Photo manipulation

[Egg Bramhill]

Following on from the photo stitching tread, it can be fun and very useful to use Xara for photographic manipulation.
The image below (left) was the original photo, but I didn't like the view of the rear of the phone box. I thought this at the time of taking the shot, so I also took a shot of the box from the other side.
I then used both photos to doctor the image so that the telephone box was no longer viewed from the rear.
The image has been on line for over a year now and know ones commented on the revolving telephone box!
(The image was also adjusted in Xara to 'straighten' it up, using the Mould Tool, as all tall objects have a dissappearing point in the sky).

Egg

[John Rayner]

Hi Egg,

what did you do about the changed lighting on this example shot? Did you do a lighten transparency?

[The Alien]

The edited version's booth is slightly crooked if you look at the base. But it's better than having a full frontal view of it. Nice done. I would've never considered using X1 for this job =)

[amoore]

Very nice work, Egg! I wouldn't have thought of using Xara for this kind of thing either. I've been straightening photos with the perspective correction tool in PhotoBrush. Have to give the old Mould a try.

[gwpriester]

The image has been on line for over a year now and know ones commented on the revolving telephone box!

That's because you made it look so natural.

Xara's Perspective envelope is more effective than the new Photoshop CS2 Lens correction feature because with the Perspective envelope you can adjust each side individually. This is good for correcting keystone distorted images.

Now you need to edit the image a little with XPE.

Gary

[AntonM]

I did a similar thing with a photo which had an ugly UPVC window in a lovely stone wall.

The first image below is the original (also straightened in Xara) and the second has a window from another building pasted over the original and feathered ever so slightly. That faux window also needed some perspective correction (mould tool), and stretching to make it fit, as it was the wrong aspect ratio. I traced the outline of the flowers and pasted them on top of the faux window, and then took a bitmap copy of the whole and exported that as a JPEG.

The original...
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...90Img_2463.jpg

...and now with replacement window...
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...g_2463xara.jpg

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Anton
How many people realised you#d done these alterations?
Egg

[AntonM]

All of them, Egg -- but only because I told them!

I posted the first pic and then someone commented that it was an ugly window, so that led me to change it. I suppose I could have done the same thing in Adobe Elements (which I'm having to get to grips with because I like taking photographs), but I'm just much more familiar with Xara, and it's such a pleasure to use.

[amoore]

I recently spent a month editing digital photos, most of which had serious problems. Adobe Elements was one of more than half a dozen apps I used. By far, I found I got the most value out of MediaChance's PhotoBrush. I started out thinking I would buy Elements, but by the end I wasn't even interested in a free copy.

One thing that's missing in PhotoBrush is the ability to select/cut/copy a portion of an image. When I absolutely had to have that, I used another app. OTW, I was surprised at how much I could do without that capability.

Still did all the standardized sizing in Xara since the photos were intended for an online gallery.

[Ross Macintosh]

I just thought I'd add that sometimes doing poor quality photo manipulations in Xara can be fun. My example was poor quality on purpose! Really!

The faces are some of the @Last office staff. They are the developers of SketchUp.

Mediocrity can be okay too you know.

Regards, Ross