The July Tutorial Discussion-Retouching Images

[Soquili]

Thanks for the tip Gary. I don't use Live Effects often and forget how many varied effects there are.

[angelize]

I like your effects Bill. I finally had some time to play around with the marbles. I couldn't resist doodling on the paper!

[stygg2003]

Here's my two efforts of X-marbles, the second one being a touch of Johansson (if only)

Stygg

[Gare]

@Stygg—

Very ambitious, very well done!

Folks, now that we aren't afraid to use the Mask tool or themanual method of slicing an are, you already know about ClipViews, so...

If you look carefully at the marbles picture, there's a depth of field going on. The foreground and the background are slightly soft because of the target distance of the "camera" in my modeling program. And this phenomenon does exist when you use a physical focal plane camera.

Entertain the idea of spending a little quality time with a Live Effect—There's a Soften>Soft-Focus Effect you can use to blur either a vector or bitmap selection. Then you use a ClipView to put the blurry object behind an in-focus one.

All of which is easier shown than explained; check out the attachment here.



@ Everyone

This focus thing is just an introduction to Live Effects, and I'm getting the idea I should devote a video, perhaps September, to some of the advanced stuff you can do with Live Effects. I'm digressing here and moving away from this moth's recoloring adventure, but it's all about image retouching.

And the truth is: unless you want to be a hobbyist for the rest of your life, an artist of any skill level needs to keep pushing their innate talent and expanding their skill set. Back in the early 1990s, right after I had a grasp on CorelDRAW, I took on Photoshop, one a vector, the other an image editor. Why? Because the world takes photos, shares photos, and publishes photos.

And unless you're rich, you're not going to buy Photoshop tomorrow, and even if you did, there's a learning curve. When I cover retouching stuff, it's to get you up and running with tools you already are familiar with. Live Effects came with Xara when you bought it. So there's no reason not to experiment with them, is there?

:)

My Best,

Gary

P.S. @Frances-Use Stained Glass transparency mode at partial opacity to make your flower blend into the paper. Right now it sort of looks like it's floating on top of the page. Sorry! :)

[stygg2003]

Just to get some more idea of using the soft focus, am I on the right lines here in this image Gary. I've left the three foreground shapes alone and applied s.f. to everything else, altering the focus as they get nearer to the front, if you understand what I mean In other words soft focus decreasing to the front!

Stygg

[Gare]

You did great, Stygg.

What a pupil!

See, it was impossible for you to restore some of the focus, so your piece doesn't work 100%, but it DOES demonstrate how useful a ClipView shape and the Blur Live Effect can be.

For example, when you want a floor shadow below an object, yep, you could use the Shadow tool, but then the shadow is not as flexible as if you drew one yourself. One way to make a manual floor ("perspective") shadow is with the Feather feature, but another is to blur the vector shape with Live Effects.

Attached is the file for this:



First, I added a Diffusion Live Effect, and then the Blur. Live Effects work on anything on the page.


Shadows are important to photo retouching. They don't always have to be totally accurate, but if there is one missing altogether—an inaccurate fake or not, people notice that.

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the shadow file Gary, that's a really good way for shadows, I've used it in this image. I've tried to balance up the focus a little better in this one but I think applying soft focus is something else you have to work at to get fairly right but I think it looks a little better

Stygg