FLYING through the air with the greatest of ease

[lakewud]

Hello all

A question to ponder. Wanting to create a little title look as though its being towen behind a plane...ie, the letters a little wavey so to speak.....just like in those good ole' days...of a biplane with letters being flown behind it.

Any thoughts, using PI 11...nothing too complicated...i know how to bend or curve various letters etc...just wanting perhaps a slightly better effect.


On another note...cutting out an image..and needing to soften the edges....i know theres the 'soften edge' tool...or feathering effect etc..could someone please tell me how to use it effectively? It's alright having all these things at your disposal but to use them to a decent effect takes..skill...time..patience...and knowhow...wanting the tricks of the trade.

Any thoughts muchly welcome.

[sjj1805]

Hopefully one of our experts will come along with more specific answers to your two questions. in the meantime you might find the left column of this page useful.
Also you can browse our IMAGING & WEB Product Tutorials

[Ron P.]

There's some presets found in the Easy Palette, under Galleries>Text Path Effects>Wrap.

You can also create a similar shape from your text, using the Transform tool, select the Perspective option from the attributes toolbar. The default is resize, perspective, distort, and slant are found on the flyout menu. When you use the perspective tool, grab a corner of your text object and drag up or down (depending on if you grab the top or bottom corner), and it moves both the top/bottom or both top, both bottom, equally creating a perspective distortion.

For such a banner grab the top or bottom left corner, drag up or down, and the left part of your text increases in size. The opposite would be dragging towards the center, which causes it to shrink.

I hope you haven't read my reply (just above this paragraph) before posting this about the Soften edge. I had a reply posted then realized that I was referring to PSP, not PI. Happens with older age and several like programs...

I think you're asking about the Option found under the Selection menu. To use this, after making your selection, you would use this option to smooth out the selection edge. It's similar to feathering, but adds a slight blur to the pixels so they will not appear so sharp and rough. In the dialog the opens for the Soften Edge, just play with the settings until you get one that works for your image..

Below is a quick example of the Soften Edge. I created a selection of the blue sky that was originally in the photo. It can be found in the Easy Palette, Galleries, Image Enhancement, Fill, Photo, Snowy Mountains. I then inverted the selection, so that I had the mountains and everything but the sky as a selection. Once that was done, I used the Soften Edge to soften the edge, being the mountain tops. If you look at the top edges of the mountains you can see this Softening. I then converted my selection to an object, replaced the background with a radial gradient fill, added an ellipse with a radial gradient fill for the sun.

Anyway I hope it helps show what that effect does...