Stone Design Forums

I particularly like using textures with iMaginator's composite effects. Like the sample pictures, iMaginator provides a handful of basic textures, about half of which are simply photographs of surfaces, things like bricks, snow, water, etc. Some of those old blurry photos, the ones you took by accident, or the ones you took to test your camera make great textures. I deliberately take a few "texture shots" whenever I do a photography project since I'm a hobbyist. Take notice of your surroundings sometimes if you even have a picture phone around. Sky, grass, paving, carpets -- the most mundane things can make great textures.

Don't forget that you can use iMaginator to create patterned or textures images too! Just save the new compositions to your image library, then when you start a new .iMaj file, drop them into a composite effect's settings.

The other thing you can do to create more geometric textures and geometric masks is use Create. On the one hand, you can simply import copy your image into Create, add a shape and use it to create a mask group. You can just export the mask group as a .jpeg, .tiff or .png from there. But if you want the mask inside of iMaginator for repeated use, you can create a mask object (make it grayscale or black and white for predictable results) and export that from Create as a .tif or .jpeg and drop it into iMaginator's image library.

I've been playing with the masks in iMaginator, as well as the ones that Ron Bishop made available a few weeks back.

Maybe I'm using different terminology, but I know there's got to be a simple way to do what I'm trying to accomplish. From my history with other programs, a "mask" is a grascale frame with a trasparent portion in the center: everything in the transparent portion shows through, but whatever is behind the gray and black portions of the "frame" is not visible.

The trouble I am having in iMaginator is that the "transparent" portion of the mask is white instead of clear, so it covers up whatever is behind it. How do I make the white portion transparent?

Thanks,

1. Be sure you have the background color turned off in Prefs
2. Be sure you are exporting as TIFF or PNG (JPEG has no alpha channel)

You might try SourceIn and SourceAtop as well as a few other filters that can knock out a shape or leave just a shape...

And maybe I didn't understand you - just email me the doc in question...

OK, I finally had some time play around with the masks. I had supposed, because of the term "mask" that the masks in iMaginator and Ron's masks were already transparent, but upon closer observation, Ron's were JPG, and therefore, not transparent.

I used iMaginator's "Mask by Color" on each of Ron Bishop's masks to make the white part transparent, and exported them as PNG files. I think they make excellent masks or frames that you can place over a photograph, masking the edges, and having the center show through.

They work great in iMaginator and in Create. You can get some really wild results by combining 2 or more masks for a composite effect.

You can download all 26 (19MB) from my iDisk Public Folder (rogerdye). I assume since Ron originally offered them in the Forum, that he won't mind my passing along my variations on his work

I'm all for sharing. That's what this forum is about, right?

Here's another set of masks Bishop Masks 2. The file is BishopMasks2.tar.gz. It's 75MB. Do what you like!

I have them in black and white so they are really flexible in what they can be used for. Also, sometimes I don't want the frame shape, but the interior shape.

If you have a working background of none, you can apply the JustBlack or JustWhite Effects Chains to get either a black (you can change the Colorize setting...) or white frame. Then just drag off the PNG from the imagewell (every graphics app should have this feature!).

I like using the Mask to Alpha iFilter because then I don't have to worry about matting (residue around the edges due to threshold settings).

daddydoodaa

Both of your guys masks are now available for direct download via the iMaginator web site, thanks:

http://www.stone.com/iMaginator/Samples.html#STUFF

http://www.stone.com/iMaginator/Features.html#MOVIES

I downloaded them and they are sitting on my desktop. MacBookPro OS 10.4.11 - Do I put them in a folder somewhere? Thanks -

Tools -> View -> Images Library (command -1) (or click the first icon under the search field).

Then right below the images, click "++" - Add a gallery from an existing folder.

Wow, I used one of the masks in a 'Combination' effect with a photo I had used in another combination enhancement ...
Unbelievable !!! AWESME - Thank you !!! cheers, Fay