Three steps to banknotes

[ivan louette]

Here is the way to easily reach and modify interactively banknotes engravings effects like those obtained with some expensive plugins.

The pictures obtained are very well adapted to print at high definition with inkjet printers.

-1 overlay any well contrasted bitmap picture or any drawing made with Xara X with a 200 to 300 steps blend between two white lines (the space between the lines may be slighly wider than the lines width) ;

-2 select the bitmap or the drawing and convert it to a true color bitmap (at 300 dpi) ;

-3 keeping this bitmap selected, go to "utilities / bitmap effects and plugins / bitmap effects / color depth" and check "to mono diffusion".

Now you have a superb engraving like picture. If you want to colorize it, you can use any quadrangle of the same size, fill it with any kind of filling and use your black and white bitmap as transparency.

Tips : move the individual points of your blended lines to give the movement you wish to your picture ; overlay with a second

blend if you want a cross hatching.

Enjoy,
ivan

[This message was edited by ivan louette on July 23, 2002 at 13:57.]

[ivan louette]

Here is the way to easily reach and modify interactively banknotes engravings effects like those obtained with some expensive plugins.

The pictures obtained are very well adapted to print at high definition with inkjet printers.

-1 overlay any well contrasted bitmap picture or any drawing made with Xara X with a 200 to 300 steps blend between two white lines (the space between the lines may be slighly wider than the lines width) ;

-2 select the bitmap or the drawing and convert it to a true color bitmap (at 300 dpi) ;

-3 keeping this bitmap selected, go to "utilities / bitmap effects and plugins / bitmap effects / color depth" and check "to mono diffusion".

Now you have a superb engraving like picture. If you want to colorize it, you can use any quadrangle of the same size, fill it with any kind of filling and use your black and white bitmap as transparency.

Tips : move the individual points of your blended lines to give the movement you wish to your picture ; overlay with a second

blend if you want a cross hatching.

Enjoy,
ivan

[This message was edited by ivan louette on July 23, 2002 at 13:57.]

[ivan louette]

A vellum effect on one of my old bitmaps with this technique.

Kindly,
ivan

[Christine Farrelly]

Hello Ivan,

So glad you've found time to spend with Xara again.

I thought we were all going to make our fortune when I saw the heading but ... back to the day job.

Great effect - an overlay like this could be used to protect sample drawings from being copied.

Christine

[ivan louette]

I will give soon a report of these very busy last months.
And of course I will show improvements of this technique too.

Kindly,
ivan

[gwpriester]

However the file size of the images is awesome too [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

While I was waiting for the image to load, I went into Xara and created this image.

I made a duplicate of the eyebulb image and converted it to Mono Diffusion, then placed the diffused photo over the color photo and applied a flat, luminosity transparency (other transparenies produce different effects).

This is where I thought you were going with your explantion until I saw your images.

You could also try using a contour instead of a blend.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

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[daglenn1960]

Ok I get the idea, but what do you mean by overlay (how)?

~dave

[ivan louette]

I want to say put the lines blend on top of the bitmap or on top of the objects you want give the effect.

Kindly,
ivan

[molucca]

I liked the idea of cross hatching, and wanted to apply it to areas to simulate shading. I made a 100 X 100 line drawing for a hatch source. Then rotate the pattern as applicable. I made shape drawings from an image, and cut the shape from the hatch. Then applied some line effects, and anything else as required. Some times I resized the hatch shape, and other times I made an additional shape to enhance the shading. I was mostly curious if cutting a shape from the hatch would leave lines being editable at their new lengths. This worked well. Ric

[Truroneil]

Ivan, your technique came in handy last week as I wished to create a birthday card for a friend on his 75th birthday. He loves Portugal and Spain, is of Italian ancestry, and is a linguist.
I combined some of these ideas in creating a new bill for him. Thanks for the mini-tut. Neil