The July Tutorial Discussion-Retouching Images

[Gare]

It's quite well done, Stygg. Congratulations!

Getting back to imae retouching this month, I thought this image is a terrific one for selecting and changing colours, especially since it's a computer graphic and all the edges are well defined and sharp.




For an extra challenge, Stygg, try putting your Union Jack on one of the figure's shirts!

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

It's quite well done, Stygg. Congratulations!

Getting back to imae retouching this month, I thought this image is a terrific one for selecting and changing colours, especially since it's a computer graphic and all the edges are well defined and sharp.




For an extra challenge, Stygg, try putting your Union Jack on one of the figure's shirts!

My Best,

Gary

Thanks for that Gary and thanks for getting us back on topic, I've got flags coming out of my ears Will have a go at putting U.J. on a shirt. Just going of topic again!! sorry, I was browsing yesterday and came across some pictures of your neck of the woods and one especially of some cigar shop totally manned by women, can't remember what the shop was called now but did they have some cigars, tons

[Gare]

WARNING: Off-topic, has to do with cigars. Continue reading at your own expense!

@Stygg—

Pictures of my neck of the woods would be in the geographic centre of New York, my friend. It's quite possible we have a cigar shop here, but I finally quit sucking on coffin nails almost two years ago and counting (I welcome applause here), so I have no want or need to index tobacconists locally.

Understand also, that the United States is a very large place. I read a funny statistic that the USA has only 32 people per square mile, while Europe has 134 people per square mile. My relatives on my mom's side hail from the former Soviet Union (watch; now the G.O.P. is going to tell everyone I'm a Socialist Commie); when my great Uncle came over, he was astounded at the spaciousness of our country, how large a relatively modest dairy farm was, and how large one of New York State's lakes are. He thought it was the Atlantic.

Point is, if the cigar store is in New York State, I probably wouldn't know it even if I smoked. A few friends in Europe assume I can get in our car and drive over to New York City, just because Syracuse and NYC are in the same state (it's a 6 hour drive). And I do this to others, too. Regardless of where someone lives in Australia, I ask them about the Sydney Opera House.

Now take the flags out of your ears unless there's a parade today, and start working on my talking head image.

:)

—Gare

[Gare]

The discussion about distortion filters and Alien Skin, and posts that begin with, "I don't want to go off-topic..." and then they do...

have made this thread hard to read, so if it's about displacement mapping:

1. I'll try to cover it in August on The Xara Xone as a Tips and Tricks section and

2. I moved the discussion to >>>HERE<<<

Please excuse this interruption. We return you now to our regularly scheduled discussion.

-g

[Gare]

The overall subject this month is image retouching, and I'm deviating slightly only because a friend told me OnOne Software has free filters and effects that can run as a standalone product (IOW, no Photoshop or Xara or Lightroom needed as a host).

They're very nice and it will probably take you less than a day to get up and running with subtle, beautiful color filters and layers you can use in a lot of different photographic blend modes. Why are they doing this? Because these are version 3 filters and they just announced version 6. It's like getting Xara Studio for free—it's friendly bait to encourage you to get the current version.

>>>Go here*<<<

*They're going to suck your email address, so expect announcements, but they swear they don't hand off addresses. My link to the software came seconds after registration and be aware that it's a 240MB download and your video card needs to support OpenGL. This shouldn't be a show-stopper; just go for it. The only video device I've seen in ten years that didn't support OpenGL is an Etch-A-Sketch.

My Best,

Gary

[angelize]

Here is a retouching job done in Xara with colour select and then I just messed around with brightness, hue, saturation etc. until I had something I liked. I started with a rather humdrum photo of daisies in the afternoon

[angelize]

And here is a go at the talking heads

[Gare]

I think what you did with the eyes is an interesting opening point to a differen thread, Frances: can you replace photographic (or in this case photo-realistic) areas of an image with vector shapes?

Upon a close look, you did really well. Accept that as a complement, and I'm just wondering out loud what we might have in the future for a tutorial on faking a photo area with Xara vectors.



—g

[stygg2003]

Talking Heads and one British sex pistol punk

Stygg

[Gare]

HAH!

I love it!

(The light is coming from the right of the scene, so make the camera left side of the flag a little darker,a little falloff.)

-g