The July Tutorial Discussion-Retouching Images

[Gare]

This month, it's version 8 and some image retouching.

Image Retouching with Xara Designer

Lets' talk.

You go second.

-g

[angelize]

That was really quite interesting I never knew about filling in the sliced out hole with the shape tool and backspace. Although I think you gave up on the colour select/erase too easily. You can mask out an area using the mask layer and the colour erase/select will only select pixels within the area you define on the mask. Here is the squirt gun image masked, colour selected, and hue changed.

[Gare]

Guilty, Frances!

But it wasn't that I gave up too easily. I covered the Color Select/Erase tool too quickly; I needed to cover a lot of ground this month, and wanted to give the alternative (and harder) method some time. So I short-shrifted the Color Select method, now to my regret.

Next month is Part 2 of Image Retouching, and I promise I'll try to give some time to the Mask tool. You and The Lone Ranger would like that.

And you did take something new away from July's tute, right?

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

I much prefer the "hard way" of changing the color of the water gun.

I'm more confortable using vector techniques than raster like features.

[Gare]

Hi, Bill—

I try to include something for everyone in the tutorials. In fact, I was flipping a coin this month because you have to have version 8 for the water pistol tutorial (but not the tic tac toe tutorial).

Out of habit, I do retouching in Xara "the hard way" by manually and accurately tracing an area I want to change. Xara's selection methods are entirely vector, seeing as we don't have a true "Brush Tool" yet (hint, hint!), but I not the ease of using variations on the Freehand tool for photo editing methods, and let's face it: design life isn't all vector shapes—every mobile device these days seems to have a camera, right?

Bill, your water pistol you recolored to bright red is a little "hot" in your post; some of the detail is lost in the color. You might consider dialing back the Strength slider, or playing with Levels to let the highlights and shaded areas become more apparent.

I'm sorry members have to deal with my idea of photography! That bucket of toys was taken on a bright day and I had my choice of too m uch contrast in direct sunlight, or not enough in shaded areas of our back yard.

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

I changed the transparency of the shape I used to cover the squirt gun from Stained Glass to Hue.

I would not know about mobile phones and cameras. I don't own a mobile phone.

[stygg2003]

Nice effort Francis, unfortunately I have still not upgraded yet but must do, so I'll just do the tic-tac toe for now. With regard to using the mask layer and the colour erase/select, did the video by NarrenzunftKalbach cover this topic?

Stygg

[Gare]

@Stygg—

If you use the second part of the image recoloring tutorial, you can follow that part along just fine. That's why I did the recoloring two different ways.

I don't know whether I've covered features exactly as someone else has previously. But that's kind of unavoidable now and in the future, isn't it? I can't be Jimmy Olsen and scoop everyone else all the time. I'm just trying to explore unexplored stuff with Xaraists (and being defensive in the process )

@Bill, use the Contone feature! You don't have to put an object over the selected area to recolor it. And I've been a devout "Vector Guy" for years.

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

I used the contone feature on the two extra alligator squirt guns. One green and one blue.

[Gare]

Got it. It looked so natural, I'd forgotten which water pistols I'd put in the bucket!

Now, does anyone know ho to make a "candy cane" water pistol? Red and white stripes? Consider this a challenge.

Or do polka dots if you're not feeling Christmassy yet.

-g