September 2014 Video Tutorial -- Xara Photo Compositions Part 2

[stygg2003]

Cheers for the file Gary, will have a look, a good look! then have a whack at it

Stygg

[stygg2003]

Those spheres are great Gary so please forgive my ignorance when I ask that the secret of doing this sort of image, is getting the correct perspective on the background grid ?

Stygg

[Gare]

There are no secrets, Stygg. For once I'm being serious.

The spheres I sort of drew (I pulled them out of an archive to spare me drawing new ones) are clearly resting on a ground plane, the ground plane just happens to extend upwards from a horizontal to a vertical orientation. In photography, this is called a sweep, the piece of paper or other material that makes a soft transition between horizontal and vertical orientation.

The advantage of curving a piece of paper for a background is that you get a gradual, perspective transition from ground to upwards. If you put a hard crease in the paper at the ground plane, the effect would be much less dramatic and look like product packaging photography or something.

When you draw anything that should suggest perspective, you need to draw from the front angle for example, but also preconceive what the side angle will look like. And then take some Tylenol.


My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the feedback and the image Gary, you've answered what I meant by secret - right angle versus bend and bend is definitly the better.

Stygg

[Gare]

It's also a nice artistic blending of opposites, which as I (continually!) mention, creates a dynamic tension that holds the audience's attention.

In this case the opposites creating contrast is the gentle slope of the seamless paper behind the spheres contrasting with the hard geometric squares making up the grid on the paper.

"Think twice, draw once."

—Probably me, who thinks a lot about a piece way before even opening a program or uncapping a pen...

[stygg2003]

Does make a big difference the bend grid Gary but hope you don't mind had a little fun with this one.

Stygg

[theinonen]

Quick post before work.

Xara is approaching photo/bitmap editing the same way as vectors and it makes it hader in my opinion to have full control how things work on bitmap side of things.

How would people accomplish something like this with Xara without traditional blending modes? Let's say I have a basic car and then if I wanted to light things up and give some additional touches.

Examples below in one huge mess as can not place pictures inline with this browser as there is no option for that.

[Gare]

Hi theoninen—

Xara Designer Pro is by definition a vector drawing program that has some, but not all animation, desktop publishing, and photo manipulation features. I stress photo manipulation because Xara has no true brush tool and therefore cannot enter the photo retouching arena, not really. I stand by its bitmap features professionally and personally because there are some things you can successfully accomplish in less this than using Photoshop.

So let's say Xara is very, very strong in the vector stroke and fill market, but not quite mature enough to pull off special stuff with bitmaps, although I'm still fairly proud to have totally retouched this photo without one ounce of Photoshop.

Xara does have traditional blending modes, theoninen, I think I've mentioned this three times now and shown a screen cap- of where they are. Stained Glass Transparency mode=Multiply mode in Photoshop, and Bleach equals Screen, both in function and mathematically.

Your inline attachments are going all over the place because you're not using the attachment feature in the Go Advanced> Manager Attachments>Add Files> and then once you've selected one or two via the Browse and then the Upload button, you have a thumbnail that takes a check mark in the corner, an Insert Inline button and then a Done button.










So if your code in the editor doesn't have these open and close ATTACH declarations (yours doesn't), you're placing files in the body of the text in a novel, but unsatisfactory way.



AS far as your very nice model of the car, why don't you do the lighting and shading in the program itself instead of coming up with shading masks and stuff?

Given these files I think I could get the look you're after in Xara within an hour. Sad to say, I have a new Xara Xone video to produce this week so it would not be me. If you give permission to the members here to download and work with your files, I'm sure stygg or someone could explain and solve your problem.

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Does make a big difference the bend grid Gary but hope you don't mind had a little fun with this one.

Stygg

Stygg, you want lizards with spheres, you knock yourself out.

Wait, strike that. I do not want you knocking yourself out. Chances are you'd wake up brighter than me.

...and that would be so wrong.


-g

[stygg2003]

No chance me ever waking up and being brighter than you Gary. Reading your comments @ theoninen, I downloaded his Png image, hope you don't mind theoninen, just to try the a few things. I agree with you Gary that you could redo this image in Xara pretty quick. Uploaded the colour change thats all, it took all of two mins. to change colour. Off to try Rik's excellent tips and tricks.

Stygg