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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
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    2

    Bug Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Hi everyone. I hope someone can help me. I recently got Xara Photo and Graphics Designer 2013 and my main thing at the moment is to make photos look like paintings or pastels etc. I cannot find where to do this. I have left and right clicked on almost everything and cannot locate the drop down menu or whatever there is to do this. I hope someone can help me. I cannot locate any info in the "help" section either. Thanks in advance for any, any help given to me.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Select the image.
    Then the Photo tool and pick the Live Effects tools (FX) icon.
    Click New > Art filter > Painting.

    Acorn
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Posts
    2

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Quote Originally Posted by Acorn View Post
    Select the image.
    Then the Photo tool and pick the Live Effects tools (FX) icon.
    Click New > Art filter > Painting.

    Acorn
    Thank you so much. I was going crazy trying to find it! You're a lifesaver!

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Placitas, New Mexico, USA
    Posts
    41,487

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Welcome to TalkGraphics the_naj

    There are lots of other cool filters in the FX menu. Experiment with all of them and see what they do.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Ottawa, IL USA
    Posts
    1,138

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    You could call me insane, but I've used xara to "hand paint" converting a photograph into a "painted illustration" without using an FX tools. I've done this a half dozen times, sometimes with remarkable results. The first file below is the Xara file I created, with the second as a thumbnail of the original. As you can see the horses legs weren't in the original, I had to add those.

    The process involves zooming in and creating vector shapes with every color in the texture of the photo, apply heavy edge feathering and transparency layers stacked on top of other created shapes, in a process that took me probably five hours to create the final work.

    samurai-illustration.xar Click image for larger version. 

Name:	samurai.jpg 
Views:	200 
Size:	79.8 KB 
ID:	104437

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    21,284

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    that's an impressive piece of work
    -------------------------------
    Nothing lasts forever...

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Gameprinter, I admire your dedication.
    I hacked up this try in 30 minutes using XDP10X's Bitmap Tracer, with a few hand tweaks.
    Again no FX Tools with a result that uses a palette knife rather than a sable brush.

    It's just to show even a tyro can get something out of Xara:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Samurai.jpg 
Views:	160 
Size:	153.3 KB 
ID:	104480

    Acorn
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Location
    Ottawa, IL USA
    Posts
    1,138

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Not bad, Acorn.

    When I created my illustration, the purpose was for art needed for a game publication - Way of the Samurai (PFRPG). Traditionally the art used in such publications are either public domain art (in which case I was extensively using period ukiyo-e Japanese wood-block print art) or paintings by commissioned artists. Since I was trying to keep costs down, rather than commission an artist, I intended to the work myself. While I'm a fine cartographer, I'm only a "so so" illustrator. I didn't want too seem to obviously digital in my artwork and it seems to me that relying on the bitmap tracer or FX tools gives the impression of using such a tool, and not being truly illustrative. So I opted to do work the way I chose, and got what I considered to fit best. I found the mounted samurai photo online (it was 6000 pixels wide, so had very good resolution to work with). Using photos from the internet for publications is essentially stealing art - I didn't want risk using unpaid artwork in a publication. Besides photos are not the optimal form of artwork in game supplements.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Need help making photo look like painting! I'm a newbie!

    Gameprinter, thank you for your background to what you had to deliver.
    If I had that brief, I would have used feathered ellipses throughout.
    It is the nearest approach to creating an image using an Iterated Function System (IFS) methodology, one where shapes are self-similar and used to describe images that are fractal in nature. In other words, nature.

    Acorn
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

 

 

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