Monday, August 21, 2006

Cartoon Effect

This is a quick tutorial to show you how you can give photos a cartoon look in Adobe Fireworks. Start off by saving this image to your PC:

Cartoon Effect start

Make a copy of the photo, hide the top one and work on the bottom photo. This photo is a little dark, so brighten it bly clicking Add Live Filters > Adjust Colour > Brightness/Contrast. I chose brightness = 36. Next, add a Gaussian blur : Add Live Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur (radius = 8). Manipulate the curves (Add Live Filters > Adjust Colour > Curves) like this :

Cartoon Curves


Unhide the top photo and apply a blend mode of Darken. One cartoon effect:

Cartoon Effect Created in Adobe Fireworks

Monday, August 14, 2006

Creating Colour Schemes

One easy way of 'creating' new colours to use in your images is to add more black to a base colour to create a shade and to add more white to your base colour to create a tint. This is a doddle if you are using Fireworks (ok, you can do this in other applications too, but this site is devoted to Fireworks tutorials :-)).

Draw a square and colour it black. Copy and paste the square and give the new square the base colour. Now if you reduce the opacity of the top (base colour) square, you will see different shades of the original colour. If you keep reducing the opacity of the top square in increments of 20, you can get five shades of the original colour lik so:

Using Fireworks to Create Shades


Similarly, if you recreate the preceding steps, but use a white square underneath the base colour instead of a black square, you will get the following tints:
Using Fireworks to Create Tints


The way I normally proceed from here is to place the shades and tints somewhere out of the way, like at the top right of the Fireworks canvas. I can then use the eye dropper to sample the colours in those shades and tints to use on new shapes.

Web 2.0 Style Text

Whilst trawling the internet, I've seen this effect used quite a lot in 'Web 2.0' style logos and it's very easily achieved using Adobe Fireworks.


Open Fireworks and use a chunky font to create some text:

Using Fireworks to Create a Web 2.0 Logo


Apply a linear gradient to the text like so:

Web 2.0 Logo Using Fireworks


I like the effect achieved as it is, but we can do more with this. Add a 2px basic soft rounded stroke (white) to the text and then add a glow which has the following properties:

Applying a Glow to Web 2.0 Style Text


This gives something like this:

The Final Web 2.0 Style Text Made In Fireworks

Adding Glossy Reflections

Start off with the shape you want to add glossy reflections to in Fireworks. I used this:

Making Glossy Reflections in Fireworks
It's basically just a circle with a radial gradient.


Now you need to create the shape of the reflection. Fireworks is excellent at combining primitive shapes and one way I found of creating the reflection is to copy and paste the circle, and then draw an ellipse on top of it like this:

Creating a Glossy Reflection in Fireworks


We need the intersection of these two shapes so select both the circle and the ellipses and click Modify > Combine Paths > Intersect. Give the intersection a radial gradient (white, black). Position the white end of the gradient where you want the highlight of the glossy reflection to be and change its blend mode to screen. The reflection needs to be more subtle so reduce the opacity to around 50. You should now have something like this:

Reduce the opacity of the reflection in fireworks


To add depth to the image, I added an inner glow with a low opacity and high softness:

Add an Inner Glow in Fireworks


Voila!

Making Reflections

Making reflections in Fireworks is very easy. First of all convert to a symbol the shape you want to reflect (press F8). I'll explain why you should do this step later. I started off with this text and converted it to a symbol.

Reflected Text in Fireworks


Copy and paste the symbol (ctrl-c, ctrl-v), then flip the copy vertically and move it down to get something like this:

Reflected Text in Fireworks


Fade out the copy by clicking Commands > Creative > Fade Image and choose the 4th option. You should now have this:

Using Fireworks to Make Reflections


The reflection is not subtle enough so I reduced the opacity to 25 (you might decide on a different value):
Using Fireworks to Make Reflections


To add some realism, I added a shadow to the original text by drawing an ellipse at its feet:

Reflection Made in Fireworks Now with a Shadow


To make the shadow effect, I added a feather of 10 to the ellipse and reduced its opacity to 20.


Note: the reason we made the initial object into a symbol is so that if you change the symbols attributes, these changes are reflected (no wordplay intended!) in the reflection. If you don't use a symbol, any changes that you make to the original shape will need to be applied to the reflection as well. Que pena!

Creating Chrome

The key steps involved in creating a chrome effect are:

  1. Apply a gradient

  2. Manipulate curves

  3. Adjust brightness and contrast



Apply a Gradient


Apply a linear black, white gradient like this:
Apply a gradient in Fireworks

Manipulate Curves


I won't explain what curves do, but simply drag the curves line like so:
Manipulate Curves in Fireworks
You will probably have to experiment with different curves settings. In using teh settings shown above, I got an effect that I liked the look of.

Adjust brightness and contrast


Adjust the brightness and contrast to have these values:
Adjust Brightness and Contrast in Fireworks
Following the steps above will give you a basic chrome look in Fireworks. To get something that looked a little more convincing, I also added a thick white stroke (soft rounded), a feathered edge, both an inner and a drop shadow.

Here is the Firworks PNG if you want to download it and look at the finished product.

Welcome To Fireworks Tutorials

Welcome to Fireworks Tutorials. Here, you will find quick tutorials to help you produce stunning effects. These tutorials won't be of the lengthy variety; they are concise guides to creating such things as reflections and chrome etc.