May 2013 Tips and Tricks: Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover

[Barbara B]

Making a Striking Coffee Table Book Cover



Learn how to create the look of a fine tooled and gilded leather book cover, fit for display on the swankiest coffee table in town, using Xara Designer and Xara’s Live Effects. Gary Bouton (Gare online) shows you the way to master this special effect. More…

[angelize]

This makes a very nice foil effect. I like how the extra layer with the stained glass transparency gives the foil a richer look.

I do have a question, in Step 5 of the gold foil section you say that filter forge and some other live effects can't be applied to a shape with a fractal fill, but I've often done that. Perhaps it's because I'm using the full version of Filter Forge rather than the free distortions set? One thing though when doing this the first thing I always do when the effect has rendered is to lock the effect.

[Gare]

Hi Frances—

If you're using version 8, then I was able to get away without making a copy.

But I want this tutorial to work as described for previous versions, too, and the deal-breaker—which I've reported to Filter Forge—is in version 6, just as an example, when you try to apply the filter, you get (or at least I got) an error:

<class XFW::OSCallError> ::WriteFile(block 4, parent pipe 00000B34, slave pipe 003C8958) failed with error code 0x000000E8: The pipe is being closed.

So we're both right.

There are a lot of third party filters that cannot run in Xara; happy, most (that I own, at least) perform as described.

My Best,

Gary

P.S. Nice book illustration!


=======================This just in==============================

Tech Support for Filter Forge is excellent. They describe the problem as follows:

This error usually occurs either when the host application is terminated in Task Manager while Filter Forge is running, or when the host application hangs up or crashes while Filter Forge is running.

Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to prevent the issue.

It's also noteworthy that this free Distortion filter is 64x, while the version I tested against of Xara is 32x.

But the tutorial, as written, should provide the results I've shown if you make a bitmap copy of the fill and use that as the target for the filter.

-g

[Gare]

I thought I'd offer some more textures. You can certainly go out and get a free leather texture, but these are seamless tiling examples of concrete and other stuff. And they're free with no restrictions—a gift to our membership.





—g

[stygg2003]

Hi Gary, thanks for a very enjoyable May Tips and Tricks and I learned a few more things from this Tips and Tricks, especially the destroying of the dynamic property of the Bevel. Also using the page and layer gallery to bring objects to the front instead of using Alt and selector tool, I was never aware of this. The use of the Filter Forge Free pack 4 was striking for the gold foil effect and a useful edition to my Live effects plug-ins.

Stygg.

[Gare]

Your finished example looks identical to my own, stygg!

Good show, glad there was something to learn, so let's see an original logo done up real pretty like Cotton Dan's, eh?

My Best,
Gary

[angelize]

This was inspired by some beautiful photos of the earth from the Space Station that I've been looking at lately. I used one of the Starfields that you posted a few months ago (I can't remember which thread) Gary.

[angelize]

Here is an example of using the gold foil effect on something other than a book.

[guyke]

Gary, thank you for the tutorial. I really do prefer the written out tutorials, and I appreciate that they probably require more work from your side.

I did have a problem installing the plug-in. As you suggested I chose "Filters" as the destination folder, but when in Xara it didn't show up under the live effects. So i looked for other filters (like AlienSkin) and found them in a map called PSplug-ins inside a map Xara Picture Editor. So I reinstalled using the PSplug-ins folder and that got it working. I'm using XDPX.

[Gare]

..and found them in a map called PSplug-ins inside a map Xara Picture Editor. So I reinstalled using the PSplug-ins folder and that got it working. I'm using XDPX.

Hi Guyke—

Okay, I think this is one of the places where XDP and XP&GD are different. I try very hard to accommodate users of all versions, but sometimes I mess up. In XDP, you can define a plug-in wherever on your hard drive you like.

I will try to make a note in the tutorial that XP&GD requires that you install a plug-in to a specific, per-determined folder, thanks for letting me know!

I am trying to have one written and one video tutorial a month, but as with this month, it gets a little overwhelming to write, and then produce two unique ones. If anyone has a tutorial locked in their heart, PM me and let's talk about it!

Thanks,

gary