I'll go first: there's a new video tutorial on the Xone
>>>here<<<
It's worth working through if you ever wanted to do some fun, fairly photorealistic retouching.
Okay, it's your turn.
-g
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I'll go first: there's a new video tutorial on the Xone
>>>here<<<
It's worth working through if you ever wanted to do some fun, fairly photorealistic retouching.
Okay, it's your turn.
-g
My first attempt at Birdhaus, learned a little more from this first part :D
Stygg
Seems a bit of centre this first image, uploaded image 2, sorry about that.
Attachment 91603
my trial
greetings
You show inventiveness!
Good submission, very original!
I've been known to get the bird from people over the years.
My Best,
Gary
Great submissions from Stygg and Germaine!
I did this one making use of the eraser tool that is new in DPX and P&GD2013 The eraser tool when used with a soft nib makes it easy to blend photos together, I tucked a couple of bird houses behind branches by first cloning the background photo, then drawing a shape around the branch that I wanted to be over the bird house and select shape and cloned photo and ctrl +3. Then I went in with the eraser tool with a very soft nib and erased around the edges of the clipped branch and erased between the leaves etc so you could see the bird house peeking through.
Another technique I used was to adjust the lighting and add a bit of blur to the smaller birdhouses that I tucked behind branches to add to the illusion that they are further away.
Really great image Francis, looks like I'm missing out on a lot by not upgrading but I'm weakening by the image! :D
Stygg
Very funny, Frances!
:)
Toucan play this game, you know!
-g
Ok here is the bird bath photo. I used the magic erase tool to remove the toucan all in one go and it worked better than I thought it would. I used a combination of magic erase and manual cloning to repair the bird bath and fix the surface of the water. I also made use of the right click flatten trick and I also used the shape builder with a very soft nib on the mask layer and adjusted the hue of the water to help blend my cloning.
Of course I couldn't resist adding Mr Toucan back in another spot (Hey I think he's cute) and a butterfly fluttered into the scene! :D
That's actually very good, Frances.
Bravo!
I disagree with the scale of the butterfly, but I'll lean toward "fantasy composition" here.
-g
very good frances
Thanks Gary, Frank and Stygg, both images were fun to do :)
In removing the bird from the birdbath I did not use any of the tools shown, I used the cat! it was quicker and easier :D Joking apart, I used a technique similar to Francis and although I'm still using PGD7, it worked ok. The headless image is a vid.snap then used the technique as shown, good bit of fun thanks to Gary :D Sorry about the chunk out of your shoulder Gary, that ruddy cat nibbles everything :D
Stygg.
Well, I was going to take my hat off to bow, but evidently I wasn't wearing one, stygg.
Both methods you propose are novel ways of removing the toucan.
Frances' technique, as she outlined earlier, uses the Magic Erase feature and cloning, which is fine as long as you own the current version of Xara; cloning goes back to version 6 (I think), but in any event, what's important when you're asked to retouch and image is to get it right, regardless of what tools you use.
If it looks right, then it is right.
I brought Fractal Plasma to the party because it can imitate the look of noise in analog photos and some of the noise you get with digital photos and high JPEG compression. The deal is: it's not enough to match the color in a photo, you need to also come real close to the surface noise, the grain in a photo to make invisible revisions.
Here's an example I did several years ago: one of the points on the paper crown was hidden in the photo, which was quite noisy because of a low light situation:
Attachment 91666
So use what you think will work, and part of the reason for the Xara Xone area on TalkGraphics is so we can all offer different methods for achieving an effect.
Thanks, stygg, thanks, Frances,
My Best,
Gary
Attachment 91671my trial to get something with the birdbath
I gave the bird some color and as background I used the image with effect paint filter
Hi Germaine—
Hey, you don't need the background!
Your composition is very clever and funny all by itself and you did very, very well with your selection edges!
My Best,
Gary
I think and this is just my opinion here but what works for one photo may not work for another and to my eyes at least the fractal plasma left a noticeable spot in the birdbath that draws the viewers attention to the area. Magic erase was brought in in version 7, the cloning technique has been possible since way back, in version 6 all they did was to automate the process. What bothered me about the results I was able to achieve with the fractal plasma technique was it was missing the reflectiveness of the rest of the water.
Agreed on a very important point: no two photos are alike.
Therefore, occasionally, the same tool will not produce the same results when the same image flaw is apparent.
I made the artistic call this month to use fractal plasma fill in the tutorial because I think it's underused, and also because there isn't a whole lot of disctinct, clean detail in the image from which to sample a clone area.
In general:
• When you have a flawed area and lots of near-identical area around the flawed are from which to sample, use the Clone/Magic Erase method (unless you're still using xtreme, in which case you can trim and feather areas to use as copies).
• When there is very little or no clean areas you can use to replace a flawed area, use a different photo as the source file if possible, or use a fractal fill in combination with transparency, and even try stacking transparent and fractal-fill layers in combination until you've synthesized a decent replacement area.
Frances, I suggest that the success of using a fractal fill to imitate a photograph area lies in both the photo and how you approach it. On the other hand, what you did with cloning worked, too, and I'd be a fool not to be open to other possibilities.
It's great when there's more than one solution to a problem!
Then we can argue over which one is best. :)
—g
i agree, but only when light angle, elevation and intensity make that possible, which so many people forget/ignoreQuote:
Originally Posted by Gare
i've never used fractal plasma for anything, at the end of the day in my opinion its a pointless bitmap tile fill
nature is random, it is the imperfections in something that make it look natural
So you're taking me up on arguing, Big Frank?
:)
I am pleased that there are some terminating fractal types in Xara, and I wish for more in future versions. There are at least 15 different sorts of fractal formulas, and they can be written as terminating or non-terminating. So Frank, a non-terminating fractal, which Xara doesn't currently offer, would satisfy the requirement for a fill type that looks "natural". Fractal math, by its very...erm, nature...shows branching, self-similarity.
I think this looks fairly "natural". I did this in Photoshop with a fractal generator and then cleaned up the basic render in Xara:
Attachment 91696
Frank, I agree that Xara's fractal features are pretty limited, but disagree that the Plasma is a "pointless bitmap fill". It's a good beginning to a complex fill; when you need a specific sort of noise, I can't think of a simpler way to generate it.
For the sake of this post not being a, "Yes, it is, no, it's not" discourse (which would indeed be pointless :)), I wrote this thing a while back while trying to explain what a "fractal" is, with respect to computer graphics:
What Is a Fractal?
Fractal geometry is based on mathematical equations, whose core is beyond the scope of a few human-understandable paragraphs! However, fractal geometry usually appears to have the following visual characteristics:
• Self-similarity Fractal designs branch with variations set by the mathematician writing the fractal math, but typically a fractal design repeats a basic structure within itself at smaller scales, branching from a main body in the design. This is why many fractals look like organic forms such as ferns, broccoli, and seashells—these designs in nature also obey fractal math.
• A recursive structure with irregularities As with self-similarity, fractals repeat, with variations, as they branch. If you’re familiar with Euclidean geometry, fractal math is too unpredictable when plotted to 2D space to be described in Euclidean geometric functions.
• Exist within a domain of 2D or 3D space Fractal math is used in several 3D programs to generate organic sculptures. KPT Frax4D, in fact, is an Adobe Standard plug-in that can generate fractal designs in 3D space. Fractals were once described by a mathematician using this analogy: if a square represents the number 2 and a cube represents the number 3, fractals live somewhere between these two integers.
What I try to do is encourage inventiveness with what we have in the program. At the same time, I'm always asking for more, and fractal geometry that can be set to repeat, or never repeat, and other types than the clouds and noise would be really nice. Here's only four of several I can use in Cinema 4D for quick, simple bump maps and stuff:
Attachment 91697
Frank, I just want to make sure you're not happy with the current offerings in the program and not the idea of fractal fills in general. Because I believe they're quite useful and I put 'em in my work all the time.
(Take a look at XenoDream, and what they do with fractal math in a 3D domain)
My Best,
Gary
i dont have the energy to reply
i know what fractals are but not as well as you
suffice to say that all of the examples you use are outside of xara, which was my point
Hi Frank—
I'm sorry I threw a chapter on fractal math at you yesterday, when a paragraph on Fractal Plasma would have done.
I agree that Xara Designer has room for improvement with its implementation of fills. And drawing tools, and other features.
First, it was the "Shades of Grey" I was getting at. Your comment, "... in my opinion its a pointless bitmap tile fill", was painting the feature "black", so to speak. It has some use, but not enough to fill your needs as an artist.
And finally (I can hear the applause from everyone!)—as the person responsible for moderating this area, there are to date over 2,000 visitor incidents (readers of this thread) while there are only 20 posts and most of them are from the same 5 members. In theory, this could mean that for every post, there are 100 people reading the post.
I have some sort of ethical responsibility to post a reply to a post that presents an opinion that paints something black, or white, Frank. Because The Xara Group, Ltd. foots the bill for this forum, and because a post that impacts on a reader in a way that they might choose not to even try the product...doesn't serve the folks who would like some revenue as an indirect result of hosting a largely uncensored forum.
I hope that doesn't come across as too much of a suck-up. I've never been an evangelist for a product, nor a brand loyalist. My "religion" is Art; I see absolutely no reason to cripple one's self in the Art field for the sake of getting a pat on the head from a software corporation.
I try to field possibilities here, ones that contribute to a reader's ambitions. I want aspiring artists to get happy with Xara Designer if they bought it, by showing some creative examples. If they haven't bought the program, I feel it's my responsibility to show the program off a little. And if an outside party such as Image Skills offers something that can't natively be done in Xara, I try to be one of the first to point this out.
I'm not attempting to nurture an argument here when none truly exists. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, Frank: I have plenty of better places to do that, where I draw more attention.
Short version:
• Fractal Fills in Xara need work, the deployment is on the wimpy side=agreed.
• Fractal Fills in Xara are a a pointless bitmap fill= disagree.
My Best,
Gary
no worries
i agree that no argument exists
until xara do something imaginative with fractals its nothing more than a sideshow feature used by some, not by me
xara has more pressing things to deal with
I know for a fact that the Dear Xara thread gets read by TPTB, so if and when people feel a strong need for something not yet implemented in Xara Designer, this is the forum for discussion, pardon the pun.
Griping right here on the Xara Xone serves a purpose, too. Because when I'm alerted to a shortcoming, when the opportunity presents itself, I take it as high on the chain of command that I can. Whether I myself feel it's important or not.
I promise you, not a lot of software companies work this way. There's A dopey company who bothers to hold pre-release forums, but have decided in advance what features will be implemented and which will be blown off.
My Best,
Gary
a certain xara never holds prerelease anythings, maybe the two could learn from one another
What I would like to see in future and I think this is what you mean Gary is to have more types of fractals and have the ability to set them via a button on the info bar (or as an option in the drop down) as terminating or non terminating.
Given the interest so far, I'm going to pass along this request for more types and the option to terminate (say at 512 pixels and then repeat) or to keep branching indefinitely.
And I'll put it with some explanation on "Dear Xara".
-g
Sounds great :)
Getting back to photo editing here is a portrait I retouched using the clone + magic erase combo to remove some stray hairs from this fellow's eye!
cute doggie :)
Nice work, good photograph, Frances.
As far as image retouching goes, do we all feel that the topic is a little played out for now?
I'm asking for input.
I could go on, in September, to do a plug-ins "round-up", or do something else.
I'm leaning toward a series of short coverages on control points: beginners have a hard time intellectually embracing the difference between vector tools and art, and bitmap photos. At least that's what my private email is telling me.
So I thought an explanation, video style, of what the difference between a smooth and cusp connection is, keeping the fulcrum of a control point close to the control point to make steering a curve easier, the big differences between the Editor tool and the Pen tool, and so on.
I fear I might be doing too many intermediate/advanced things with not enough introductory coverage.
Image editing? Intro on control points? Something else entirely?
I have about a week before I need to start creating something.
TIA,
Gary