots if you're not feeling Christmassy yet.
-g
Good morning Gare
Good tutorial. I am glad you showed alternative ways instead of just relying on the latest version. Everything you did could be accomplished by anybody still running in XaraX or Xtreame, no problems there. The clone tool is basically just slice and dice, which you did with the alligator. I do love the trick of selecting the original image and selecting all the nodes and hitting the back key.........fantastic tip there. I used to do the same thing by slicing, cloning the slice, moving the clone, then selecting the original slice and image and adding them together. Did exactly the same thing but I like your method.
Like many people out there, I am running an older non pro version and am very happy where I am with no intentions of upgrading in the near future. Like Bill, I believe almost everything you can accomplish with version 8, I can accomplish with older versions by using work arounds, sometimes I just have to think harder.
I'm happy you got something out of this month's tute, Seagull.
Dear Members: I am trying very hard to produce something for everyone, every month, regardless of the version you own.
There's two truths I'd like you all to bear in mind:
1. I necessarily have to document new features in the latest version, as Xaraists upgrade. If I leave something out in preference to covering older features, I'm not serving a segment of the audience.
2. The Xara Group naturally wants you to buy the latest version of Xara at some point. I think this is called Capitalism and really hip, cool people subscribe to it. :) So the Xara Xone needs to support the latest features with a regular mention.
Rock.
Hard place.
Gary somewhere in between.
I'll try to be both current and mindful with the monthly tutes.
Deal?
Thanks!
Gary
I'm into candy canes all year long, especially if they are the King Leo brand. :D
You are astounding and outstanding, Bill.
You win on time trial alone, man.
Now, consider this: the stripes are "2D" on the pistol. You need to bend the edges a little to conform to the relief of the water pistol.
It's mostly planar, but there are areas where it extrudes toward the camera, hopefully I'm making sense here.
Currently, I'm trying to get the guest tutorial up, but I will post an example of what I'm talking about in due course.
-g
Hi Frank,
I have the latest version Xara Designer Pro X, old custom of upgrading with each new release. I also buy Photo & Graphic Designer of each new release, makes answering member's questions easier because there are differences.
Anyway what I wanted to mention is you can always use an alternate method if it is more comfortable to you. I find the Photo Color Erase more work. You select a color and if it removes too much from other objects similar or near enough to be erased you undo and retry and undo and retry. Next month Gary will explain how to use the tool without also erasing other areas of the photo.
I think I know what you are saying Gary. The stripes need to follow the contour of the squirt gun. Using parallel lines to cut it to look like stripes doesn't "Cut It" visually. :D
Exactly and precisely.
Here's a mock-up. I projected stripes in a Planar fashio against what is clearly a 3D surface. Curves and irregularities, not straight diagonal lines.
Attachment 90889
Actual, this related to the Mould tool example last month. Surfaces are presented to us in a distorted fashion in the real world.
My Best,
Gary
P.S. EVERYBODY go over to the The Fonts and Typography Forum
There's a new, free Group-created font!
Hi Guys,
First with regards to the video that Stygg references by NarrenzunftKalbach, No he didn't cover using the mask with the colour select/erase. I almost always use the mask with the colour select/erase tool. And you can do a lot with the mask! Any of the drawing tools work on the mask including the new shape builder and eraser tools! and if you convert it to editable shapes and ungroup you can add text on the mask layer.
Because I have Designer Pro X I couldn't resist messing with the tic tac toe image. Some naughty person has scratched something into the desk, and what's that font on the center X? :)
Attachment 90896
Very amusing, Frances.
I already advertised our new typeface earlier! :)
You did very, very well with the photo retouching work and nice variations on a theme.
I'm trying this month, and next month, to take the Intimidation Factor out of messing with photography.
Here's a retouching job I absolutely couldn't do with Photoshop. This was about 6 years ago, and PS 7 or whatever, didn't have the zoom level I needed to hit individual pixels sometimes. So I think this is Xara Prime I worked in.
Attachment 90898
So if I can do this stuff in a 6 year old program—and I'm not an accomplished Xaraist like Ron Duke or others are—I think you should give the new tools a chance with your less-than-perfect photos.
-g
Another newer photo retouching feature I use a lot is the magic erase, it's usually the first thing I try when removal of an object is needed. Then if the magic erase can't do the job I clone things out the manual way. I posted these photos before but they are a good illustration of what you can accomplish with a combination of colour select/erase, masking and magic erase. And I also used the eraser tool on the sailboat that I added into the image to blend the photos together
Attachment 90900Attachment 90901Attachment 90899
To get back to this month's tutorial, what I tried to do is to let the problem lead to the tools and not the other way around. Me, I don't get a lot out of "survey books", that define a tool or feature and then tell you what it does, and then show you an example.
The examples this month I thought were based on a problem, a need, and where to go from there. Photo-retouching is completely dependent on a specific photo. The Cadillac photo was a need-based retouching job—the company wouldn't let me take the plastic barrier chains off for even three minutes. The sections that needed replacing were so small that Photoshop couldn't be used. I used feathered Fractal noise to replace the parts at almost a microscopic level.
So there are opportunities when the Color Select is appropriate, Magic Erase suits certain needs, Gary P. showed how to use the command to remove "keystoning" from an image that has bad perspective, and the list of tools goes on. I think they've all been covered to some extent.
What I'm trying to do is suggest which ones fit a problem, and then address the problem.
My Best,
Gary
Here's my first two attempts at re-colouring as shown in the tut. The first one being the croc. and the second one of Gary's can pic. All done in PDG7.
Stygg
Flawless.
I appreciate the fact that you continued on your own with a different image: it shows you understand how to improvise and this can be turned into problem-solving around an office.
The pod from 2001 now looks like it belongs in a used car lot, price negotiable, and no one could find the correct matching colour panel for this model after an asteroid collided with it.
Or perhpas HAL 9000 is colour-blind?
:)
Nice work, Stygg. I'm sure I'll be posting more example images later in the month.
My Best,
Gary
I decided to have a bit of practice with the backspace to fill in the hole trick and take you up on the spot/stripe challenge. I gave the seahorse a colour change and some spots and made a bit of a discovery trying to apply a hue change to a masked area of a photo that already has been hue changed doesn't work but I did find a workaround, I just made a bitmap copy and masked out the spots on that and changed the hue of the spots no problem.
Attachment 90906
Clever girl!
Folks, when you run into a rut with changing a shape or images, always, always note the resolution of what you're working with if it's a bitmap, and then Ctrl+Shift+C to make a copy at the same resolution. This lets you do stuff you cannot ordinarily, especially adding something to a Live Effects image. IOW, you can't, but you can make a copy of it.
Frances I like what you did, its inventiveness, and from a photorealistic aspect, the thing works.
+3 !
It's an alligator water pistol. I did own a sea horse water pistol, but the Little Mermaid borrowed it and never returned it.
-g
Actually looking at it again I did make one mistake with the green spotted alligator can anyone else see it? :)
Did the Tic-Tac tut. and got beat. :D I was never any good at noughts and crosses. While I was doing this tut I thought I'd try a change colour and levels on the top edge and left edge of the board, just to keep my hand in, so to speak :D
Stygg
You win, Stygg! The noughts have it.
Gosh, whoever played against you, the crosses, was very tidy when they made their moves. :)
*A good example for all: retouching falls into three categories:
• Invisible work: cosmetics adverts, color and tone orrection globally or locally, and so on. This is the hardest to execute, and Stygg's example here of killing the highlights on the left side of the board is a good example. Barbara took the photo years ago so I know what it looks like, yet I had to pull it to compare it to Stygg's version. His work is invisible, it passes a casual observance.
• Surreal work: Erik Johansson (I feel, at least) is the undisputed Master of surreal imagery these days. His work is all over the web and his gallery is HERE. I think it's possible to do this sort of fantasy work in a convincing way with Xara. Erik uses Photoshop; he's said so in interviews. Plus he sets up his photography in advance to make the fantast editing easier (and sometimes possible) later. Surreal work sort of demands the first quality, the invisible work.
• Unsuccessful work. This category, sadly, is found far too often in non-commercial work. If you've seen a piece that almost works, it looks like and strikes the audience as an uncomfortable composition due to the failure to 100%, absolutely nail the retouching.
Therefore, I'd recommend that you try invisible retouching before trying fantasy compositions. Unless you're winking at your audience and deliberately want to present a childish retouching composition. There's some charm in an obviously botched design. Perhaps once in your career.
My best,
Gary
That is some work by Erik Johansson Gary and I'm certainly no where near those capability's but I can say yet again I've learned a lot from your tut. Looking forward to the second part as I've never been to happy about the mask tool nor, come to think of it, the clone tool. When I've done cloning in the past, I've used Zoner Photo Studio, so I should really brush up on these tool in Xara.:o
Stygg
@Stygg—
Check your PMs. I sent you a link.
@ the entire thread—
I've been in the "Imaging Biz" in one job or another for about 40 years, and I can unequivocally assure everyone that there will always be a new Pop Star, a shining Kid On The Block. I love Erik's clever work. And last year I loved some other artist.
My point is you don't try to hit a moving target. You know your own skills, your shortcomings, limitations, and you focus inward on realizing them, not always outward and comparing yourself to a temporary star in the Heavens.
Is that a fair philosophy you can appreciate?
I can tell you that it works for me, and makes me feel good about my own work.
As far as masking goes, actually, next month, I'm going to show something that's very simple for cloning, that people might just not have considered. I have a backlog of "unethical" uses for Xara's tools.
I'm pleased to tell you that I fooled Charles once. He asked me how I did something that looked extremely complex or impossible and the solution was to go around the wall instead of over it, to use a metaphor.
And I'll also demonstrate the conventional way with the Photo tools, to be both traditional and heretical. :)
These guys can be done is Xara. The trick is to photograph enough replacement material when you do the photography.
Both these sets of clothes are overweight, aren't they?
Attachment 90926Attachment 90927
—gary
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, :o I've deleted your message by mis-take with the link, can you please send again, thank you.
Stygg
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
Attachment 90928
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
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.
Attachment 90935
Well done Larry, it took me a few minutes to find it!
Just a little change to two of the marbles.
@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
Thanks for the tip Gary. I don't use Live Effects often and forget how many varied effects there are.
I like your effects Bill. I finally had some time to play around with the marbles. I couldn't resist doodling on the paper! :D
Attachment 90957
Here's my two efforts of X-marbles, the second one being a touch of Johansson;)) (if only)
Stygg
@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.
Attachment 90968
@ 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! :)