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Cutout Black & White Clipart
PhotoImpact 5.0
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This tutorial makes use of that black and white clip art your disks are
brimming with. Let's get some of the money back we spent on those disks.
If you did not spend money on clip art, you can use a ding for this tutorial.
If you use a ding, use it to make a merged black and white image. Make
the ding size about 250 pixels wide, right click and merge all.
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For this tutorial, choose a piece of clip
art that has wide black lines or large areas of black like this fish image.
1. Before starting this tutorial, you'll
want to resize the clip art so that it is the size you want your finished
border piece to be.
Click format/dimensions to open the resize
dialog box.
Change the unit to pixels, and leaving "keep
aspect ratio" checked, change the width to 300 or less. |
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2. If your clip art is not grey scale, (Look
at the color palette to the right. All grey colors means it is grey scale.)
change the image to grey scale. In the lower right hand corner, click the
rainbow, or the number 256, and click grey scale (8 bit).
3. Click format, invert to change the
white areas to black and the black area to white. |
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4. Click file, new to open a new canvas.
Click current image so that the size is the same size as your grey scale
image. Change the width to 1152. If you intend to use a background
tile to fill your image, use a multiple of the height of that tile nearest
to the height of the image for the height. If you don't understand this
completely, click here for
more on this. Click the box next to canvas in this box, and select
the main color for your piece.
Click ok. |
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5. Now click selection, and you will see
a thumbnail of your grey scale image there.
Click ok. |
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Now you have a selection like this on your
canvas. I have kept my strip white so the selection lines will show.
Keep in mind here that the fish shape is what is selected. We need
to select what is called the negative space of the image and convert that
to an object in order to produce the cutout effect. Negative space
is the space around the image that is not part of the image.
6. Right click and click invert.
This will select the whole strip with the exception of the fish shape,
which will not be selected.
Right click and click convert to object. |
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7. Right click again, and click shadow.
x and y axis 8, Transparency 25, and soft
edge 15. |
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8. Right click again, and click split shadow.
(version 6 users will find this command in the object menu.)
9. Right click, and click shadow again.
This time, change the color to white,
x and y axis should be 1, transparency 25,
soft edge 2. |
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At this point, you have a background and
two objects on your canvas. One of the objects is the top with the
fish shape cut out from it. The other is the shadow you split from
the top when you applied the white shadow. If you press space, no
objects will be selected. You can then change the background
color or apply a texture or use creative painting on the background
to further define the fish shape and make it stand out more. I most
often use the quick color commands to change the color. |
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Now how you proceed is up to you. Your
image is rather plain at this point. To add to the look, and make
your stationery come alive, you can click on the top object and:
1. add texture with the texturizer plugin
as explained here, or,
2. Click effect, noise, add noise.
Change the amount of variance from 10 to 3, 4, or 5 depending on the color
you have applied to your canvas. or,
3. Click edit/fill, and then the image
tab to browse to a tile you have saved on your hard drive. If you
choose this method, make sure you planned ahead for seamlessness as explained
in step 4.
When you are done, right click and merge
all.
Click web/image optimizer to save your strip. |
Click the image to see my finished strip.
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