Stone Design Forums

I need to select portions of an image so that I can apply effects to that selection only. To do this I need tools that perform as "lasso," "wand" and "paintbrush", but I'm not seeing tools like this in Imaginator. Currently I use a different program to select my portions, create transparent tiffs, and then import the tiff into Imaginator, but this is not an optimal solution.

If there is no lasso or "wand," will a future version of Imaginator include them?

DP

There are other threads on the forum on how to do this - as well as a movie on it:
http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/selections.mov

selections.mov shows how to select a part of an image, and then modify parts of that image with Core Image effects. While some people might long for the selection tools that are available in other programs, the process here works quite well, and allows a lot of effects and modifications that are not as easy in other programs. They are also infinitely editable in iMaginator, and I show some of that in this demo. You can obviously have multiple simultaneous selections using this method, but I don't cover that in this video, as that is a very simple extension of what is presented here.

Thank you for the swift reply. Unfortunately I cannot view the file- I get a .mac error message regarding data transfer restrictions. Is there another location where I can get this information?

Yes - our .Mac site has exceeded the maximum 250 GIGS per month transfer -if you can believe that - it'll be up again tomorrow or friday when the "half-month" begins - so - I put a copy here:

ftp://ftp.swcp.com/pub/tmp/a/selections.mov

Andrew

I have downloaded the .mov file. The instructions seem pretty clear, but they do not work for me. I can get my cutout .tiff image into imaginator, but when I use source over for the background image, no image appears. I have tried png, tiff and jpeg and source over doesn't work with any of those.

I discovered the problem- first, I cannot drag and drop the image as you demonstrate in your video. I notice that your Create screen indicates above the scrollbar that your masked image is a tiff file before you drag it onto your desktop . My screen merely says "effect". When I try to drag the image to the desktop, it merely disappears off the edge of the canvas. Is there a step missing? Next, my masked image has a white background; it is not transparent. That is why I cannot see ny background image. How can I correct these two problems?

Thank you!

That's called the Image Well, and it has a little popup menu widget below Effect. Click that, and you'll get all the options for stuff you can drag out. Choose TIFF, obviously.



Open your Create preferences, and in the Image tab, check "Include Alpha Channel". That will make the rest of your TIFF transparent.

Thank you for that information. I was able to change the well so that it says "tiff". The alpha option was already checked, but I figured out that the reason my dragged images had a white background was because I had the selection option on. When I ensured that nothing was selected before dragging the image onto the desktop, I got the transparency I wanted.

My remaining problem: I cannot get the source over to function properly because the background image I choose appears underneath the default image of the tiger. How can I get rid of the default tiger (and rose, for that matter) altogether so I can avoid this problem?

Thanks again.

Drop on your main background image to replace the tiger.
(Or choose Open...)

You can also set any image to be your default main and auxiliary image in Preferences.

Any Effect that takes a secondary image by default uses the Rose - you can simply drag in an image into the well in the Effects Options area to change that....

All right- that's what I've been doing; simply doing file-->open to obtain the image I want to use as my background. I have then overlaid my transparent tiff by "adding another image"- I never use source over.

However, I am curious as to how you are able to use it successfully when I am not! In your demo, your background image appears to be placed over an image you already had in the background.

Thanks again for the information and suggestions- these are helping me greatly with my project.

The easiest way for me to have the image backgrounds I want appears to be to just make that image the desired default background (replacing the tiger) using Preferences- it has saved me a lot of time and trouble!.

Through experimenting and using the advice I've received here, I've been able to put together some amateur "tilt-shift effect" images. If anyone is interested in seeing the fruit of my labor, there is a link below. I gladly credit Stone Design for the great software! Hopefully people will see that you don't need Photoshop to do this kind of detailed work.

http://static.flickr.com/78/167912063_7770cd419b_o.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/74/167912064_75b9edbf24.jpg

Great job!

They look like miniatures. Reminds me of the dioramas I did in grade school - although mine was the Battle of Stalingrad, not a casino!

Rock on!
daddydoodaa

that is very cool, thanks for showing these to us!

Thanks for the help!