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Getting Started with shadows
The first requirement for creating a shadow is to make the original
graphic as simple as is can be, of one basic color, usually
a shadow of grey. Basically you can use two special effects for achieving
shadows blurring and blend.
- Setting the target bitmap.
Mark the bitmap you want to make a shadow of. This is usually a basic
form of the original graphic. Then select Extras->Bitmap effects->blurring
or Extras->Bitmap effects->blend.
- Getting rid of unwanted "noise".
After applying blurring or blend you may notice unwanted "noise" on
the rands of the original bitmap. Get rid of this noise by creating a
new bitmap with Bitmap->Select region, copying the region to
the clipboard and pasting from there.
This procedure is illustrated in the sample below.
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Shadow sample
For the samples below we assume a blend of 80%. Set this value in
the Extras-page in the settings-notebook if necessary.
We'll create a bitmap object from a text-object and then apply blend
to it. Then we'll take the original text-object and place it on top
of the shadow, and finally create a second bitmap from the original
graphic (text) plus shadow. This is the final result:
- make sure we have a clean drawing area. Click on New
on the upper-left icon if necessary.
- Select the text-tool from the toolbar, place the cursor or "T"
in the midddle of screen and click once with the left-mouse button.
At the prompt enter "LogoArt". With the TAB-Key leave the field,
and change the Font to "Times New Roman Bold Italic". Set the
point size to 60. Now press the CTRL-Key and right-mouse button to get
the selection-tool again. Not doing this may create another text-object,
which you want to delete. Finally change the color of the
bitmap to a dark-tone gray.
- We're almost ready for creating a bitmap of our text-object. We
could just select Bitmap->Crop to bitmap, but we want the
area of the bitmap to be bigger as the area of the text. Select the
rectangle-tool and create a rectangle which is on all sides bigger than
the text-object. Click twice with the left-mouse button to create the
reactangle, and make it fillable. Change the color of the
fill to white. The rectangle will be completely covering the text-object.
Select Edit->Bring down or click on the Bring-down-icon on the
actions-bar. The rectangle should be still selected, the text "LogoArt"
should be visible.
Select Bitmap->Crop to bitmap. You
should have following bitmap:
We have not applied any shadows yet. We could use this bitmap
as shadow, however we want a "soft" shadow.
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Mark the bitmap and click on Extras->Blurring once. Then,
select Extras->Blend three times. Blurring and blend are
similar, just being fancy here. Here are the results:
Notice the "noise" on the borders. We'll get rid of that in a minute.
- Next, move the original text-object on the bitmap so that it is
shifted to the upper right. You may need to mark the blurred bitmap first
and use Edit->Bring to bottom in order to have the text on the
top. Change the color of the text to orange. You should have smthg.
similar to this:
- To get rid of the unwanted "rand" click on Bitmap->Select region
and carefully position the region-rectangle such that it surrounds
text and shadow completely, and leaves the rands out. Select
Bitmap->Copy to clipboard, and finally
Edit->Paste from clipboard. The result again here:
- We still need to save the final result. Select
Bitmap->Save bitmap file.. to get the file-dialog and enter a
name of your choice for the new bitmap. Of course, you could save in this
manner each bitmap created on the steps before . Even more,
I create a copy of the bitmap before applying an effect - there is no
undo for special effects.
If you attempt to save the art-file itself now,
LogoArt will complain if you don't save any modified bitmap explicitely.
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