gdenby

Serif's in-house quick demo is at
 
vimeo.com/110124748

I'm glad your client is satisfied. The logo really does look pretty good.
 
 
Logos are part commodity. I personally would like less "flat" designs, but I can think of an economic necessity. Assume a company is widely accessible. What if there are a half billion hits on the website? In some places, viewers may have plenty of bandwidth, tho' the cost may be high. In other places, the bandwidth is small, and the cost is even higher. And the company/institution would like to keep its costs down too. The aggregate savings could be significant.
 
I've mentioned I worked in an art museum. There were pieces I viewed w. wonder every work day for 40 years. Alas, the average view time by a visitor for a work was 15 seconds. If the display didn't engage in less than 3 seconds, the average viewer would pass over the item(s). What was worse was that most people in the US, where I worked, wanted learn about art. They would spend 10 seconds of viewing time reading the historical description, and more on information panels. The artwork was secondary.
 
Essentially, one must design for economy, but create for delight, and hope there are some who will go for the later.
 
(historical note. Look up the illustrator/painter Maxfield Parish. Compare the work he was paid to do, and what he did on for himself.All exquisite, but some beyond words.)

Something occurred to me. Obviously, I appreciate everyone's input (and this is not the case here), but I am just curious about something in general. Several years ago, logos had a much more "lively" look. Similar to how software UIs are turning more flat, I wonder if it is actually necessary. We have technology to print detailed logos in such small sizes, yet we tell ourselves to keep it simple. But from what we were educated over time, did we forget that art varies? When ever I show complex art or logos to people who are not graphic designers, they love it. I'm just curious to see how and why things changed over time. I personally hate modern UIs for software and how everything is looking flat and competing with Microsoft, and I see many others do as well, but I fear several years down the road, all UIs will look like that, and then people will learn to like it. That new style will be encouraged. (Simplicity is not the same as plainness.)
 
I am not complaining, but I am just trying to understand, do we take our learning too seriously without realizing it? Kind of like how many people to this day prefer 2D animation over CGI? Are changes of style forced, and we just forget over time because we are never taught why?

Seems your argument is self defeating. You say the book will be outdated. But,  some one will digitize it  and others d-load a 400+ page document that will be outdated, as if network connection is free.  Repeat. Repeat.
 
"I think they should increase the price of AD by $10 ou $20 and include the ebook with it. That way, the mass effect that every licence sold is purchasing the book will covers the difference in price and you have more chance to convert ppl to your product."
 
This makes some sense, but are you sure that is enough to compensate the people who made the content? They not only know how to use the 'ware, but obviously have lots of previous practice. It may seem silly, but actually having a physical item that is intact and has one's name on the credit is remarkably valuable.

Seems your argument is self defeating. You say the book will be outdated. But,  some one will digitize it  and others d-load a 400+ page document that will be outdated, as if network connection is free.  Repeat. Repeat.
 
"I think they should increase the price of AD by $10 ou $20 and include the ebook with it. That way, the mass effect that every licence sold is purchasing the book will covers the difference in price and you have more chance to convert ppl to your product."
 
This makes some sense, but are you sure that is enough to compensate the people who made the content? They not only know how to use the 'ware, but obviously have lots of previous practice. It may seem silly, but actually having a physical item that is intact and has one's name on the credit is remarkably valuable.

Seems your argument is self defeating. You say the book will be outdated. But,  some one will digitize it  and others d-load a 400+ page document that will be outdated, as if network connection is free.  Repeat. Repeat.
 
"I think they should increase the price of AD by $10 ou $20 and include the ebook with it. That way, the mass effect that every licence sold is purchasing the book will covers the difference in price and you have more chance to convert ppl to your product."
 
This makes some sense, but are you sure that is enough to compensate the people who made the content? They not only know how to use the 'ware, but obviously have lots of previous practice. It may seem silly, but actually having a physical item that is intact and has one's name on the credit is remarkably valuable.

Visited your site. Many good works. You may not be working by commission, but you are certainly a gifted amateur. You have a clear talent, and the pictures do justice to the beauty of the plants.
 
As far as selling goes, it will depend a lot on where you are, or if you can manage to ship items which are purchased on the web.
 
Art sales galleries in the city I live in are almost non-existent. Those that appear sometimes are only in business a few months. There are a few groups of artists who share studio space, and once or twice a year they will mount exhibitions. There are art fair, but few artists make much if any money participating.
 
Bigger cities tend to have more galleries, but the competition for space is still intense. Typically a gallery might host 30 shows a year, but have 500 applications for representation. 
 
There are also art fairs, but typically the booth rentals are high enough that if you can't sell $1000/day, you won't break even. 
 
Cities that get lots of tourist travel tend to have good sales opportunities, particularly if there are seasonal peaks in visits.
 
I've spoken w. several people who have made more money selling thru websites. The down side is that they have to be able to ship works quickly and cheaply. That limits what they can offer.

FWIW, Illustrator was in its 9th version before it had an acceptable auto trace. Corel Draw was in its 3rd version before it added the trace module. If my memory serves, it only handled 1 bit graphics, and only later had a threshold option for greyscale.

It may seem basic to you but there is nothing straightforward or simple about the actual process.
 
Consider what this involves: the app has to analyze all the pixels of the source file & determine what represent edges that should be converted to vector paths. In a document with millions of pixels, many of which will have almost but not quite the same colors, some sort of algorithmic threshold to determine where an edge transitions occur must be established -- if every group of pixels of the same exact color was converted to a filled path, the result could be the creation of tens of thousands of tiny vector shapes.
 
For the same reason, some sort of area based path smoothing algorithm needs to be used to reduce the number of nodes per shape to a reasonable number.
 
If either algorithm's threshold is set too high, accuracy will suffer; if too low, enormous files will be generated that will be hard to edit. Ideally, all the algorithms would be adaptive & interactive, somehow modeling human vision closely enough to determine area by area when creation of more nodes & shapes would not produce any perceptible visual improvements.
 
This is kind of optimization is not easy even for high contrast pixel line art; for a typical photograph with thousands of low contrast edge transitions it would be a formidable task, particularly if the conversion process is required to complete in a reasonable amount of time on more than the most powerful systems available.

A good tracing tool in AD with options of exactness would be extremely useful for those of us who have brought over complex docs from Illustrator (AI). As you no doubt know, AI comes up in AD will all types of problems (ellipses become curves, curved strokes export from such AD docs as much bigger SVGs, etc.). Even a simple road I tediously drew on a map in AI exported as an SVG of about 800k from the "AI to AD" doc, but when I redrew the road in AD the exported SVG was only 7k. This is a big difference when developing an app with many such SVGs.
 
Also, myriad of city-dots imported from AI to AD became a very large SVG, but redrawing these dots as ellipses in AD greatly reduced size of the exported SVG, but this was a lot of the work, even with cutting and pasting ellipses. 
 
Thus, for those of us who are importing our previous AI work, a good AD tracing tool would be invaluable. Thanks for your consideration, all of you who make AD the wonderful program all that it already is.

Thank you!  :D To be honest, I wasn't sure they are worth selling. As you know, I am new to this. Any ideas on how best to do it? Anyone?
 
The pods of the sunflower are just small brown circles and yellowish rectangles arranged together in spirals. I use the Gaussian Blur tool to make it look a bit more realistic. :)

Thank you for being so generous sharing your techniques.

Please scroll down to the end of this post to see the latest added tutorials.
Thanks.
 
Hello Everyone,
 
In the last couple of weeks I shared in the Forum different topics related to video tutorials I upload to my YouTube channel. To make it more practical, I'm gonna share them and new ones in just this topic. Feel free to scroll down and find all the videos I already uploaded.
If you want to know a bit more about me and what to expect, then keep reading.
 
Photography (and design) is part of my life for more than twenty years. I began working in the advertising industry in the 90's and from there I covered many different areas from the creative process to production. Today I mainly do portrait photography, fine art, special assignments and some design projects.
 
In the last years and as a certified trainer, I began to share what I've learned and continue to learn in workshops. I mainly cover Portrait Photography, Black & White, Digital Workflow and Retouching. For the love of sharing my passion about photography, I decided to start making video tutorials and this is the reason I end up here. The amazing software the Affinity Team made gave me the enthusiasm we normally have when we get a new toy. For me it's been a fantastic experience and discovery of new ways of doing the same things in a different, and many times better, way. And this experience is what I want to share with you.
 
This is also the reason I'm going to cover more the Affinity apps in a photography scenario. But you can expect more, a lot more... I'll also be covering photographic tips and techniques and other software that I find relevant to my/our work. This is the case of Capture One Pro that will have also a special feature. Apart from this I'm also preparing some "extras" but that's for another time
 
What to keep in mind:
Every time I make a tutorial where I create a special resource, like a macro, a brush, a style, etc. I'll share it for free. You just need to follow the video tutorial or blog post to see the download links.
 
Some tutorials also have a related post in my blog with more details. You can check it here: (available in Portuguese and English): http://blog.pedrosoares.photo/
 
The tutorials are made in Portuguese but they have English subtitles. Nevertheless I make them in a very easy to follow pace. For that reason they are suitable for both beginners and advanced users.
 
The list I have for upcoming tutorials is long but if you have a specific topic you would like to be covered just let me know. You never know if your request is my next tutorial. This was the case of the Glow Effect video.
 
I'm going to share them chronological so the new ones will be in the end of this topic.
 
Finally my idea is to share tutorials on a regular basis so feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel to be the first one to know about it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxdrAaW4Zr9lYktQmt5O4VA
 
You can also subscribe to my Blog where you can find other topics: http://blog.pedrosoares.photo/
 
Sorry if I made this introduction to long, but it was important for me to share this.
I hope you'll find each tutorial a useful resource and also a source of inspiration.
 
 
 
TUTORIALS
 
How to Create "Good Looking" Snow | Affinity Photo Tutorial + Free Snow Brushes
 
How to Combine Text and Imagery | Affinity Photo Tutorial
 
How to Extract Detail | Affinity Photo Tutorial + Detail Extractor Macro
 
How to Create a Glow Effect in Letters | Affinity Photo Tutorial
 
How to Create a Winter Scene | Affinity Photo Tutorial
 
How to Create an Anaglyph 3D Effect | Affinity Photo Tutorial + Anaglyph 3D Macro
 
How to Create Light Rays | Affinity Photo Tutorial + Light Rays Style
 
How to Make Amazing Bokeh | Affinity Photo Tutorial
 
Mock-Up Design - Clothes & Shoes | Affinity Designer Tutorial
 
Ribbed Glass Effect - The MDNA Cover | Affinity Designer & Photo Tutorial

Graphics or other files can be added by selecting the "more reply options" button while making the post.
 
Mr. Limoncelli's work is well known and admired on the forum. Its not surprising you find the economy and skill remarkable. That is something that comes with lots of practice.
 
In general, when doing vector drawing, it is best to lay down as few nodes as possible. For example, a circle can be made w. just 3 nodes forming an equilateral triangle, and then turned to a circle by carefully adjusting the nodes' control handles. It is easier to use 4 nodes, and most times that is more convenient. But if the illustration becomes quite large, thousands of nodes, a bit of economy can be desirable.
 
The leaf holes appear to have been made by drawing separate "hole" curves over the leaf mass, and then added to the leaf curves, and given the same grey color as the underlying layer.
 
Here's a small exercise you might want to try. Use the pen or pencil tool, and draw some simple shape, say the outline of a bird, or a tree. Don't bother much w. accuracy. Make as many nodes as you like. When the outline is almost complete, with the last node close to the 1st. switch to the node tool, and click on the close curve widget in the tool context bar. Now there is a closed shape. The nodes can be moved around to get a better approximation of the desired shape. If certain details can't be made, add a few nodes. There may be long portions of line where there are extra nodes that can be removed because the control handles for the outlying nodes are sufficient lo bring the line back to the curve it should have.
 
Study the way the various layers are stacked in the tutorial files. The standard is that the bottom is covered by any of the next layer above it that overlaps. And so on. 

I pretty much have to agree w. @verysames view. Serif must maintain a core focus. Tho' obviously talented, the personnel ratio between Serif and an immense enterprise like Adobe is what, 1 to 75/100?
 
Yes, there are lots of features that really should be implemented. But reliability is essential to production.
 
As a side question, AD has an auto save, default every 5 minutes. Doesn't AP also? 

Literally three seconds in Inkscape: Break Apart & Ungroup. (new svg attached)
 
Now you're left with simple line segments, disjointed as they may be.... which is what you wanted I think.
But, if you want to fill anything, you're back into the frying pan ^_^ . (although, that was going to be a problem anyway, I guess)
 
(btw: Why is the the Rhino exporter unwelding every single point?? Does it do that on a simple/single box or circle? How would you ever get a working fill? I believe I've seen a fairly robust svg export plugin that even "tries" to keep some sort of element/layer hierarchy in the export. I think it uses order of creation.)
curves problem-2 inkscape.svg

The work looks good in my unprofessional estimation.
 
I looked up Vectorworks. $! Yikes. Looks like it is a full blown 3-d modeling and rendering program. Did you get to use it as part of your student class works?
 
But there were lots of shapes in your work that I suppose could have easily been done w. AD. How much do you think you could re-create just using AD.

Sounds like vector trace is what you need. You must either trace the image by hand or use some tool to make automatic trace (this may not give exact enough results and you need to hand correct anyway).
 
Line art is two colour (black and white generally) image, still pixels which may show if enlarged a lot.

If you were to go w. my suggestion of changing the direction of the gradient, you might continue w. a linear gradient, but add some stops to produce a darker band along one side of the length of the fuselage.

The problem for me was not just the diagonal line. In the file, the diagonal line is part of a a shape that is part of at least 2 unclosed shapes that were laid one on another. I could get rid of the diagonal, but then there was an incomplete shape that included what appeared to be a closed shape at the bottom. And the outline exends up to one of the rear view mirrors. When I did a divide, I got yet another diagonal.
 
I supposed that the curve was originally composed of several lines that had end nodes snapped to ones already existing. It was a major fuss, but I was eventually able to break them apart. I had to isolate 2 different point lines that were on top of each.
 
Then I could make a discrete shape at the bottom of the body silhouette, and complete the upper shape to 1 closed curve.
 
 

OK, Just d-loaded the file.
 
OK, there is something I'm not understanding. The shape w. the diagonal appear to be made from 3 shapes, of which at least 1 was not closed. Affinity can't do geometric operations when there are unclosed shapes w/o repeatedly trying to close them.  
 
After a few tries, I'm not seeing how to break them up. 
 
I'm going to go and have some dinner. I'll look at it again after some refreshment.

Picasso replied to a questions w. something like 'Of course I steal. Everybody steals. But the mark of genius is knowing who to steal from.' And then, slice and dice to your heart's content.

Picasso replied to a questions w. something like 'Of course I steal. Everybody steals. But the mark of genius is knowing who to steal from.' And then, slice and dice to your heart's content.

When you rasterize a vector, the form just becomes dots on the canvas, a bunch of pixels. What you should have tried is the "expand stroke" command. That will create a new set of vector lines at the edge of the stroke. Note that if the stroke is complex, the expanded stroke may have large numbers of points.

Very simple.  Draw a white or pale grey filled rectangle. Make it less than 50% opaque. Duplicate it, and change the duplicate layer to text frame. Set the opacity back 10 100% so the text is solid.