Pastel brush?

[Toonicorn]

Hi, all!

I'm wondering if there are any brushes for Xara DesignerPro X10 that are the equivalent of the pastel brushes available in Photoshop? Brushes that really look like pastel strokes when you use them? Thanks!

[gwpriester]

Ask this question in the Xara Brushes forum. http://www.talkgraphics.com/forumdis...2-Xara-Brushes Maybe someone there has already created such a brush.

[handrawn]

Hi

over in the brushes forum Frances [angelize] said:

Hi toonicorn,
You could take a look at the pencil and chalk brushes that come with Xara they could reasonably simulate pastel. Or if you have some pastels and paper you could easily draw some strokes and scan them. Then the scanned images could either be vector traced for a vector brush or crop it as close as you can and then use the background eraser to remove the background and use them as raster brushes.

apparently that forum does not accept replies [at least, not from mere mortals like me] so I'll reply here:

I hate to disagree but you cannot stimulate pastel in xara.. certainly not in the way photoshop does it and the reason is because of the way that the brush work is rendered

in photoshop the rendering is done by laying down a pattern made up of of pixels and 'gaps'; when you brush over an area already covered, some of the gaps get filled, some do not - this stimulates the building up of pastel

in xara, an art brush stretches the pattern along a line which is not at all the same thing - a scatter brush uses a bitmap that repeats and there is no infilling of what went before, just overlay

that is not to say you cannot try, but I can almost guarantee it won't look the same [challenge here someone? ] - you really need a pixel mode here, which xara does not have

[handrawn]

PS - if I really had to do this in xara I would not use a brush - I would use a bitmap fill as a texture - but that is not always practical

ok - and someone may come back and say - what if I use vector scatter in xara as Frances suggested - well, that does not infill either it will still just overlay and it is the partial infilling with graduated overlay as halftone pixels are covered/cover that gives the effect... that would be almost impossible to do with vector as there is no matrix and therefore it would be 'all or nothing'... but I am willing [as ever] to be proven wrong....

PPS and then there is paper texture to think about......

[angelize]

I have to apologize because Toonicorn was asking about v10 and art brushes are a feature new to V11. So there are no Pencil and chalk brushes in V10.

[challenge here someone? ]

What a great idea! And if each person who gives it a go adds some brief instructions we can all learn from each other

For my attempt you could create 2 or 3 shapes and give them a flat fills . give them each a fractal plasma transparency adjust the fractal transparency of each to vary the transparencies ( click the arrow on the infobar to open the profile sliders and experiment with those too. Once you are happy with your shapes you will need to make bitmap copies . select your shapes and with the freehand and brush tool selected create your brush. Experiment with the brush settings randomise spacing, rotation, scaling and more. I've attached a .xar file that can be dissected.

A repeating artbrush in V11 might be an interesting method to try however it would not be usable in v10 or older.

@Handrawn: You are right about the brushes forum (partly) It is a moderated forum and it is meant as a repository but you should be able to respond to a thread to thank brush contributors. As this is a how to thread IMO this discussion is better here so I'm merging the other thread into this one.

[Albacore]

Use Frances's brush but also have a look at Xhris's brushes set right at the very bottom of the link given above. I had this set on my H/drive for years and still use them. For Xhris put all of his brushes in this one doc. This means all that I need to do is open that doc and copy out of that doc. I even now save my new brushes into that doc. and use it like a library still using the layers like Xhris did.

[hseiken]

Hi

over in the brushes forum Frances [angelize] said:



apparently that forum does not accept replies [at least, not from mere mortals like me] so I'll reply here:

I hate to disagree but you cannot stimulate pastel in xara.. certainly not in the way photoshop does it and the reason is because of the way that the brush work is rendered

in photoshop the rendering is done by laying down a pattern made up of of pixels and 'gaps'; when you brush over an area already covered, some of the gaps get filled, some do not - this stimulates the building up of pastel

in xara, an art brush stretches the pattern along a line which is not at all the same thing - a scatter brush uses a bitmap that repeats and there is no infilling of what went before, just overlay

that is not to say you cannot try, but I can almost guarantee it won't look the same [challenge here someone? ] - you really need a pixel mode here, which xara does not have

I would completely disagree with you here. The method for achieve results does not equal wither result is possible. In the end, whether vector illustration or raster illustration in terms of software is used, both can definitely pretend to look like the other. The OP asked if there was a pastel-like brush, not whether they can replicate exactly the feel of using pastels to construct an image. There's more than plenty of brushes that mimic pastels just fine and tons more post effects and fill patterns and masking and all that stuff to convince someone of the pastel qualities of an image made in Xara.

It's the path to achieve that quality and texture that's completely different than Photoshop or other 'painting' software that deals in raster only.

[handrawn]

what he asked was whether xara can have a 'pastel' brush that makes strokes that look like [are the equivalent to] the photoshop pastel 'brush' strokes - effectively my answer was 'no' and I stand by that.

sure you can make 'imitation' pastel brushes in both apps, and good ones, but the ps ones are much closer to the real thing

he also said:

that really look like pastel strokes

now I use real pastels... I prefer the harder ones to say, the oil, but whichever pastel you use, a significant factor in the effect you get is the texture of the paper; xara does not have any paper texture features, that's not a vector thing - I guess you could texture the stroke afterwards, but that is not then in the brush, and it is going to be difficult to get to look natural in my opinion

for reference, below is a hard pastel brush stroke made in CS6 photoshop with canvas texture built in

[hseiken]

I agree with you in that Xara's brushes don't 'recognize' texture. But that was my point...Xara can do it, but not in a way that 'makes sense' to the medium...it doesn't try to fake anything like Photoshop does, so you have to take those steps and the artist to push that texture effect as a post treatment. But yeah, You're right, it's easier to just pick up and doodle in Photoshop, but the paper texture isn't something that xara cannot do...it just doesn't do it while you're drawing.


EDIT:

It did also make me think of something else that I wish Xara could do, but strengthens your stance and that's to 'drag' pigment of strokes into an overlapping stroke. I feel like Xara could do this via doing some engine trickery and playing with it's gradient fill technology to auto create gradient fills based on where a stroke travels and what's underneath it. This is something that's essentially impossible to just 'do' via any kind of intuitive way in Xara and something that occurs in in pastel drawings too (i.e. getting residue on your finger and rubbing it into the texture or finger blending two shades)...

[angelize]

Hi toonicorn,
You could take a look at the pencil and chalk brushes that come with Xara they could reasonably simulate pastel. Or if you have some pastels and paper you could easily draw some strokes and scan them. Then the scanned images could either be vector traced for a vector brush or crop it as close as you can and then use the background eraser to remove the background and use them as raster brushes.