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Editing PNG, PDF, JPG in Affinity


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Hi,

 

I am still a novice at graphic design and I hope I'm not asking for too much with this question.

 

I would like to take this image (and others I have created) and make them editable in AD or AP. I'm asking for best ways to convert the file, and what to convert it too, so I can change the colors of the lines, make the background transparent, etc.

 

Hugely complicated - I know. But it can't hurt to ask, can it?

 

I'm also experimenting on how to actually make these kinds of designs in AD, with some luck, but not much. 

 

Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

Bill

 

 

fullsizeoutput_4da.jpeg

fullsizeoutput_4d1.jpeg

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Hi Bill, what format are the files in at the moment?

 

With the lines being so fine it would be hard to remove the background and it still be neat.

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1 hour ago, BHIP said:

I'm also experimenting on how to actually make these kinds of designs in AD, with some luck, but not much. 

Have you tried offsetting the rotation center of a curve & power duplicating it around that center? A crude example of this is shown below & in the attached power duplicate example.afdesign file:

5af21c1d4d8d6_powerdupoffsetcenter.png.28e36f447ce7bd94905ee7ee87c1ff47.png

The curve shown selected (red & with a thick stroke so it stands out in the screenshot) has its rotation center moved to the location shown by the target symbol. Duplicating it once & immediately rotating it by 5° produced the curve just to its left. Then using power duplicate (CMD + J on a Mac or Duplicate from the Edit menu) 70 times creates the remaining 70 curves.

 

By using a more complex curve to begin with and/or grouping, duplicating & flipping the duplicate group, you should be able to create designs more like your examples.

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3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Hi Bill, what format are the files in at the moment?

 

With the lines being so fine it would be hard to remove the background and it still be neat.

 Hi firstdefence they are currently in png format. 

 

I got this app that makes these things and the only option, right now is to save the picture. I'm working with the developer to have it save as pdf as well.

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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Have you tried offsetting the rotation center of a curve & power duplicating it around that center? A crude example of this is shown below & in the attached power duplicate example.afdesign file:

5af21c1d4d8d6_powerdupoffsetcenter.png.28e36f447ce7bd94905ee7ee87c1ff47.png

The curve shown selected (red & with a thick stroke so it stands out in the screenshot) has its rotation center moved to the location shown by the target symbol. Duplicating it once & immediately rotating it by 5° produced the curve just to its left. Then using power duplicate (CMD + J on a Mac or Duplicate from the Edit menu) 70 times creates the remaining 70 curves.

 

By using a more complex curve to begin with and/or grouping, duplicating & flipping the duplicate group, you should be able to create designs more like your examples.

 Thanks R C-R I have been experimenting but you have given me a way to make this easier.

 

I really appreciate the help.

 

Bill

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4 hours ago, firstdefence said:

With the lines being so fine it would be hard to remove the background and it still be neat.

Filters->Erase White Paper does a pretty good job, though not perfect.

But it would be better if the tool that created them could do so with a transparent background originally. And, ideally, it would allow specification of the color, too.

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The type of pattern you want to produce reminds me of guilloche patterns, albeit in a simplified form, these were used on banknotes as a form of security and not just a pretty pattern.

 

There is a very competent app called Excentro that is designed to produce guilloche patterns similar to the ones you want to make. It makes use of sine functions among other equations.

 

I wondered if Affinity with its equations feature could emulate it, albeit in a simpler form.

 

Excentro can produce guilloche like this:

5af29b4a93fdc_ScreenShot2018-05-09at07_49_06.png.e484e620bb638c4702e382fa243ecffd.png

 

 Excentro do a Lite version for about $25.00, the full blown app is $500 O.o

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31 minutes ago, dutchshader said:

another way to do this, using symbols and power duplicate:

spiral2.thumb.png.89451d480910c89806c08c9968b7d188.pngspiral4.thumb.png.82a914eb957f07e61cc3aee5b1c49eef.png

spiraltest.afdesign

Like the Orange one.

 

Amazing how two ellipses and a line can create such a nice pattern.

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12 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Filters->Erase White Paper does a pretty good job, though not perfect.

But it would be better if the tool that created them could do so with a transparent background originally. And, ideally, it would allow specification of the color, too.

 

6 hours ago, firstdefence said:

The type of pattern you want to produce reminds me of guilloche patterns, albeit in a simplified form, these were used on banknotes as a form of security and not just a pretty pattern.

 

There is a very competent app called Excentro that is designed to produce guilloche patterns similar to the ones you want to make. It makes use of sine functions among other equations.

 

I wondered if Affinity with its equations feature could emulate it, albeit in a simpler form.

 

Excentro can produce guilloche like this:

5af29b4a93fdc_ScreenShot2018-05-09at07_49_06.png.e484e620bb638c4702e382fa243ecffd.png

 

 Excentro do a Lite version for about $25.00, the full blown app is $500 O.o

This is beautiful

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Also, using power duplicate and symbols. These started w. 1 curved line, with pressure change stroke size, and color gradient. Made quickly, 4 samples in of 8 made in 8 minutes.

OpTickle-01.jpg.f7c240ba33248bd9d9896731db3f4cc9.jpgOpTickle-02.jpg.3a2a25652a209d8dab2eb8e615029cbd.jpgOpTickle-03.jpg.25d0b992ec6475af23525fa52970b8cf.jpgOpTickle-04.jpg.6195a28054d326a2678768186bd01a92.jpg

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For those who don't know, it is maybe worth mentioning that it is possible to use the rotation center instead of one of the 9 anchor points as a reference for the "R" rotation field in the Transform panel -- as long as "Show Rotation Center" is active, it will automatically use it in the panel. Using that, you can enter any angle you want for the first duplicate directly in that field without having to drag the rotation handle on the canvas.

 

But what makes this really useful is the "R" field accepts expressions, so for example you can enter "360/n" where n is the number of 'petals' or 'lobes' you want in the design, & power duplicating from there will rotate the duplicates by that increment precisely, even if it is an angle you can't enter precisely as a number, like 360/7 or 360/21.

 

Combine that with symbols and/or with some of the shapes & the possibilities are almost endless. :)

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That patterning looks very much like Flame Painter

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1 hour ago, Wosven said:

But it's done with adding sub-pathes: fake3Dmesh.mp4

Nice video showing how to create this effect.

 

 

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Or with the free Guilloché Pattern Generator as mentioned in this post by Armadillo. Create your Guilloché Pattern, right click and save as a PDF file. Open in AD as a vector file so you can change colours and any elements of the design.

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