Christmas Glass Ornaments

[HayTay]

I found an old Photoshop tutorial while looking for something else on the internet. Since Christmas is coming, for those who elect to receive, I thought I'd give it a go.

I think it turned out fairly well but I desperately need to work on my color linking skills. This is the only first go 'round, now I need to fiddle with them so that I can change the colors of individual ornaments quicker and easier. I know there's a Xara video and I'm sure that Gary and/or Egg has a workbook or tutorial that will help me in that regard so I'll be looking them up, pronto. So much to learn, it's a good thing that it's so much fun.

BTW, the tutorial called for using the Photoshop Lens Flare and Polar Coordinates Distort filters and it looks like it gives a nice glossy mirrored finish to the Christmas ornaments but I'm at a loss to find an equivalent filter or Live Effect in Xara Xtreme Pro 4. Does anyone know how to achieve the same effect(s) using Xtreme's built-in Live Effects tools or freely available plug-ins that work with Xara Xtreme? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for looking,
HayTay

[Xcellent]

if it's shiny, it MUST be done in xara

[HayTay]

Excellent, Xcellent!

I ripped apart the xmb.xar file you provided and I must say that the way you created your ornaments is much simpler than mine. So much for trying to adapt a PS tutorial. Oh well, I did learn from it, though. I'll give it another go in the next couple of days and incorporate some of the techniques shown in your example.

Thanks for sharing,
HayTay

[steve.ledger]

Simple lens flare:
http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook03/page_4.htm

Or the beautiful lens flare by Klaus Nordby

[HayTay]

sledger,

Thanks for the lens flare links. Without realizing it, and without the stunning effect of either one (either), I actually incorporated a little of both techniques on my lens flares. I will read up and practice both for next time.

Most appreciatively,
HayTay

[angelize]

I just had to try my hand at this.

[salaam]

Penny also created a nice one a while ago:
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...as+ball&page=3

[Soquili]

Gary Bouton graciously donated a great lens flare .xar file some time ago. You can down load it from the XaraXone Templates page:
http://www.xaraxone.com/html/templates.html scroll down the page to find the link to the file.

The attached image uses that lens flare.

[Soquili]

An old drawing updated using the lens flare by Gary Bouton.

[ss-kalm]

Another good way to make the ornaments look shiny is to add an indoor picture to it. Take a picture (preferably with a window off centre) - mould it to a circle using Gary's circular bitmap blending technique (See especially Haakoo's explanation in post #22) - Make bitmap 95% transparent (May vary depending on bitmap).

This gives the impression of reflecting the room and seems to work very well. Obviously the more suitable the interior photograph, the better the effect.