Mouldy Image

[DD]

When a large image is resized within Xara it gets pretty nasty as it gets smaller.

I assume this is because the original is not resampled when displayed on a low res output device such as a computer screen and that some simple but quick algorithm throws pixels away to achieve the resize on screen.

On export or print the full res image is resampled and all looks fine even on a display screen.

However I need some moulded images to look decent on a web page but such images stay nasty on export.

e.g. The thin black strap over the blue shirt can look decent at the moulded size ( see unmoulded exports ) but always looks bad in an exported mould.

Is there anything to be done ?

I hope the question makes sense.

thanks
David


http://www.talkgraphics.com/attachme...1&d=1163261482

[Availor]

Hello DD,

Xara does not handle well bitmap moulds. It cannot disort them if that is your intention. It has several neat plug ins to go with it, but as far as I know mould tool is not very effective for bitmap pictures. I.e. you cannot disort a bitmap picture to make it look as if squeezed into the center.

The best thing you can do with to disort a bitmap is use a blend tool, here's a tutorial.

Regarding the resizing problem, honestly, I don't know so I can't help you there.

[Big Frank]

If you want use bitmap moulds I would recommend using a dedicated raster application. I use Photoshop for that task. It was made for it. I have never tried in Illustrator.

[Allen James]

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/2707/lowresbp0.jpg

The other point is that your mould skewed the picture on one side, and when being stretched the pixels became visible. If the picture had been high res this may not have happened as much. You can use photoshop to increase the resolution and go to filter/noise/despeckle to blur the pixels down – or just take a higher res photo. In the end though, photoshop would do a better job of this as Big Frank said.

[molucca]

An image warp in E3. The on screen view is not the greatest, but it exports better.

Rich

[maak]

What can be done is the following:

Make a bitmap copy of the bitmap you want to distort with the mould tool
- make it, say, twice as big. Then apply your mould to the big bitmap. Next, reduce the size to 50% again and now is the time to play out Xtreme's strengths by making another bitmap copy.

I hope you got, what I mean. It's pretty late in here.
If there are any questions left, I guess I will have to load up some additional pics to eplain the whole thing.

c ya.
maak.

[DD]

Thanks to all for the ideas.

I have a copy of Photoshop Elements and it does indeed make a much better job of the bitmap transform.

I'm a bit disappointed that Xara gives such a poor result.

The clip below shows what I am working on. The vector text is not bad but the little pictures are very poor.

I was hoping to keep everything "live and editable" so that small tweaks to the perspective could be made easily. I am loathed to go to large bitmaps or work untransformed and do the final transform in something like photoshop.

You will notice that I am using a "redfield - water ripple" pluggin on the reflection.

I don't know how pluggins work on bitmaps but if they resample the big bitmaps behind the small pictures might it be that a "transform" pluggin would give me a better result than the mould tool ?

Thanks again
David