Cactus Blooms at Night

[sallybode]

Just felt like doing a little painting to see if I still remember how.

[molucca]

Sally,

Have you tried painting with saturation in Xara.

Rich

[TwidderBird]

really good to see you back on the board, here, Sally. I do like your painting.....but gotta ask:
your flowers appear negativized?
did you use a particular plug-in?

Rich, what do you mean by painting in saturation? (Xara)
nance

[molucca]

Nance,

When you apply saturation transparency to a lighter shade object in Xara, it is possible to increase the saturation of something under that object. The darker, the less saturation. I made a light shade circle with circular transparency and used the freehand tool to make a brush. When I painted with the brush, I got a light path with soft edges. I set the transparency to saturation, and turned recent attributes so the each new line would saturate.

Rich

[sallybode]

I actually was painting in a pixel program here. PaintShopPro to be exact. After I had painted the flowers, I merged the layers, duplicated and made a negative image. To this I changed the mode to difference.

Using negative images has been done for years now in photoretouch for bringing out details or for gaining special effects.

[-=Drifter=-]

Very cool effect, Sally! And to think, i've had paint shop pro 7 for years and never thought of that! thanks for the tip

[TwidderBird]

Sally inspired me to throw in a few flowers of my own. so much easier than trying to be a shipbuilder....

Sally, what do you mean by, "I changed the mode to difference" ?

I'll get back to your saturation thing later, Rich
nance

[sallybode]

In a bitmap editor such as Photoshop, PaintShoPro, PhotoPaint, PhotoImpact, you have blend modes such as Screen, Mulitply, Difference, Luminance, Saturation, Burn, Dodge, Lighten, Darken, Soft Light, Hard Light, Color/Hue, Exclusion, Dissolve. There may be other modes, each of these creates a different effect on layers beneath it.

Xara has different modes too, other names in other programs for the same sort of thing is Add, Subtract, And, Xor, Or, Red, Blue, Green (CorelDRAW).

BTW, your flowers have a very nice sparkle, Twiddler, how is that done?

[TwidderBird]

ok, thanks Sally--the blend modes on each layer properties. now I know exactly what your saying...have only used normal ,smudge, and burn so far

this flower picture is back to all psp. it consists of 2 layers. first time I've used the effect browser on each layer separately--each layer being a combination of effects. the flowers are 'sparkled' by the "noise" effect
nance

[TwidderBird]

another version--both layers have different combination of effects; the top flower layer finished in a blend mode (Lighter, I think)
nance