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Documentation - Painting And Tools
Again, the main interface for Pocket Artist is shown to
the right.
The Pocket Artist tool popup menus are as follows:
Each persistent tool has its own status/options bar that
appears in the second bar when you select that tool.
Pocket Artist features "smart sliders" -- that is,
to save space, the function of a slider track bar is
not given right away. By dragging the nub back and forth,
the value of the slider is shown, along with a description of
what the slider is affecting.
Below, brief descriptions of each tool and explanations of
their status/options bars.
Drawing Tools
Paintbrush: this is the standard paintbrush. By clicking
and dragging in the document window, you paint with the
foreground color using the current brush. You can also
hold down Shift (HPC) or Action (PPC) and click and it will
draw a line from the last point of which you drew. The
Sketch checkbox puts the brush in Sketch mode, which is
a different way of drawing. As you draw In Sketch Mode,
your brush strokes are cascaded onto those you have already
made. In other words, the brush effect gets darker and darker
as you go over the same area. In the example to the right,
the top stroke is Paintbrush at 20% opacity in normal mode.
As you sketch over the same area, it doesn't get any
darker than 20%. In Sketch Mode (the second stroke),
it gets darker and darker, giving the appearance of a pencil
sketch or something similiar. In the third example, the
Blending Mode has been set to "Multiply" (which in effect
darkens the image), and the Sketch Mode keeps darkening
as one goes over the same area. The bottom row
of strokes are examples of varying opacity in Normal Mode
(the first five strokes) and Sketch Mode (the last six strokes).
The "Normal" box chooses the blending
mode for the Paintbrush. Blending modes are described
below. The slider affects opacity of the brush.
Pencil: The pencil is much like the Paintbrush except that it puts the
current brush in a "Clamped Mode" -- that is, where it
would normally have soft edges, Pencil makes these hard
edges. For example, the edges of the diamond brushes
are light and soft (and drawn that way with the paintbrush)
but with the pencil they are hard and drawn on/off on a
pixel-by-pixel basis. Options are identical to Paintbrush.
Eraser: Eraser is identical to the pencil,
except that it draws with the background color and
there is no Sketch Mode. In
a future release that supports layers, the functionality
of eraser will be enhanced.
Dodge/Burn: The dodge/burn tool lightens or
darkens parts of an image. The options enable the user to affect shadows, midtones, or
highlights, as well as the pressure of the dodge (lighten)
or burn (darken). See the example to the right. The
first column of strokes is Dodge, the second is Burn.
The top row is affecting Highlights, the second is
affecting Midtones, and the third is affecting Shadows.
Note how the Highlight Dodge affected the pink flower
much more than the Midtone Dodge, and how the Shadow
Dodge affected the dark area much more than the Highlight
Dodge.
Smudge: the smudge tool is like taking a wet
finger to your painting. It has the Blending Mode
and opacity option of the Paintbrush tool. The 'Wet'
option is where the smudge changes take effect
upon themselves. Put more plainly, without the
smudge being wet, there's little it can truly do
to an image. When wet, smudge almost acts as a watercolor
finger painting. It's recommended that the opacity
is turned down to 90% or so when wet, as to allow
the original image to "bleed back through" as one is
painting.
Eyedropper: the eyedropper tool looks at the
image and grabs the color at that point and uses it
as the foreground color. There are several options to
how the color is retrieved from the image. A 3x3 or
5x5 surrounding box can be used to fetch the image
(if the point is in a 'noisy' group of samples) and
there are "averaged" and "weighted" modes, where in
weighted mode, points near the center of the box
sample are given more weight to the average.
Paintbucket: fills an area with the current foreground color.
The area that it fills is determined by the picture
itself. You pick a tolerance value of 0 to 255 ("Tol."
in the options bar), and then by clicking in the image,
a flood fill will take place across all pixels whose
colors are within the tolerance value of the original
pixel you clicked on. Clicking "AA" enabled
antialiasing of this flood fill. Blending mode and
opacity are additional settings to control the fill.
Blur/Sharpen: blurs and sharpens bits of the
image interactively. Select the "pressure" (amount)
of the tool and draw on the image to blur or sharpen
individual parts of it.
Rubber Stamp: takes one area of your image and paints it into another area.
By holding down Action (PPC) or Shift (HPC) and tapping,
you set the "source point." Then, let go of the
key and all strokes after that act as a stamp coming
from the source point. In the example to the right, the
source was set on the cusp of the petal to the left of the
main flower. When "Aligned" is unchecked, you get
behavior as of that in the bottom left of the example.
Each tap acts as if the source is put right there in
the image at that position. By enabling "Aligned,"
each tap results like that of the example near the right,
where the relative position of the source of the stamp
is saved between taps/drags. Blending mode and
opacity values are also able to be set.
Texture Brush:paints with an external picture as its "source." Click the
"Tex" button to bring up the Texture choice window
(shown at right). A listing of images found in the
"Textures\" subdirectory off of the Pocket Artist
install directory will be shown here. By choosing
an image, it will be shown in the window. Clicking OK
will bring you back to your document. Painting in the
document will now use the texture (and tile it
appropriately) instead of the current foreground color
along with the current brush shape. By enabling the
"use as bump map" with the texture brush, the
tool takes on a completely different feel. Now, the
current foreground color and brush are used, but
the texture acts as a "rough surface" that you are
painting on -- for example selecting the canvas texture
makes it appear as though you are painting on canvas.
Due to the way it functions, for best results enable
the Sketch mode for this tool (the "S" checkbox), and
set the opacity to a low value (around 20% to 40%).
It will appear as though you are drawing with pencil
or charcoal on rough paper. Different textures yield
different results, and some nice effects can be made.
Blending mode, sketch mode, and opacity can be
set with this tool.
Text/Shapes
Draw Text/Text Outline: These tools
enter text into Pocket Artist. Draw Text will
make a new floating selection on your document
with the text entered in the current foreground
color, while Text Outline will simply make a selection
based on the text you enter. Options include
font name, size, bold, italic, and whether the
font should be antialiased. There is an experimental
"angle" feature where the text can appear at an angle. By simply tapping
(when the Text tool is selected) in the document
the "Enter Text" dialog will pop up and prompt for the
text -- tapping OK will float the text (or outline)
on the document. By tapping and dragging a rectangle
on the document, the same thing will happen, except
it bypasses Pocket Artist's auto-calulate of the text
rectangle. This is useful if you would like to chop
off the text, or when working with text at an angle (Pocket
Artist does not compute the needed rectangle appropriately).
To the right is a sample of what you can do with the Text
tool. The first line is simply "Pocket Artist" in bold italic
Tahoma. The second line is the same, except with anti-aliasing
turned on. The third was two instances of the text tool. The
first was set to gray and blurred after placement, and then
black text on top, creating a drop shadow effect. The last
example shows that the floating text that is placed after
using the text tool is just like any other floating selection,
and has opacity and blending mode settings.
Rectangle: this is a quick shapes tool. By
tapping and dragging, you create a rectangle on the
document. Hold down Shift (HPC) or Action (PPC) to
make the rectangle a square. The options are opacity
and blending mode, as well as whether to fill the
rectangle or have it use an outline instead. Check the
box next to "1px" to make the rectangle draw as an outline.
The thickness of the rectangle outline can be set as well.
Ellipse: this draws an ellipse, much like in
the way the rectangles are drawn. Hold shift or Action
to make a circle. It can be forced to draw as an outline as well.
The "AA" checkbox specifies if the shape/outline is
to be drawn antialiased (smooth).
Polygon: this draws a polygon. By repeatedely tapping
where the points of the polygon should go, then by tapping
at or very near the first point, a polygon will be drawn.
The options are much like the ellipse tool: blending mode, opacity,
and whether it should be an outline. Also the polygon may
be drawn smoothly.
Draw Line: this draws a line. By tapping and dragging
you set the start and end points of the line. Options include
the thickness of the line, blending mode, opacity, and
whether to make it smooth or not.
An example of the different shapes and their settings is shown to
the right.
>> Selections
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