Contents under pressure
Mastering
Corel Photopaint's Image Sprayer.
by David Wiles
Introduction
Go into any clothing store and you will rarely find anything that is exactly what you want. Either the shirt you want isn't available in your size, or it is available in your size but it is in a color that you don't like. You may sigh, and with a long-suffering look fork out your hard-earned cash and buy it anyway, even if it isn't quite what you wanted. Or you may go home wishing that you'd paid attention in the sewing classes for you feel that "you could make just what you want yourself"!
This tutorial endeavors to show you a little of what the Image Sprayer can do. It can achieve some wonderful effects, with a little effort and understanding from your side it can become your ally instead of your enemy. Rather than using an existing Image Sprayer file that isn't quite what you want, you will be learning how easy it is to create your own custom image sprayer files.
So what is the "Image Sprayer" tool?
Think of it as a spraycan that sprays images or pictures instead of pigment. Normally, your paint tool allows you to paint with a single colour, but using the Image Sprayer allows you to paint with images contained in a special file called an image list containing separate objects.
Getting Started
The Image Sprayer tool sit in the flyout Paint Tool. Access this by clicking on the small arrow in the lower right corner of the Paint Tool.
Once open your Tool Settings Rollup should update to look something like this: (If nothing seems to appear, you might not have the Tool Settings Rollup displayed. Press Ctrl-F8 to display the rollup or select the View...Rollups...Tool Settings... menu item.)
Notice the 3 available tabs. The Main Settings tab, the Dab Variation and Image Choice tab and finally the Orbits tab.We will touch on their functions later. Below the 3 tabs is a small arrow indicating a flyout sub-menu. Below this is a small thumbnail preview of the image list (the series of images contained in the particular brush - in this case some butterflies) To the right of the thumbnail preview is some information about the current image list. (Columns, Rows and [N]umber of Images.)
Below this is the Paint Mode or way in which the brush will be applied to the "canvas", the overall Size of the images in the list. How transparent the images will be when applied is controlled by the Transparency setting, and finally the Presets requestor allows you to access some of the Corel PhotoPaint Image Sprayer presets, an invaluable source of inspiration and information if you are prepared to experiment and play with the presets.
Now we will load an existing Image Sprayer list and make a bit of a mess on our clean white paper.
Select File...New to create a new image and use the following settings:
Now select the small arrow on the Tool Settings rollup of the Image Sprayer. A small popup menu will appear. Select the "Load an Image List..." item
From the list (the default Corel PhotoPaint image list directory) choose the file "foliage.cpt". Now holding down the left hand mouse button paint on your newly created image. (Note how the cursor changes to a brush when in "Image Sprayer" mode.)
There a number of settings to can change to alter the appearance of the default image lists:
Normal (no changes):
Reducing the Size from 197 to 50 gives this result:
While a 50% Transparency does this:
The Fade Out setting (behind the 2nd tab) allows the brush to fade out over the length of the whole stroke. Here the fade out was set to 75:
and finally enabling the "Orbits" in the 3rd tab and setting the Orbit Number to 2 gave a very dense stroke, but doesn't really show what "Orbits" can do:
If you select the Preset called "Rainbow Coils" and drag it once across your screen, you will get a better idea of what the "Orbits" settings can do:
This is what Orbits can do for you:
OK, there are the basics for you. Now we will be starting to really delve into the fun part of image lists - creating your own from scratch!