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Make straight lines look hand drawn?
I was wondering if there's any easy way to make lines to appear less precise as if they were hand drawn with a pencil?
eg.
Attachment 93879
I have seen brush strokes, but they only really provide a texture rather than a variation in the line as far as I have seen.
Any ideas?
Thanks
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Hi gingerbeardman,
Some stroke profiles might simulate it, for example intestine if you have a long line or pen pressure for short ones.
Otherwise to rasterize the stroke, then put a distort/glass filter is Photoshop. (edit bitmap)
Marc
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Just use the Freehand and Brush tool as a freehand line drawing tool, adjust the freehand slider down to create a more jagged line.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Unless you mean you want to change a line you've already produced at an earlier stage to a more jagged one? In that case you could try using a brush.
I'll attach a xar file containing a bush that may give you some ideas.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
use the live effect: deformation filter / liquid color - the attached was done on setting 'draw'
this will give you the 'wobble' [that I might add most of us 'serious' freehand artists spend a few years learning how to avoid :p:D]
if you drag slowly and carefully when deforming you will tend to get get less width variation in the stroke than if you go fast [ie fast will make the line pinch out and become thin]
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Do a search on this site for Xhris brushes. I have a copy of them on a hard disc somewhere. He did a lot of brushes including pencil and charcoal which you might be able to use: Had a quick look in Xara support and found this linl:http://support.xara.com/index.php?_m...nloaditemid=25
Use the word doc. to download all of his brushes. Hope this helps.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
if you want a brush that simulates the slight 'bleed' at the edges of the stroke here's one - you can adjust the 'bleed' using the offset tab of the edit brush dialog by moving the 'random' slider
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
use the live effect: deformation filter / liquid color
this will give you the 'wobble'
This is the one I chose to use, as it gives me control over the effects I was looking for.
It is important that after the effect the lines remain as editable vectors.
But worth mentioning that the Xhris brushes that were mentioned are amazing! Good to have in the toolbox.
Here's the link: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ush-Collection
Thanks all
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
ok - but it is a bimap effect... so, make sure that the resolution on options / effects and plugins tab is set high - and if you want to edit unclosed lines convert these to shape before you apply the liquid color
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
I realised it was bitmap shortly after posting, it will do for now but eventually I will probably need to redraw all lines by hand if I cannot create a brush that will do what I need.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
if they are solid black lines you could try using the bitmap tracer afterwards to generate vector copies [using the greyscale setting - may need to play around with the sliders a bit...]
see attached
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
If you have one of the latest versions, either DPX or P&GD2013 you can very quickly and easily make a sketchy brush that gives you rough hand drawn lines.
1. Draw a shape, any shape will do you can use the fee hand tool or if you have DPX, the shapebuilder tool can be used.
2. Use the eraser tool set to the smallest size and to a hard erase. zoom in and erase bits here and there. Zoom in to various levels to get various sized erasures and as you do this you will chop your shape into many many little bits
3.Select all the little bits of your shape open the colour editor and create a named colour ( I usually just name it brush) make sure all your pieces have this named colour.
4.Select the freehand tool and click create brush, if you chopped your shape into more than 50 pieces (I wound up with over 200) you will get a warning that only 50 pieces will be used this is fine, 50 pieces are plenty. just click ok and name your brush then click ok again.
5. Edit your brush and close up the spacing and set the sequence to random. On the scaling tab you can set the pressure sensitivity if you will be using your brush with a graphics tablet.
Because of the named colour the brush colour can be changed quickly on the fly by clicking any colour you have on the colourline.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Thanks for the tip and step-by-step.
I don't want that sort of brush, with bits missing that looks more like crayon or chalk.
What I want is more the unevenness or wobble of a line to pretend that it is hand drawn and not geometrically perfect. Like a ballpoint pen.
Of course I could actually draw these things freehand to get the effect, but I want more control over it. And ideally the ability to "undo" it at any point.
I feel a brush is the right way, but I am yet to find (or create) one that suits my need.
See the red and yellow star shapes in this image for another example of the desired effect:
Attachment 93909
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
You can't really have a fully editable vector brush with Xara programme it is just a scatter brush. One more thing, I am sorry I haven't looked at your brush yet, do look at your brush options and especially the Offset options where you can Alternate the brush from oneside to the other and also give it a Random effect on the line.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Post #3 had the answer.
Did you try this?
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
sledger
Post #3 had the answer.
Did you try this?
Sadly I need to convert straight lines that have already been drawn.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
bit of a clue here as to what you want:
Quote:
Of course I could actually draw these things freehand to get the effect, but I want more control over it. And ideally the ability to "undo" it at any point
anyway to move on... I don't really agree with albacore about the xara custom brush being 'scatter' - its more like what we used to call a 'hose' brush - the offsetting is repetitive and although you can set it to 'random' that isn't what you want as it will not give you a 'wavy /wobble' line [path], it will give you a 'blotchy' one... [although maybe with a lot of work someone will prove me wrong]
If you need to edit your 'wobbled' lines afterwards [eg add fill], but still have the ability to undo the wobble afterwards I don't see a better way in xara than the live effect
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Well if you want them to remain vector, I think you're out of luck.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
short of 'ghosting' your changes on a hidden layer....
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
What I do (and this really only works for straight lines), is use the freehand tool to draw a really randomly wavy line, then switch to the selector tool and squish it almost, but not quite flat (adjust "wobbliness" to taste). Do a couple of these (so all of your lines don't start looking the same) and have them off to the side, then when you need a wobbly line segment, grab on, rotate to the proper angle, put it in place and either resize it or clip off the excess.
When I have curved lines that need to be of a similar wobbliness, I draw smooth curves in a different color (and usually on a lower layer), then trace over them (not too carefully) with the freehand tool.
-- Ben
Attachment 93923
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
I think Handrawn is on the right track here with the bitmap tracer. Here's how I've used it.
video
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
If the Live Effect is not locked and the shape has been converted to editable, you can still edit it. So, then you don't need to use the bitmap tracer.
By the way, handy technique to make shapes wobbly with the Live Effect, Handrawn. Thanks.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
You're missing the point, I'm not using Live Effects, just the bitmap tracer.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
yes of course you need to unlock it to edit it
a live effect, locked or unlocked, is not a pure vector - the suggestion to use bitmap tracer was to make it so... that is particularly important if you want to export it from xara as a vector for example....
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Egg was doing something different....
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Some confusion here, I gather. I was referring to Handrawn's 'wobble trace' file in which his starting point was 'Live Effect'. So, what steps did you follow, Egg?
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Sorry Boy, there's a video link in my post but last ;)
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Oops, missed that link all together. Creative solution.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
I like it Egg, especially as the effect is more like what I would call hand drawn as the lines are not 'wobbly' as such but rather they are asymmetric in pattern
and being vector you can export it without worrying about the rasterisation you get with live effect
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Cheers. Perhaps I should have made the link more obvious :)
I also found a second way of doing this using the Shape Builder tool but as it meant almost redrawing the shape I couldn't see the point.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
If you have either P&GD2013 or DPX you could go over the edges of the shape with the eraser tool
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
as I understand it the idea was to as far as possible to redirect the path of the line, not 'scallop' it, ball point pen was mentioned and they tend not to give much of a variation in line weight unlike say a gillott dip pen which could
on that basis you'd be using both shape builder and eraser, and like Egg says practically redrawing it...:)
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
If one has those tools then the shapebuilder/eraser tool would be the easiest route. I did play around with Egg's method and going over the edges with the shapebuilder or eraser tool is much faster, and these tools do have a smoothing slider which can be used to determine how much they redirect the line. yes you would be in a sense practically redrawing a shape but it's quick and easy if you already have a vector shape.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
but not as quick as redrawing it with a graphic tablet and pen ;)
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
I was talking with my girlfriend and she suggested using Illustrator. Annoyingly - because I hate Illustrator - she was right.
HTML Code:
Effect > Illustrator Effects > Distort & Transform > Roughen...
This applies a roughness - or random wave effect - to lines.
You have control of:
1. how severe you want the roughness to be (wave amplitude)
2. how often you want the roughness to occue along the line (wave frequency)
3. whether you want the roughness to be smooth or jagged (interpolation)
The effect remains editable, and everything stays as a vector. Amazing!
So I suffered Illustrator for 30 mins and spat out a PDF that I imported into Xara.
The imported graphic features more detailed shapes because of the roughness.
Settings I used for this example:
Attachment 93951
And here are images to show the effect:
BEFORE
Attachment 93952
AFTER
Attachment 93953
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
this is a feature I'd love to see in xara so I'm starting a thread for this in the Dear Xara forum.
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
And just how often would you use it I wonder? :think:
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
I'm getting old. Reading all these excellent suggestions, found myself thinking -- 'hey, just draw it.' Then scan, photograph, whatever.' But I'm getting old. Only a few years ago, would have truly enjoyed trying out every approach on this thread... but now am reverting to pencil and paper, more and more. Changes!
EDIT -- just remembered, from the mists of the past, that Macromedia Fireworks had a hand-drawn line effect. Guess Adobe dusted it off for Illustrator...
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
if I'd known you had access to illustrator I'd have mentioned it, nearly did in fact...
don't forget, if it's supposed to be a brush line there will be swells, on the other hand if it's a ballpoint pen there should be texture, ballpoint ink is a dye it is not solid black...
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Re: Make straight lines look hand drawn?
Quote:
And just how often would you use it I wonder? :think:
As often as I need a line to look like a "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" piece of tape. That's a feature I really wish Xara had included ;)