PHOTOIMPACT
Page 2
Now I am going to make two images with PhotoImpact's Creative painting, which you will find on the effects menu.
Creative painting has a huge amount of options. This is the working screen where you set up your effect.
Top left is the preview window, where you can get an idea of what your effect is going to look like, but bear in mind that this is a very small representation of the screen, so the effect will be much heavier than it appears in this template. So from time to time you should use the preview button at the bottom of the panel. This will preview the effect in your photo in the main workspace, so you can see exactly what it is going to look like. You will have a menu to cancel, undo, or apply the effect, or to continue working in the creative painting screen.
Bottom left are the paint templates which control the overall look of the effect. Here I have chosen one of the monochrome ones, but there are also many which have coloured effects. The try button applies your present setup to the tiny thumbnail for the template. Default restores the original thumbnail.
Top right are the parameters which change the look of the effect. Nothing appears to happen as you change these values, but if you hit the apply button, the effect is applied in the preview window.
Bottom right are the patterns which change the nature of the effect. Any pattern can be applied with any paint template, and these, together with the parameters, give a huge range of effects.
Underneath these are the options which are present in all PI effects, to accept, cancel, load a saved pattern, preview in the full size image in the workspace, add the setup as a new preset, and access the help file.
The parameters I have set up here give this textured, monochrome image.
To demonstrate one of the coloured templates, I used these settings.
This gives an image which looks as though the flower is viewed through 'bathroom' glass.
Finally, you might want to get away from just giving the photo a painterly effect, and go for something more abstract.
PhotoImpact's kaleidoscope is particulary good, and you will find it on the magic effects menu.
You can choose one of these presets if you wish, but I prefer to set up my own kaleidoscope, so I hit the options button.
You have a choice of shapes of areas to be kaleidoscoped, and also a choice of how many repeats of the kaleidoscope, and what angle you want the repeats to be. These are all in the templates at the bottom. If you try them all out you will soon see how each one operates. I have selected the middle one of the top row, which uses a triangular selection and repeats it eight times, with every repeat a mirror of its neighbours.
In the top left box you can move the selection around to select exactly which bit of the image is to be kaleidoscoped, and enlarge or contract the selection. Every move you make shows you the effect in the preview window alongside. And you have the same preview button that you found in the creative painting option, so that you can check with your full size image in the workspace.
This is how my kaleidoscope looked
Of course, there would be nothing to stop you adding another natural or creative painting effect to the kaleidoscope. The possibilites in PhotoImpact for making good use of a poor photo are endless.