Designing Scrollsaw Patterns with Paint Shop ProX Part 7c More (and more) Tools - Cont.

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Part 7c will introduce a few more tools and procedures that you may use from time to time in your design work. Keep in mind that all the information in Part 7 is more or less general in nature. That is, you will not necessarily be using all the tools for every conversion that you do. Neither will it be necessary to breakup all photos into different layers as we did in the previous lesson. You will find that many times you can produce the base for a good pattern by using just the Threshold adjustment. Other times you may need to do only a small amount of detail work with the lighten and darken tools before applying the Threshold adjustment. Just as each photo is different, the process that you employ will be different. Recognizing what needs to be done will come with time and experience. That is another reason for my now redundant line:

Practice, Practice, Practice.

Soon things will become more or less automatic and you will probably even develop some of your own procedures that no one else has tried.

We will continue to work with the Kirk Douglas photo that we used in Part 7a and 7b. Since the shirt is very difficult to define using Brightness and Contrast, we will convert it in a "cookie cutter" fashion, which will be more of an outlined feature. There is nothing wrong with the hat, but to illustrate another option that we have available let's reverse the colors of the hat and the background. Next we will convert the face features using threshold and the lighten and darken brushes but we will do it in multiple selections rather than treating the face as a single element. Normally we would do all this work in different layers as described in the previous lesson, but to make the study less confusing all this lesson will be done on only two layers - Background and Copy of Background.

Start PSP and open the Kirk Douglas image which has already had the background removed, and "Save as:" - a new file.pspimage.

If you have not already converted the image to greyscale go ahead and do that by clicking the Greyscale icon on the PA Bar. Then click the "Duplicate Layer" icon: We will be doing all our work on the "Copy of Background" layer so make sure that it has the blue highlight.

As we did in the last lesson, pick up the "Lasso" selection tool and select the area similar to the graphic to the right which will isolate the shirt (and neck) from the rest of the photo. There is not a Threshold setting that rendered good detail of this area even after considerable alteration with the L/D (Lighten & Darken) tools. So let's try something a little different. Go to Effects>Art Media Effects>Charcoal. Choose the "Default" settings (Detail = 90, Opacity = 100) in the dialog window and click "OK". Unusual effect, Huh? Now go to "Threshold" and adjust the settings to about "10". There is a considerable amount of "noise" in this rendering but it can be made to be quite interesting with a little brush work. But let's not stop here!

Click your undo button until you have returned the image to the point prior executing the Effects command. Now click the "Gaussian" Blur icon on the PA Bar Next, repeat Effects>Art Media Effects>Charcoal as above and then return image to Threshold and adjust to 10 once more. This time the rendering is a little smoother and should be easier to work with but still give a good effect.

If you would like to experiment further with the Art Media Effects, click your undo button to return back to the point just after the lasso selection then go to Effects>Art Media Effects>Black Pencil. The image below compares the two different effects with the same Threshold settings: Charcoal on the left and Black Pencil on the right:

Let's leave the shirt area now and move on to the hat. Click the "Select None" icon on the PA Bar. Pick up the "Lasso" and select the area similar to the graphic to the right. Although the hat will be rendered as being white after this process, there will still need to be some black area underneath to represent the shadow. That is why I have placed the selection across part of the bottom of the hat rather than just an outline. Disclaimer: This takes a little artistic ability and I admit that I have none, so nothing is written in stone here. lol You can probably do a much better job. Now click the "Negative Image" icon on the PA Bar - then "Threshold" with settings to your liking. I would prefer something around "220". Click the "Select None" icon once more and we will then work on the face.

I found that when attempting to convert this photo that the nose was one of the most troublesome areas to get "right". So here I am sectioning off portions of the nose and converting each section individually.

The first section is the right side of the nose (graphic to the left) which I have selected with the "lasso" and darkened slightly. The "Threshold" adjustment was then applied with a setting of about "190". Then, I selected the remainder of the nose (graphic to the right) and set the "Threshold" adjustment to: "130". (Don't forget to always click the "Select None" icon before making a new selection with the lasso.) I am still not 100% satisfied with the results but I think that a little brush work will bring out this feature. Had this photo been taken at a slight angle the nose would have not been so difficult to pattern. As I mentioned in an earlier lesson, when studying pictures to convert, try to choose those with a slight side profile. Your job will be much easier.

To complete the conversion I made five more selections as follows:

After all the processes above are completed we are left with an image as in below left. The image to the right is the photo with a single threshold adjustment at default settings.

As before, we will not take this conversion even further, but you can see that with a little additional brush work that this could be converted into a very interesting pattern. In fact, if you have the time and would like to finish it for us, I would love to see the results.

Part 7 has been quite a salmagundi of information and I apologize for any lack of continuity, but this is all important stuff.

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