Lights and more...

[molucca]

An application of a transparent map. I happened across this method when I was trying to find the essence of how maps work. These only work in Expression. Not something you might notice since the on screen view shows the transparent areas as black. One day, stumbling through things, I happened to turn on paper texture, and the fill came alive. Now the map fills are transparent on screen. I constructed this map in Xara using the mold capabilities.

Rich

[molucca]

EGD- Using grayscale strokes to shade and highlight portions of the leaf. The leaf had a color, a grayscale and an inverted grayscale stroke. I used erasing srtokes to control the effect to different parts of the leaf. Rich

[molucca]

A heart with a gold stroke border. Rich

[TwidderBird]

Rich

For your leaves: did you start with a layer with the leaf and color (green?) and add a layer with the grayscale for shading....or

was all done on one layer-- EGD allows vector and nonvector to occur in one layer....or

was everything applied as vector?


nance

[molucca]

This was on three layers because I erased parts of the grayscale strokes. Erase mode will erase everything below on a specific layer.

Grayscale strokes become transparent. The gray pixels can be colorized, or/and they can be used to erase. PNG strokes can erase, but not colorized. The first green leaf is a PNG into a stroke. The other two are grayscale. I inverted the PNG to make the second grayscale stroke. I wanted the background to remain white, and become transparent.

I have made several fog and cloud strokes that I use as erasers. In erase, it is the transparency and not the color.

So, these are bitmap strokes on a vector layer. EGD has both vector and bitmap layers. You can have both vector and bitmap on a vector layer.

The second set of leaves are leaves as a strokes.

Rich

[TwidderBird]

grayscale strokes can become transparent becuz they can have color added or they can be used to erase (take color away). I'm assuming the PNG means an image 'completed' in PNG format and used in another image--therefore how it works is different (of course)...I'm thinking this out loud to help me clarify it in my head

to be able to use vector and bitmap in the same layer is great...psp 7 can't do that

really helpful explanation--and I really like your leaf strokes


nance

[molucca]

Grayscale strokes and fringes become transparent in use. Grayscale maps don't. My transparent maps are PNG format. This isn't in the manual.

You can colorize strokes and fringes and adjust global transparency. Fringes can use image fills, gradient fills and I'll have to look...


PNG/alpha. You an use PNGs or PSD, I think. Don't think you can change color by colorizing. I was changing color by adding and removing things. The file can be loaded an an image, of course. With a stroke, you can flow the image. There are vector strokes as well.

I am still learning how these thing work.

Rich