the practice side

[Beth]

Thats a good idea about the warping Stu. I think it would work nicely in alot of situations.

I kinda figured Xara would do a good job of the plastic buttons. Probably alot quicker too. Although, one advantage photoshop has, is being able to write scripts for a series of repeatable steps. And another is being able to control the overall transparency of a layer. Xara can only control the transparency by individual object (or group). ALthough maybe you can do this in Xara X...I dont have it yet. In PS, you create the layer for the button and apply all the effects to that layer. You then control the transparency of that layer (which helps make the button more transparent) and then you can add a layer mask to that layer to make the inside of the button even more transparent. (ie everything in the layer becomes more transparent when you put grey to blackish pixels.

I dont know which ap would do this better...probably better in some aspects and not in others. At least in Xara, you can bitmap a layer and then apply transparency to it (both for the entire object and/or paritally with eliptical transparency...which would work similar to the mask I was talking about).

b

[s.winders]

I checked out that tutorial and decided to expand on it a bit,heres what I came up with,what do you think?


Stu.

[Erik Heyninck]

Hi Beth,

I did not intend to say that Photoshop isn't as good as Xara. In my enthusiasm, I sometimes forget that this is...a Photoshop Forum. Xara has the advantage of being the underdog, the agile mammal amidst the dinosaurs.

What I really wanted to say is that Xara baffles me. Of course Photoshop can do lots of things Xara can't, but I can't help wondering about what this little app can do. I think that if you have both, you go a long way. Of course I don't know how Photoshop handles text and vectors, for example stars, squares, ellipses etc. , but it would be a shame if its bitmap possibilities wouldn't be at least five times as big as Xara's.

About the X: I can't help but connect with a Professor Xarax. Without any doubt the bad guy...

[Erik Heyninck]

I see a handy plastic box to put the aqua button in before you go to bed. I like the moire-effect on the surface.

[Beth]

Kiwi, very nice texturing and colouration. Looks very 3D and substantial. But on my monitor it is quite dark. I would like to see more of that colouration on the pill. Fun stuff eh.

Hey Erik, rave on about what ever you want. I very much like Xara too. It has had its problems regarding file importing and exporting and such, but very cool none the less. I think they have improved the program quite a bit since leaving the vice grip claws of Corel. Why dont you try out the demo and give it a whirl (or two). One technique I like using in Xara is to duplicate the object directly on top of itself and fill with either a very light or dark shade (often use white or black) and then use the bleach or stain transparency controls to make part of the item disapear.

Heres a xara pill (for what ails you)

[s.winders]

I think I might have sorted out a really easy way of doing the aqua buttons,I got pretty close by using a custom gradient that I made,and then all I had to do was add the highlight and a dribble of touchup.


Stu.

[Erik Heyninck]

Thanks, Beth. Normally I only browse around and keep quiet on this forum. Luckily you are (all) very tolerant. I really don't understand why some PC users hate Mac and vice-versa. Being a painter, I couldn't care less about which brand of oil colours was used: it's the painting that counts. And the same goes for computers. It is a question of "feeling" the programme I think.

Thanks for the tip, but I'm afraid to install a trial of Photoshop as I probably wouldn't continue without it, and it still is, unfortunately, too expensive.

But Photoshop tutorials are very handy, even for Xara. And after reading one on layers (probably on Mark's site), I tried this out in Xara, discovering that the technique you describe above is extremely handy. So, because there is some Photoshop foundation in it, and because it fits in this topic that happily joins hands with the Xara one, I take the liberty to post here an image made in Xara.

[Beth]

Sorry Erik, I misunderstood. I thought you had photoshop but not Xara. Hence me trying to convince you that Xara was a cool thing to work with. Guess you knew that .

Xara and photoshop do work nicely together. I often go back and forth when working on something complex. Like in that pill example in the Xara forum...PS will do the shadows much nicer than Xara, so I would make the intial shadow shape in xara, convert to bitmap and then copy and paste into PS. There I would gausian blur it and bring it back into Xara. One cool thing about both aps is how the modes work. In Xara you use the stained glass mode and in PS you use the multiply mode. Same thing and when you use this mode with things that have a white background...the white disappears. So as you mentioned, there are alot of similarities between the two aps.

You know there are some cheaper ways of getting PS. Competive upgrades or even if you can find a copy of ImageReady. This was released before PS 5.5 came out and is now integrated into PS 6. And if you could get IR, this would allow you to pay the same upgrade price that I pay.

Anyway, best of luck,
Beth

[Erik Heyninck]

Beth,
you are a good webmaster. It is a real pleasure visiting this forum, and I plan to have Photoshop in the second half of this year. Meanwhile I browse the net, and read all the tutorials I can find. I even bought a book on PS6 this morning, the PS6 bible by D.McLelland. When I will install Photoshop, it will already be familiar.

Thanks for the upgrade info. I'll try to get hold of IR or an older copy of Photoshop. Perhaps someone who has upgraded will sell a former version...we'll see. It'll be there when the moment is ripe.
'till soon.

[Beth]

good webmaster (???) jesse what I do to deserve that complement. No need to answer...Im not looking for more complements here.

You know another way is to get ahold of an LE (light) version. They came with alot of things. Some scanners have it and so does Pagemaker and possilby Illustrator. (??)