Plug-ins and Displacements

[jvila]

What a good thread, I'm uploading a picture I'm working on, the second one is the original.
I think that a REALLY GOOD IMPROVEMENT in xara would be to have a distortion tool for bitmaps, like mould tool, with more controls and It works over bitmaps, I think it really makes the difference.
I've seen a lot of work done with photoshop and almost everyone is done using a distort tool
Best regards

[angelize]

Hi Javier, Have you tried the liquid colour plugin? it's not perfect, but it can bend and mold photos.

[jvila]

Frances,
How are you, thank you for the advice, I tried it but it is not the same, what I meant is (like) a mesh tool, please look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3NF3O7esOk
He uses a lot that kind of tool let him to bend bitmaps to adapt them to surfaces.
Best regards and thank you very much.

[Gare]

Hi Javier—

One cannot realistically make a comparison between Photoshop's image editing powers and Xara's. This month I'm trying to get artists to think outside of vector shapes and see what can be done with bitmaps images in Xara, which is actually quite a lot. I'd have to agree that if you load a smallish image and use the Liquid Color Live Effect, you can pull on areas of the photo, and it's quite like Photoshop's Liquify Filter.




I didn't see a lot of Photoshop's distortion features in that Transformers speed-drawing, aside for some skewing and rotation.

For the beginner and intermediate Xaraist, there's a lot you can do with photos in Xara.

It's just not Photoshop.

Nor does Xara have Photoshop's price tag.



My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Here's a trick, and honest to gosh trick to distort (no mesh, sorry Javier!) images you import to Xara smoothly.

If you use the Mould tool in Perspective mode, at some point, the greater you distort the photo, the more aliasing (artifacting, crap) you'll notice within the image, because images are by their nature made up of a fixed size, fixed number of pixels and the pixels are supposed to be rectangular, not trapezoidal.

But if you 3D extrude and then rotate an image object, you'll see far less artifacting and you can then make a copy or use ClipView. The 3D Extrude is using different procedures to display the angled cube than it is a Perpectived image:



-g

[angelize]

Yes I did recolour the centers of the sunflowers but the fact you had to ask means I must have done a good job.

That's really a great trick using an extrusion for perspective to reduce the artifacting. I made a bitmap copy, used the liquid color, and added some shading and subtle highlights and a custom shadow.

[Gare]

the fact you had to ask means I must have done a good job.

Um, no: the fact that I asked means I'm obsessed with colour accuracy, Frances! How can anyone share image files if they're tagged with different color profiles, or our monitors are old(er) and as a consequence dimmer? Or someone doesn't calibrate their monitor?

This should be carved in stone: when something looks off on your monitor, don't change your art. Instead, change your view of the visual data. By adjusting your monitor, or recalibrating it or whatever.

When you change, for example the brightness, of a bitmap, unless it's a live, dynamic effect, the change is permanent and progressive. In other words, if you change the saturation, and then the brightness of a bitmap, you can't go back and change the saturation after the file's saved and/or closed. Changes to bitmaps are usually permanent.

So you want to make sure that what you see is what you want to save.

@Frances-can you screen capture a zoomed-in view of your lovely artwork? I'd like to see and validate that the extrude technique is indeed producing nice smooth alterations without harsh pixels edges.

TIA,

Gary

[Gare]

If your image in post #133 is close to what you wish to accomplish with the filter, then it is all good!

Nice, and nice use of burnt orange color.

My Best,

Gary

[Big Frank]

I downloaded and installed displace map from image skill

fantastic tip - many thanks

sadly, there is no way to apply this Live Effect plug-in to vector shapes so the changes are permanently vector

so the changes are permanently raster (bitmap)

[Gare]

Yep, you can only output a filtered shape as a bitmap, but then again I think this is true of all the filters.

Not a biggie if your displacement is simple, though: you auto-trace it.

Also, regardless of how messed-up you displace a vector shape, like most Live Effects, you can edit the position and type of control points along the path, which can make for some interesting art.

My Best,

Gary