how to make a noisy feather

[killerwhale65]

Hi,

I was wondering how i could make a "noisy" feather. What i mean in like in Illustrator, there is an option add noise to a feather, and what this does is create a feather that, instead of a regular feather, is very grainy at one side, and the grain becomes less and less dense towards the other side.

How would i do that?

Thanks!

Matt

[Albacore]

Yes but it is a bit of a fiddle. Create your feather and adjust its size to suit application. Use the Live Effects Tool->Click New -> Go down to Distortion Filter and down Add Noise, use the sliders to add the effect. The filter is a bit crude and you could look around the net for another PS 7 style filter to use or link in Illy's if you are on a slightly older version of AI.

These effects are all raster and I like to keep the majority of work as much as possible all vector (feathering is a bitmap effect) so I tend to use the Contour Tool or Blend Tool merging my object colour out into the background colour to give the same effect as feathering. Also to add the noise I would bring in a bitmap with the type of noise that you want. The use the Auto Trace in Xara to convert it to vector. Remove all of the background from trace and the use your noise with transparency to give the effect you want.

If the work is for the web go with the Live Effect Tool.
If the work is for print the use the Contour -->The Auto Trace a bitmap -->Clear background shapes --> Maybe use the noise with Transparency

[killerwhale65]

Thanks. I tried the Live Effect, but it does not seem to produce the effect that i want. It does indeed produce the noise, and fades out towards the edge. But what i really want is that each "noise particle" retains its original opacity, but the amount of noise particles should become less and less towards the edge.

[gwpriester]

Then why not do it in Illustrator?

[Egg Bramhill]

A picture speaks a thousand words

An illustration of the effect you require would help greatly

[killerwhale65]

Hi,

Here is a good sample:



I don't have Illustrator anymore, so i can't use that one :-)

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks KW65, I was reading your request completely differently but having seen your example I can understand what you're after.

The best I can do at present is to use a brush along a spiral with a stroke/pressure profile attached. Clone resize, alter brush rotate & resize etc. Not the best of solutions.

I attach an image of the outcome, which is 100% vector (I'm not sure that's a factor)

Why Xara users still need to create spirals in Inkscape for import into Xara really p****s me off!

I'm sure Dmitrys "Spray" should be capable of creating this effect as well but I can't figure out how to do it yet

[killerwhale65]

Thanks, i will try and recreate this!