| Author | Message | ||
     Anonymous |
Making Virtual Mats Creation of virtual mats is nicely covered in previous posts, see http://www.dl-c.com/discus/messages/2/5156.html#POST9302. Below I offer a few modifications that, despite the large number of steps, others may find helpful. Largely as described earlier, the basic idea is to create the borders, bevel, mat area, and a mask using the add border and mask tools. Then create a small precursor of the mat, texture it and possibly add noise, expand it to final size and adjust its color, contrast, and sharpness using file new, and the texture, noise generator, convert, resize, and color adjust transforms. Place the image plus its added border and bevel into the textured mat with the mask and composite transform. Finally, to add the illusion of depth, make a suitable mask and darken two of the four bevel areas and perhaps add lines at the two corners of the bevel area to indicate intersecting planes and at which color or darkness does not change. The individual steps in the process are detailed below. Building the Borders, Bevel, and Mask 1. Using Transform//Geometry//Crop/Add Border, add borders (perhaps 25 pixels) representing a border, and bevel (perhaps 75 pixels) to your image. In the border tool, use Border//Select Solid Color and the color picker to choose colors for the border and bevel, and in a later step, for the mat. If mat is not to be textured, it can be added at this step and you can skip to the Creating Depth steps. 2. Using Mask//, All, create a white mask that exactly covers the image, border, and bevel. Using Add Border as above, add a black border to the mask of width equal to whatever width will be used for the mat and note this size for later use. 3. Again using Transform//Geometry//Crop/Add Border, add another border to the image+border+bevel. This border is to be the width of mat. (The color of this border doesn't matter as this addition is merely to bring the image size to its final value.) Generating and Texturing the Mat 4. Using File//New, create a new blank image that will be used in making the mat. To generate large-scale texture in the ultimate mat, create a file of size around 150 x 100 pixels. To generate smaller-scale texture, use a larger image size at this step. 5. Using Transform//Texture, generate texture in the new blank image. 6. (Optional, the presence of some noise often improves the mat's appearance. To generate colored noise, perform step 7 before this step.) Using Transformation//Special Effects//Add Noise, typically 20%, add noise to the pattern. 7. Using Transform//Convert, convert the texture file to color, 24 bit. 8. Using Transform//Geometry//Resize, convert the texture file to the exact size noted in step 2. (A substantial magnification at this step by having used a small image size in step 4 generates large-scale and soft detail in the mat.) 9. Using Transform//Gray//Brightness Curve, and Transform//Color//Filter or Color//Correction and perhaps Transform//Blur, adjust the contrast, gray level, and color of the mat as desired. Place Image in the Mat 10. Using Transformation//Composite with the textured mat as the input image, the mask as generated above, overlay as the image plus border and bevel, and the blend operation with no alignment, place the image plus border and bevel in the center of the mat. This operation places the image exactly in the center of the mat. Generate Depth Ilusion Two modifications add a sense of depth to the virtual mat. First, the left and upper bevel areas can be darkened, and second, thin black lines can be drawn connecting the upper left corner of the image to the inner upper left corner of the mat (that is, on the bevel section) and similarly for the opposite corner. 11. Adjust the magnification and window size so you can see the entire image plus mat. Using Mask//Polygon tool, in a light area (so you can see what is happening) of the composite figure drag the mouse with the left button depressed to create a rectangle. The four inner anchor points represent the corners of the masking rectangle. They can be freely moved to generate an arbitrary quadrilateral. Add two more anchor points to the inner quadrilateral by shift-clicking on it. Now drag, in order, the six anchor points to the close vicinity of each of the six corners that define the left and upper bevel areas. Now greatly enlarge the image, 1:1 plus a couple more steps is good, and precisely position the anchor points of the mask at the required corners. Convert to a mask by clicking on Apply and OK. 12. Using Transform//Gray//Brightness Curve and the mask from the previous step, adjust the darkness of the left and upper bevel areas as desired. 13. Using Tools//Line and Arrow, add the lines in the other two corners. Pixel width of 2 is good, line can be black, no arrowheads. | ||
| Anonymous |
Making Virtual Mats Creation of virtual mats is nicely covered in previous posts, see http://www.dl-c.com/discus/messages/2/5156.html#POST9302. Below I offer a few modifications that, despite the large number of steps, others may find helpful. Largely as described earlier, the basic idea is to create the borders, bevel, mat area, and a mask using the add border and mask tools. Then create a small precursor of the mat, texture it and possibly add noise, expand it to final size and adjust its color, contrast, and sharpness using file new, and the texture, noise generator, convert, resize, and color adjust transforms. Place the image plus its added border and bevel into the textured mat with the mask and composite transform. Finally, to add the illusion of depth, make a suitable mask and darken two of the four bevel areas and perhaps add lines at the two corners of the bevel area to indicate intersecting planes and at which color or darkness does not change. The individual steps in the process are detailed below. Building the Borders, Bevel, and Mask 1. Using Transform//Geometry//Crop/Add Border, add borders (perhaps 25 pixels) representing a border, and bevel (perhaps 75 pixels) to your image. In the border tool, use Border//Select Solid Color and the color picker to choose colors for the border and bevel, and in a later step, for the mat. If mat is not to be textured, it can be added at this step and you can skip to the Creating Depth steps. After adding border and bevel. Despite many attempts, I was unable to get the bulletin board to accept my image for this. It is, however merely the image plus the narrow black border and the wider brown border that can be seen below 2. Using Mask//, All, create a white mask that exactly covers the image, border, and bevel. Using Add Border as above, add a black border to the mask of width equal to whatever width will be used for the mat and note this size for later use.  3. Again using Transform//Geometry//Crop/Add Border, add another border to the image+border+bevel. This border is to be the width of mat. (The color of this border doesn't matter as this addition is merely to bring the image size to its final value.)  Generating and Texturing the Mat 4. Using File//New, create a new blank image that will be used in making the mat. To generate large-scale texture in the ultimate mat, create a file of size around 150 x 100 pixels. To generate smaller-scale texture, use a larger image size at this step. 5. Using Transform//Texture, generate texture in the new blank image. 6. (Optional, the presence of some noise often improves the mat's appearance. To generate colored noise, perform step 7 before this step.) Using Transformation//Special Effects//Add Noise, typically 20%, add noise to the pattern.  7. Using Transform//Convert, convert the texture file to color, 24 bit. 8. Using Transform//Geometry//Resize, convert the texture file to the exact size noted in step 2. (A substantial magnification at this step by having used a small image size in step 4 generates large-scale and soft detail in the mat.)  9. Using Transform//Gray//Brightness Curve, and Transform//Color//Filter or Color//Correction and perhaps Transform//Blur, adjust the contrast, gray level, and color of the mat as desired.  Place Image in the Mat 10. Using Transformation//Composite with the textured mat as the input image, the mask as generated above, overlay as the image plus border and bevel, and the blend operation with no alignment, place the image plus border and bevel in the center of the mat. This operation places the image exactly in the center of the mat.   Generate Depth Ilusion Two modifications add a sense of depth to the virtual mat. First, the left and upper bevel areas can be darkened, and second, thin black lines can be drawn connecting the upper left corner of the image to the inner upper left corner of the mat (that is, on the bevel section) and similarly for the opposite corner. 11. Adjust the magnification and window size so you can see the entire image plus mat. Using Mask//Polygon tool, in a light area (so you can see what is happening) of the composite figure drag the mouse with the left button depressed to create a rectangle. The four inner anchor points represent the corners of the masking rectangle. They can be freely moved to generate an arbitrary quadrilateral. Add two more anchor points to the inner quadrilateral by shift-clicking on it. Now drag, in order, the six anchor points to the close vicinity of each of the six corners that define the left and upper bevel areas. Now greatly enlarge the image, 1:1 plus a couple more steps is good, and precisely position the anchor points of the mask at the required corners. Convert to a mask by clicking on Apply and OK. Resulting mask.  12. Using Transform//Gray//Brightness Curve and the mask from the previous step, adjust the darkness of the left and upper bevel areas as desired.  13. Using Tools//Line and Arrow, add the lines in the other two corners. Pixel width of 2 is good, line can be black, no arrowheads. |
