Document size, fonts, blend shapes, transparency, help

[greenmorpher]

Good morning from Melbourne

I woke up unnecessarily early this morning so whiled away a couple of hours duplicating in PhotoLine 15 x 64 (MacBook 2GHz 4 Gb RAM) a job I had difficulty completing a while back in Canvas X (Rosetta x 32 -- Canvas is no longer being developed for Mac although v.12 is about to be launched for Windows. Buggerit!).

I completed the job, but I ran into a number of things which either held me up, made things difficult or reduced the quality of the job. Maybe they were real PL problems, maybe I just missed something so they were me interfacing with PL problems.


The job was a banner, 3 x 1 metres, with a single colour radial blend/gradient in the background, some lettering on the front, and a bunch of logos which were supplied in a variety of formats, JPEG, TIFF, PSD and PDF.

A much(!!!) reduced screenshot of the finished product is attached.

1) DOCUMENT SIZE. Opening a new document offers a maximum of A0 size. Huh??? I thought at first that I was stymied from doing the job right there -- there was no custom/free setting. In fact, you can select ANY size then change the size of the page in the pages menu.
**There should be a "Custom" setting in the document opening dialog.

2) FONTS. I wanted to use ITC Eras PS Type 1 typeface in a range of weights. The fonts loaded in the OS are Light, Book, Medium, Bold and Ultrabold. PhotoLine's font menu offers only Light, with the "B" button delivering, I think, Ultrabold.
**This is not nearly good enough for a professional program. Many typefaces are available in a range of weights, not just two. Every other program I have, old and new, offers all weights. This is particularly important in a graphics program.

3) BLEND SHAPES. I wanted a circular blend but I really wanted one that responded to the elongated rectangular shape, i.e. it would have been based on an ellipse rather than a circle. I couldn't find a way to get away from the circle-based radial blend. Canvas, offers reshaping to ellipse-based. In addition, if offers blends that respond to the shape of the figure. Really nice effects with stars, etc.
**Have I missed something here? If not, it would be nice if some more options for blends were available -- specifically being able to reshape a blend to an ellipse base and also shaping the blend to the figure shape.

3a) Why can't blends be created in CMYK? That;'s the colour space I wanted to work in.

4) TRANSPARENCY. I just don't get the mask brush and stuff. I had JPEG images I wanted to place on the banner. The images had white backgrounds, white in the bowls of the letters, and white surrounds. I wanted to change the white to transparent. I couldn't work out how to do it.
**Ah -- did I have to resave the document first in PL format -- or something else to get away from JPEG? That's not mentioned in the Help. Or is that just an artifact of what I did when I finally did something right?
**With a variety of settings, I got bits of white hanging around the red in the logo I tested. Canvas does this MUCH better with clean edges in the text image (red lettering on white). THIS TOOL IS NOT PROFESSIONAL in my view.
**Why can't "Fill Holes" take out the centre of the letter "o" or the closed bowls of other letters? Canvas does -- and has for many, many years. (I mean, at least 10 years.)

5) I was finally able to complete the job -- with a couple of deficiencies -- and export it as PDF, my ultimate aim. Theoretically, it should have been able to export the thing with all components remaining as components. In fact, it couldn't do that. I had to reduce everything to the background layer before PL would export it as PDF. That's okay, but not ideal.

6) HELP IS NO HELP. Or very frustrating. I and others have talked about this before. To get the Color Edit dialog, double click in a color field, it says. I assume a color field is color in a figure. Nope, double clicking gets me nothing except selection. Right clicking gets me nothing -- why doesn't it lead to the color editing dialog? Why isn't that available? Why isn't the color editing dialog in the Dialog menu? I finally look up "color field". That leads me back to the blend menu!!! Ah! Eighth item down -- "The Color Field". The double click on a field only works if the little color menu showing all the fields is not open. Mind you, reading The Color Field page is a lesson in confusion too. Try looking up the Automask tool. It tells you to do all kinds of things ... but it doesn't tell you to take the final step -- delete the selected stuff.

cheers
geoff

[akeller]

*

[bkh]

2) FONTS. I wanted to use ITC Eras PS Type 1 typeface in a range of weights. The fonts loaded in the OS are Light, Book, Medium, Bold and Ultrabold. PhotoLine's font menu offers only Light, with the "B" button delivering, I think, Ultrabold.
**This is not nearly good enough for a professional program. Many typefaces are available in a range of weights, not just two. Every other program I have, old and new, offers all weights. This is particularly important in a graphics program.

I see the same effect for some fonts. I don't have ITC Eras, my American Typewriter font has a light, regular and bold version (and condensed variants as well) but in PL I can only choose between Bold and non-bold (which looks like Light). I don't know a workaround.

3) BLEND SHAPES. I wanted a circular blend but I really wanted one that responded to the elongated rectangular shape, i.e. it would have been based on an ellipse rather than a circle. I couldn't find a way to get away from the circle-based radial blend. Canvas, offers reshaping to ellipse-based. In addition, if offers blends that respond to the shape of the figure. Really nice effects with stars, etc.
**Have I missed something here? If not, it would be nice if some more options for blends were available -- specifically being able to reshape a blend to an ellipse base and also shaping the blend to the figure shape.

Not sure what type of blend you are talking about. You can fill a bitmap layer with a blend and then distort that layer as you like. If you stretch a circular blend, it will become elliptical, and you can use outline warping to change it into a figure shape. If you have a vector layer filled with a blend, you'll have to open the Attributes Dialog and tick "Align pattern". Then the shape of the blend will change as the layer shape changes. Doesn't work with outline warping, though.

3a) Why can't blends be created in CMYK? That;'s the colour space I wanted to work in.

Blending mode and the colour mode of the image layer are two different things. The blending mode determins how intermediate colours are calculated, but the actual colours will be translated into the colour mode of the image layer. Now CMYK and RGB blending modes should be virtually the same, so an extra mode probably doesn't make sense. Note that you can still specify colours for the blend in CMYK mode.

6) HELP IS NO HELP. Or very frustrating. I and others have talked about this before.
To get the Color Edit dialog, double click in a color field, it says. I assume a color field is color in a figure. Nope, double clicking gets me nothing except selection. Right clicking gets me nothing -- why doesn't it lead to the color editing dialog? Why isn't that available?

What PL calls Color fields are called colo(u)r swatches in other programs - they are those square or rectangular patches showing sample colours - for instance, foreground and background colour in the main toolbar, various similar fields in dialogs, and the small colour patches in the Colour List. Opening a colour picker (which is effectively what the Color Edit Dialog is) by double clicking on a colour swatch is pretty standard among graphics programs, I believe.

I guess that the authors of PL would be willing to change "colour fields" into "colour swatches" if you feel that that would be a significant improvement.

Not sure what you mean by "figure". A vector object? Double clicking an object has different meanings, depending on the tool you are using. I don't think that double clicking to change its colour would be an improvement to the user interface.

In any case, right clicking will always give you a context menu, and this is what one should expect.

I finally look up "color field". That leads me back to the blend menu!!! Ah! Eighth item down -- "The Color Field". The double click on a field only works if the little color menu showing all the fields is not open. Mind you, reading The Color Field page is a lesson in confusion too.

The search function in the Mac online help doesn't work well - that's a known problem, and it seems difficult to resolve. I prefer to use the pdf version of the manual, together with the search function in Preview or Adobe Reader. However, even then the relevant manual section often isn't among the top matches among the search results. On the other hand, the context help works remarkably well now (but in your case, this admittedly isn't of much help).

Try looking up the Automask tool. It tells you to do all kinds of things ... but it doesn't tell you to take the final step -- delete the selected stuff.

The auto mask is for creating a mask (something like a selection). You may use that mask for a variety of purposes, and there are many ways to create a mask. So I think it doesn't make sense for every chapter about creating masks to contain an explanation of what a mask can be used for (in your case, for deleting that selection).

If you want to do this in one step, you could have used auto transparency instead, or, preferably, "Select colour" with destination "alpha" and "smooth selection" enabled and a good choice of "tolerance", which helps avoiding the problem of remaining whitish edges in jpegs.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[akeller]

*

[Hoogo]

1) DOCUMENT SIZE... **There should be a "Custom" setting in the document opening dialog.

OK, as this is custom in other programs. But it appears a bit strange in PL to me, the settings are only suggestions, no control is locked, as you have already found out.

3a) Why can't blends be created in CMYK? That;'s the colour space I wanted to work in.

I don't even know if a vector has a color space of its own... To test that I created a shape and filled it with the Lab-Color 100/100/0. That's pretty pink when I'm in picture mode and the background layer is in RGB or Lab, but quite dull when it is in CMYK. In document mode it always looks pink, though.

4) TRANSPARENCY...or something else to get away from JPEG?

The alpha- or transparency-channel is optional, not a must. When you add a layer like Jpg to your document that had no transparency in it, there's also no alpha-channel. If you add a file that already contains transparency, there's also an alpha-channel. Enable it in the attributes-dialog, or by double-clicking, as akeller mentioned.

....Or is that just an artifact of what I did when I finally did something right?

I guess so Afaik there's no need to save a layer as PLD before transparency is available.

**With a variety of settings, I got bits of white hanging around the red in the logo I tested. Canvas does this MUCH better with clean edges in the text image (red lettering on white). THIS TOOL IS NOT PROFESSIONAL in my view.

Which tool did you use? Automask or Auto-Eraser? Anyways, "select color" should be more useful in this case. But I'd first add the picture to the document, then enable transparency, then use the transparency. That saves you the saving as Png.

5) ...In fact, it couldn't do that. I had to reduce everything to the background layer before PL would export it as PDF. That's okay, but not ideal.

That's bad, I can't remember such a problem when saving as PDF...

[bkh]

I don't even know if a vector has a color space of its own...

At least, you can assign a colour profile to a vector layer. This RGB profile is then used if you pick an RGB colour. Also, if you set a colour profile and the layer contained an out of gamut colour it gets changed. However, afterwards you can specify an out of gamut colour again. Neither is it possible to convert from one profile to another, you can only assign profiles. I guess that this should be considered an unsupported feature …

To test that I created a shape and filled it with the Lab-Color 100/100/0. That's pretty pink when I'm in picture mode and the background layer is in RGB or Lab, but quite dull when it is in CMYK. In document mode it always looks pink, though.

I tried this in document mode with the Mac version. There, the bright pink vector layer changes to dull pink as well.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Martin Huber]

I don't have ITC Eras, my American Typewriter font has a light, regular and bold version (and condensed variants as well) but in PL I can only choose between Bold and non-bold (which looks like Light). I don't know a workaround.

With OS X 10.5 and higher you can use the OS X font panel (Cmd+T).

Martin

[bkh]

With OS X 10.5 and higher you can use the OS X font panel (Cmd+T).

That's another great feature which I hadn't discovered yet. Since it is, in fact, non-modal (you can leave it open and use it whenever you need to specify a font), I am somewhat surprised that the font panel hasn't become part of the text tool settings. Alternatively, it might become a "Font List", like "Brush List", "Color List", "Shape List" etc. The only problem seems that it does not dock with the other lists and dialogs.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

I don't have ITC Eras, my American Typewriter font has a light, regular and bold version (and condensed variants as well) but in PL I can only choose between Bold and non-bold (which looks like Light). I don't know a workaround.

With OS X 10.5 and higher you can use the OS X font panel (Cmd+T).

Ah, that's excellent, Martin, thank you. However, I can't find this in the Manual.

In my head space, PL is a port to Mac and I don't actually expect it to use any of the Mac OS features. Mind you, I don't use that particular feature in any other program.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE Bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[greenmorpher]

Excellent help -- thanks, everyone.

So referring back to my original:

1) Right, Oldradiobloke. AND being able to set up new presets is a good feature. BUT I would still like to see a "Custom" offering in the menu which leaves the fields blank ready to be typed into. Just better for the tyro or someone stepping outside their usual.

2) Fixed with the Mac Font Panel. However, it would be better, as Burkhard suggests, that it be translated over into the text tool settings and the font list ... which is present in the toolbox but not referred to as a "Font List" so far as I can see.

3) So we can change the shape of a gradient by converting it to raster, then distorting the layer either through just grabbing a boundary point of the figure box and dragging it or by using the Effects > Distort menu. That's pretty useful PROVIDED the image retains its resolution throughout the process. Does it? WEE NEED TO HEAR FROM MARTIN ABOUT THAT.

3a) Fine -- it's clear I should work in RGB then convert to CMYK for print-ready artwork output. No worries.

(For those remarking about a pink color going dull when converted from RGB to CMYK, this is no surprise -- it is an artifact of CMYK. In theory, the four colors can mix to make every other color, in fact, they can't. Stuff at the red end of the spectrum, particularly, is often dulled or shifts quite considerably one way or the other, or both! To overcome this, skilled color people (not me!) use five, six or even more colors. This distortion of colors in the conversion is a reason why I like to work in CMYK on screen. It gives a better understanding of what I am going to get in the final, printed result. You can imagine how frustrating it would be to make many adjustments to get a gradient just right ... then have the whole thing turn to slush when you convert to CMYK.)

4) Tried all your advice, but I'm still not getting a hard-edged break between the red and white -- still got fluffies around the edges. See the attached image.

5) I was also surprised about the difficulty of saving to PDF having seen some heroic PL work on PDF before (I remember particularly having converted a picture of a butterfly to vector, then saving that as PDF with layers -- about 200 of them, I think. Just messing around!) There were no fonts in it, by the way -- I had converted all type to outlines.

6) HELP or the Manual (which I also prefer to use) really does need serious work. AND the nomenclature needs fixing so it uses common terms. Even if users use no other graphics programs, reviewers do and they'll automatically downgrade PL because it doesn't use the common terms.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE Bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[Hoogo]

These Fluffies are Jpg-artifacts. In this case of this real simple red/white picture you can get rid of them by using the histogram correction. Just pull the upper boundary (in rgb) down to about 50%.

[Hoogo]

Oh, and something more...
There will always be a little color poisoning at the edges when you select the colors smooth or with tolerance. The color of the pixels there is a mixture of white and red, and adding transparenvy won't change the color itself. In this special case you can just choose the red brush and press the "work on whole picture"-button.

[bkh]

3) So we can change the shape of a gradient by converting it to raster, then distorting the layer either through just grabbing a boundary point of the figure box and dragging it or by using the Effects > Distort menu. That's pretty useful PROVIDED the image retains its resolution throughout the process. Does it? WEE NEED TO HEAR FROM MARTIN ABOUT THAT.

It will not retain its resolution - if you start with a small image (say, 10 by 10 px) and scale it by a factor of 10, you'll see the effect. It will look better in the final output (or if you fix the layer) because then PL uses interpolation, which gives acceptable results for blends. In practice, you should be all right if you avoid enlarging the gradient.

Or consider the vector alternative which I mentioned before: fill a rectangle with a gradient and open the Attributes Dialog and check "align pattern". If you distort the the gradient by dragging the rectangle's corners, or by using "Distort Frame", it will be distorted as well, just as with the bitmapped version. Imo, this is the far better alternative: you can easily edit the gradient afterwards, you always have full resolution, and it saves hard disk space. The only disadvantage is that You can't apply the more advanced distorsions to the gradient, though.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[bkh]

[quote= greenmorpher]
4) Tried all your advice, but I'm still not getting a hard-edged break between the red and white -- still got fluffies around the edges. See the attached image.
[/quote]
The screenshot looks as if you ticked "mask" instead of "alpha" under "Destination" when you used "Select Colours". Once you have a mask, you can use Tools->Mask->Mask to Alpha to get the same result as if you had ticked "alpha" before. If you really want hard edges between red and transparency, you may try to unckeck "smooth selection", but this may result in more visible pixels around the edges.

In your particular case, when you just have a single coloured font, you could even create a new (vector) layer from the lasso, choose the red of the font as fill and line colour, then throw away the original logo …

In any case, these jpeg artifacts look pretty bad to me - life would have been much easier with a higher quality version …

If you would like more advice, why don't you post a piece of the original logo (the same size as your screenshot would do) for others on the forum to play around with?

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

Oh, and something more...
There will always be a little color poisoning at the edges when you select the colors smooth or with tolerance. The color of the pixels there is a mixture of white and red, and adding transparenvy won't change the color itself. In this special case you can just choose the red brush and press the "work on whole picture"-button.

This is the result I got with Canvas as described originally.

cheers, geoff