Digital Magic in Xara Xtreme
This lesson in photo edits and creating custom graphics using Xara Xtreme includes a bonus item. First let me explain how the first photo below was created from two photographs. The zoom function and tracing allows graphic artists to create some pretty cool effects.
The wooden seagull in our front yard was purchased by my wife because it was on sale for $1.00, and once it was planted I took the photo shown minus the real seagull. Using the photograph closeup (below) that I took on the Maine coast several years ago, I clipped and resized just the gull.
Tutorial: I outlined the seagull with the pen tool by zooming in 5x and using a contrasting line before converting it to the dotted red line shown. Once outlined I clipped the gull from the original photo and resized it to fit the fake graphic version. The background has transparency added to better illustrate the cropped portion.
What’s the bonus? My wife wanted the top photo saying it would be a cool wallpaper for the computer desktop, so I created a high resolution version. The free wallpaper includes more of the foreground for better proportions to stretch on your desktop. You may download the free seagull wallpaper here (right click and save target) to add this to your collection. The wallpaper is in a zipped folder, 677Kb.
Experiment in Xara Xtreme with a free 30 day trial and try clipping portions of photos as shown in this lesson. The technique works great for business cards, and most other printed marketing material.
TAGS: artwork photo edits xara xtreme free wallpaper
The wooden seagull in our front yard was purchased by my wife because it was on sale for $1.00, and once it was planted I took the photo shown minus the real seagull. Using the photograph closeup (below) that I took on the Maine coast several years ago, I clipped and resized just the gull.
Tutorial: I outlined the seagull with the pen tool by zooming in 5x and using a contrasting line before converting it to the dotted red line shown. Once outlined I clipped the gull from the original photo and resized it to fit the fake graphic version. The background has transparency added to better illustrate the cropped portion.
What’s the bonus? My wife wanted the top photo saying it would be a cool wallpaper for the computer desktop, so I created a high resolution version. The free wallpaper includes more of the foreground for better proportions to stretch on your desktop. You may download the free seagull wallpaper here (right click and save target) to add this to your collection. The wallpaper is in a zipped folder, 677Kb.
Experiment in Xara Xtreme with a free 30 day trial and try clipping portions of photos as shown in this lesson. The technique works great for business cards, and most other printed marketing material.
TAGS: artwork photo edits xara xtreme free wallpaper
Labels: artwork, photographs, tutorials
Jim Degerstrom 
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