depth of field

[ivan louette]

Hello,

a little tip to create depth of field in Xara X.

1° draw your object.

2° apply a perspective with mould tool.

3° rotate your object at 90° (any rotation may be interesting and if you group your object with another
one bigger and which has no filling and no outline you may begin your shadow already blurred !!!)

4° select Floor Shadow tool and chose your settings (in this case shadow transparency was turned to
zero.)

5° orient your floor shadow (in this case it was exactly superposed to my object.)

6° convert to editable shape and ungroup.

7° use your shadow as a new bitmap object (I have reoriented, duplicated and displaced it and given
different colors to the two bitmaps; then I have blended the two with alt rainbow setting.)

8° eventually add a new shadow.

...and enjoy all this world of new possibilities; not only depth of field but also motion blur, and more
...!

iva

[ivan louette]

Hello,

a little tip to create depth of field in Xara X.

1° draw your object.

2° apply a perspective with mould tool.

3° rotate your object at 90° (any rotation may be interesting and if you group your object with another
one bigger and which has no filling and no outline you may begin your shadow already blurred !!!)

4° select Floor Shadow tool and chose your settings (in this case shadow transparency was turned to
zero.)

5° orient your floor shadow (in this case it was exactly superposed to my object.)

6° convert to editable shape and ungroup.

7° use your shadow as a new bitmap object (I have reoriented, duplicated and displaced it and given
different colors to the two bitmaps; then I have blended the two with alt rainbow setting.)

8° eventually add a new shadow.

...and enjoy all this world of new possibilities; not only depth of field but also motion blur, and more
...!

iva

[Egg Bramhill]

Ivan

What a great idea. I had a little difficulty following your tutorial at first until I grasped what you were after. I've created the same effect with text. Thanks for the excellent tip

Egg

[ivan louette]

Hi Egg !

Excuse my bad english !!!
My drawing was also a text object. It was made with a font I have created with Xara 2 and Fontographer (all outlines were made with Xara !!!) Its name is BOTAROSA (all characters are botanical parts of wild roses.) I distribute it as a freeware and here it is for Xara users !!!

regards,

ivan

[stlewis]

A linear bleach over the top would recreate my old art teacher's instructions with watercolours; things go blue and paler into the distance.

All these ideas are really inspiring.

[ivan louette]

My brother is a photographer. Thus he asked me how one could displace focusing along objects !!!

After rotating your object at 90°, slice it into two parts; the slicing zone will be the focus zone.
Then flip horizontally and vertically one of the two parts, apply your floor shadow to each parts, convert
the two parts into editable shapes, and then flip again the part you have already flipped.
You must probably nudge this part it to apply it correctly against the other one (nudge by pixels for
more precision).
Thanks for the nice idea to add an object with a blue bleach on top of the result !!!

Enjoy !!!

iva

[Egg Bramhill]

Ivan

I've been messing around with the "glow" shadow (can't rember it's proper name now...halo?) and by doing convert to shapes, ungroup you can get some great affects. See attachment.

Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

Try a Gif this time !!!

[ivan louette]

depth of field for bitmaps !!!

Xara X can add different kind of blur effects to bitmaps; no need to go to other programs. I have applied it to an old Panhard & Levassor I have modelised in Lightwave (but not terminated at this time.)

1 bitmap oriented vertically.
2 transparent bitmap copies (stained glass) with primary colors bleach.
3 floor shadows of the bitmap copies with shadow transparency setting to zero (after that, convert to editable shapes and ungroup); superpose and group 4 copies of the resulting bitmaps for saturation !!!
4 the same floor shadows filled with primary colors.
5 the same exactly superposed with stained glass transparency.

You may play with little shifts, replacement of primary colors by others, ...!

Enjoy !!!

ivan

[ivan louette]

That may be easier with a .png file with an alpha channel. You can fill a copy of your shadow with
white, set its transparency to mix and align it under the three shadows copies filled with primary colors.
And then you can use any background !!!

ivan