#How to anti-alias in IP?
23 messages in this thread
Ben,
another question. Say I have some white-on-black text with a nicely
anti-aliased contour. Is there a way for me, using what IP has to offer, to
stamp it onto an image so that the anti-aliasing will be kept. It also
means I could create high-resolution objects, then create a smaller version
along with a corresponding anti-alias mask, and composite it all onto a
background image. Without anti-aliasing, that chroma key effect looks a bit
cheesy. Low res and all that, ya know.
Blaq! – via Whap!
Blaq, it depends on where the text is, and where the anti-aliasing is.
If you have a text object, just created from a font, it is masked at the
pixel boundries that the font defines.
This means that the anti-aliasing you might do on the font (in this initial
state) can only operate upon pixels that are _inside_ the characters, as
all pixels outside the characters are masked, and therefore unchangable.
If you bring the text into an image (using brush, or combine, etc) then you
can anti-alias the text "locally", that is, in the current image context –
which allows you to anti-alias pixels outside the font but at the edge of
it.
This is ideal – because the local colors, those you have in the image where
the text has been placed – are used for the anti-alias calculation.
I'd clip the region after the text was dropped, then work close and
anti-alias carefully using the paint brush anti-alias mode (I forget – is
that in 4.4 or only 4.5?) if it's not in 4.4, use the freehand anti-alias
tool in the process panel.
If there is a specific situation you can describe, that would help – but
these should serve as general guidelines.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ben,
thanks for the reply; at least I know I can do it by hand. But imagine
tracing the contour of all those letters… what I had in mind was a 1- or
2-step process in IP.
Here's the scenario. I create some large white-on-black text in DPaint.
I import it into IP, for example, and reduce it to 25% in each direction.
This gives me text that is 4 times shorter and narrower, with the border
composed of pixels going from almost black to white in 16 steps. The
anti-aliasing should make the letters look really good.
If IP were to allow some kind of 3-image compositing, I could specify a
scanned image as primary buffer; a solid (or graduated, or textured) color
as secondary buffer; and the anti-aliased letters as transparency mask. Now
when you combine them all together, the colored buffer gets merged onto the
background in the shape of the letters; but since the transparency map
(ternary buffer? Eeek!) has varying shades of grey at the letters' edge,
they appear smooth. Now doesn't that prospect make your mouth water? It
sure does for me!
(But then again I have a font fetish B^D )
Blaq! – via Whap!
Let me talk to Barry about this. It's sort of already there, I _think_.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ohhh. Ben, this image-based transparency is just what I have been asking
for since about version 2.0 or such. I think, anyway.
What I'd like to be able to do is have a 'transparency' buffer, rather than
a blend requestor. The buffer could contain any image, just like all other
buffers. The blend would be performed (between the Primary and Secondary
buffers) dependent on the luma value of the transparency buffer.
Possible? IP 4.6? (Image Master 4.6 too?) Thanks.
–jp–seattle–
John,
yes! yes! That's exactly what we need. Fairly easy to hook into IP to,
methinks.
Blaq! – via Whap!
IP 4.5, and Imagemaster F/c 1.1 both have fully implemented
Transparency-From-Buffer, *and* they still have all the blend options. You
can even create a transparency buffer from the blend settings as a starting
point. :^)
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Well, it took you long enough! We posted the request a few days ago. 🙂
–jp–seattle–
<Aiming small fusion device at John>
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ok, we put this in, too. It'll be in IP 4.5, which is moving right along,
as they say. :^) ANything else? You seem to have a knack to pick
not-too-hard things that are mostly done anyway. :^)
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Hi Ben, how are the manuals coming along?
Nick
Coming, is the operative phrase. :^) We're expecting them shortly…
they're not shipped out of the printer yet, and when they DO get shipped,
they are coming by muleback… Air is mucho expensive when things are
heavy, and these manuals are _heavy_
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Can you descibe the manual? Is is spiral bound? How many pages? What does
it cover?
It is spiral bound. I don't know how many pages… but it's quite heavy.
:^) It covers a lot.
What you'll be getting is essentially the manual on disk, plus some further
elucidation on things we felt needed it, with a Table of Contents and a
very extensive index to help you find things.
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ben,
index? Contents??? What kind of a computer manual is this!! Haven't you
guys done your research? Computer manuals should _never_ have an index, and
hopefully no table of contents either. Users should absorb all knowledge
about the program through osmosis. B^D
P.S. I suggest you check out the Electronic Mall for that book. Books are
noticeably more expensive north of the 40th parallel, and once you add
Provincial Sales Tax, Goods & Services Tax and so on… well I guess you
get the picture.
Blaq! – via Whap!
Will do
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
For what it's worth, Charles, I just received my 'beta' printed manual for
the 'ImageMaster F/C' (IP for the FireCracker24) by Black Belt. It has a
14 page index (out of 111 total pages). I am a happy camper.
All in all the manual is close to what you get when you take care to print
out the full IP manual. Nice white space, good, concise text. I can
always imagine improvements, but I have -no- complaints about it so far.
For what it's worth, my 'beta' manual is 8.5×11", staple-bound. It has the
text 'Preliminary – spiral bound manual will be provided later' on the
front cover. Spiral bound. Very good.
It is definitely a 'reference' manual, however. I wonder if BB has a
'tutorial' manual in mind, or would be interested in an 'ordinary' user
developing one? To my mind, IP is among the most sophisticated pieces of
software available for the Amiga, rivaling tracers and such, and a good
'tutorial/hints&tips' manual would go a ways to helping new users [shoot,
helping me 🙂 ] get to using its full potential. TTFN
–jp–seattle–
John,
after speed-reading that book on Adobe Photoshop, I'm _positive_ that a
tutorial book on IP would be a delight to all. Maybe the closest thing
would be an archived thread, updated quarterly. (With the hints & tips
stating clearly which version they apply to)
Blaq! – via Whap!
Tutorial _video_, not manual. :^)
Ben
Amateur Radio Callsign is A A 7 A S
Ben,
<giggle> Hmmm… I was wondering about having a toggle to show
coordinates somewhere, either in screen pixels or in terms of the buffer
being displayed. This could come in handy if I need to line things up or
something.
The transparency map will do wonders for Chroma Key. Right now, as I
said, because of the low resolution of a HAM-E image, Chroma Keys look
really fake. The jagged edges on overlaid objects are a dead giveaway. With
a transparency map, you could use the following steps to create a seamless
Chroma Key: you can use Chroma Key to isolate an object from the
background. (Let's say the background is green) You then make the object
white and the background black, anti-alias the image and voila — a
transparency mask ready to be used. In my mind's eye, I foresee this
technique being prone to creating a faint green halo around the object,
since the anti-aliasing in the transparency map would cause some of the
green background to be overlaid on top of the primary buffer. An easy cure
would lie at the black-and-white, not-yet-anti-aliased-image stage: use
thicken (or thin, whatever) to shrink the white silhouette by one pixel.
Then when you anti-alias the map and composite the elements, you should see
no trace of the green background.
Each user has their pet feature, and anti-aliased text has been a dream
of mine ever since I started learning about computers. Now, 15 years later,
the dream is finally coming true. Thanks, Ben!
Blaq! – via Whap!
Of course, Chroma keying or any other compositing operation should be used
with the anti-alias tool that is currently in IP… when you're dealing
with low resolution, anti-aliasing will likely be a major factor in any
image you create.
Images that are larger and so have more built-in resolution, will not have
the problem, as the edges will be as fine as the images _actual_ resolution
will permit. The display on the Amiga screen can't show this unless you
clip in close.
However. :^)
The new buffer-as-transparency will help as you say…
and, for operations that are not Chroma keyed, we've built in a new type of
Merge operation that provides the same functionality as Merge, except the
image is anti-aliased, both in the re-scaling and in the insertion into the
primary image.
I spent the afternoon at a bookshop, reading a wonderful tome called the
Adobe Photoshop Handbook. (By Bantam Books, if memory serves me right) If
you're ever in the market for additional features to include in IP, get
this book! There are some things in Photoshop that would cause tumescence
in any computer graphics afficionado! B^>
We've never seen the book, Blaq… we have seen PhotoShop, though. Most of
the features in PhotoShop that we decided not to implement have to do with
color separation and steps similarly close to actual printed output. IP
isn't (currently) aimed at that type of operation.
However… if you can find another copy of the book, please buy it, and
we'll pay for the book and it's shipping to us from you.
Being 300 miles from the nearest city can be a disadvantage for getting
items like this. :^(