January 2013 Video Tutorial - Working With Live Effects

[Barbara B]

Working With Live Effects is this month's Xara Xone tutorial on XaraXone.com


One of the most under-used tools on the Xara Toolbar for hardcore illustrators is the Live Effects button. But once you’ve tapped into bitmap effects such as distortions, color filtering, and even third party plug-ins you can buy, you’ll wonder how you did without Live Effects! It’s the easier road from artistic problem to solution, and this month, Gary takes you on a tour of some of the creative possibilities for filters in design work.

Plug in, turn on, get your fill of filters! And the show us your work, of course.

[angelize]

I found this tutorial quite interesting, I learned something about the colour with gradient live effect.

Here is my attempt at the tutorial (I couldn't resist doing it in red!)

[stygg2003]

I found this tutorial quite interesting, I learned something about the colour with gradient live effect.

Here is my attempt at the tutorial (I couldn't resist doing it in red!)

Well done Francis. I've not got round to doing this yet, still working on your Valentine Card which is really neat.

Stygg

[angelize]

The tutorial got me playing around with the colour with gradient effect and it's an interesting way to recolour seamless tiling bitmaps, and a black and white gradient can be used to turn a full colour image vector or bitmap into a greyscale image.

[Gare]

Although I emphasized the Color with Gradient filter this month, the "Big Point" I might not have successfully made is that there are a LOT of native filters, and you can more easily do certain things with them to finish a composition than slaving over shapes for hours on end.

Example? A fairly common effect you see on the web is an object reflecting into the ground plane. The reflection is blurry and it fades to nothing toward the bottom of the composition.

Okay, you can do this sometimes using the Photo tool and the sharpen/blur feature on the Infobar, but it is limited in its blurriness, while the Gaussian Blur Live Effect can blur a chosen selection so dramatically it impair your vision!

Then you use the Transparency tool in linear mode to finish the effect. I've attached the file if anyone would like to do something similar. You just "can't get there from here" sometimes without a filter.



My Best,

Gary
(This is what happens when you fail to budget an example into a tutorial's time frame...)

[stygg2003]

That is a really neat effect Gary, I will try this on some image when I've done the Jan. tut. Only just finished the tut. by Francis, not enough hours in a day

Stygg