Ok ... I recently made three ship "paintings". One was done with the program RealDraw Pro (the demo version www.mediachance.com ), one with one of my favorite programs PhotoImpact6 ( www.ulead.com ), and one made with XaraX. Each program has it's own unique features. I found XaraX to have the best vector abilities, RealDraw to have some really neat lightings and effects, and PhotoImpact to have the best pixel-based tools (ie ... paint and retouch) with good vector abilities and some great lightings and effects. Anyway , I found this interesting that every program seems to allow one to make images in certain unique styles. Take a look
RealDraw ship
http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/rea...ater_small.jpg
PhotoImpact ship
http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/pho...t_on_water.jpg
XaraX ship
http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/xar..._on_water1.jpg
On the XaraX ship ...all the shadings on the sails and mountains and sea was done in a certain way I discovered (at least for myself).
So for example;
Take a sail shape with a texture fill applied. It's on layer sails. Make a new layer (sails_shading1). Pick the sail shape on layer sails and duplicate it (ctrl-d). Move it to layer "sails_shading1". Go into "Utilities / bitmap effects and plugins / bitmap effects" and pick brightness and contrast. Make the sail shape on "sail_shadings1" darker. Apply a radial transparency with the edges transparent and the middle opaque. Move and adjust the transparency until it's the way you want (like for shadows in the valleys of crumples in the sail). Duplicate this sail shape and move and adjust it's transparency. Repeat for other shaded areas on that sail area
You can build up layers of shadows but they have the same texture as the sail. They will not fill in the sail detail with plain color like a colored fill would.
I used this on the mountains and sea and the ship hull (also made a glowing area on the ship hull by just making the texture on that copy brighter and then applying the radial tyransparency.
Anyway , I hope you like them all and I'm kindof pleased at how the Xarax fully vector one compares to the PhotoImpact one which I did using vectors and paint and retouch tools.
For the general darkening around the image's edges in the XaraX one, I exported a bitmap, and imported it onto my drawing. I darkened it and gave it an elliptical transparency so the middle was transparent and the edges were more opaque. I zoomed in real close on a detail of the ship and then moved the bitmap so it lined up perfectly on top of the same features on the vector drawing.
(sorry if this technique is old news and was thought of for months but I just discovered this and I like the results)
David K
www.dkingdesign.com
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