Overview
A brief overview of the Pixeluvo program and a lesson for the beginners.
Introduction.
I need make a reservation that this lesson is written for the most inexperienced and for those who want to get acquainted in general with the interface of the Pixeluvo program.
So if you are an experienced user of programs of this type and do not intend to use Pixeluvo in the future, most likely you will be extremely unhappy with this text where there are many illustrations with primitive descriptions and much useless, banal information.
While writing this manual, I was based on my experience and I remember how difficult it was for me to find tutorials with the most banal information when I first decided to start editing photos. In the meantime, this key information, which is very necessary for a novice user, to understand how this works and where the same tool is locate about which the author of the lesson writes.
In general, we will assume that I have warned everyone that the text is very special and not for everyone.
P.S: My native language is russian. Therefore, I apologize if my English will be difficult to understand! For translate this text was helped me by Google translator.
Review photo and plan further actions.
For this tutorial, I used Pixeluvo v.1.5.4 . The latest version of the program at the time of writing this lesson. If you interesting this information – this photo I made with a Canon PowerShot A720 IS camera. This is really outdated and elementary camera.
So there is a crookedly photographed of a rotten apple lying on a stump.
I must say that, all the manipulations with the photo I maked about 25-30 minutes of real time. But the creation of this lesson is of the order of three days. I agree, you need read and watch a lot information, but do not be afraid all is not as scary as it looks.
The mistake of shooting was that the photo as a result is completely crooked, the stump of the curve, the apple is absolutely crooked, the perspective curve, the shorter everything is wrong and crooked. When I photographing, I was guided by an apple and tried to align the photo with it. Hmm, I was cruelly mistaken.
Overall idea in the next, we turn a blind eye to the curvature of the apple, and everything else we try to align of perspective.
The Tool “Box Select” (M).
In short, to begin with, we need to align all horisontal perspective on photo, we’ll take a central level focus on the stump.
To do this, use the “Drawer Selection” tool (M) [1] on the left toolbar. Just click (and do not release) the left mouse button and drag the selection to the desired location. Since I decided to select all on the photo, left-click outside the photo above the upper-left corner and “drag” outside the photo to the lower right corner and beyond the photo, release the mouse button.
You can also do the same selection by selecting the “Select All” (Ctrl + A) [2] option in the “Select” section of the program’s top menu.выгыгшвнывгнш
As a result, we get a completely selected photo.
The Tool “Grid” and “Grid Options”.
To better focus on how we need rotate a photo, we need a tool like a “Grid”. You can enable this grid in the menu “View”, select “Show Grid”. By analogy, this lattice performs exactly the same function for us, which is performed by a grate cage printed in a school notebook. It helps us navigate in the space of paper sheet, and here this help orientate in the space of the program.
Since the grating is very small, we will need to change its settings, this is done by selecting the grid settings. We choose right away “Grid Options”.
In this case, we do not need any vertical lines, so we remove the “X-Size” parameter to the minimum, the slider to the left until it stops. But we need horizontal lines, but not so frequent, so we change the parameter “Y-Size” to the parameter we need. In general, it seemed to me that the most suitable for me are the following parameters X-Size: 1px. and Y-Size: 149px.
By the way, here it should be noted at the moment it seemed to me that there is still no adjustment of the thickness of the grid line and its color. Maybe the developer will then add later?
The Tool “RotateScale” (Ctrl+T).
In principle, the selection can be removed, the selection turned out to be useless in Pixeluvo in this situation, but in Adobe Photoshop I used a selection area to scroll the photo using “Free Transform” tool. In short, this is not work now.
It would seem that remains a little bit. We came to the main task, now stay one a little step to rotate the photo and voila, the masterpiece is ready.
Well, to solve this problem we need the “RotateScale” tool (Ctrl + T) . The tool is located in the top panel in the tab “Edit” and in the section “Transform”. We need choose “RotateScale” (Ctrl+T) .
On the edges of our photo there is a small frame with circles on the corners and of each side of the photo. If you hover over one of the circles, this will stretch the photo, deforming its contents (zoom-stretching). When stretching, the image in the photo is stretched, and it loses its proportion, and in this case we do not need to stretch the photo. But now we need only rotate photo slightly on its axis, without changing the aspect ratio.
To do this, simply move the cursor over the border of one of the sides of the photo and see that the mouse cursor changes to a circle with arrows. In this position, click the left mouse button and move the mouse to rotate the photo to the desired position. During the torsion in the center of photo, a count of degrees appears, which indicates how many degrees you scroll through your photo.
In general, it seemed to me that it would be so good, the value of 5 degrees.
Function “Crop to Selection”. Croping photo to the desired size.
Now it remains to crop the photo to fit the size that would hide the emptiness around the edges of the photo. Shall we try?
To begin, we will disconnect the grid, that would disturb. We already aligned the photo.
The next plan is to select the desired foreshortening of the photo and crop it with the “Crop to selection” option in the “Image” section of the top toolbar.
In general, select the piece of photos we desire and cut this selection, I made this in two steps. Approximately like this.
Functions “Undo” (Ctrl+Z) and “Redo” (Ctrl+Y). Cancel and return your actions.
Hmmmm… Achtung, achtung!!!!
So the result is clear that in the end, nothing good happened. Therefore, we need to act in a different direction.
To the new start editing the photo, we return to the original position of the photo after it has been rotated step. This is done with the function “Undo” (Ctrl+Z). This function rolls your photo back one step, as if canceling your last edit action with a photo. In order to roll back the photo a few steps back, you just need to use this command as many times as many steps you want to cancel the action from the photo.
This function is located in the “Edit” tab on the top bar menu. Also there is a function “Redo” (Ctrl+Y) which performs the same function, but does not roll back the performed manipulation with the photo, but scroll the actions you made opposite direction after. This function is useful when you rolled back the action too far with the “Undo” command.
We roll back several steps to moment when we cut the photo, until the photo was rotated. We do this by pressing the hotkeys “Undo” (Ctrl+Z) several times. Now stop when we see this moment. Well done.
The Tool “Clone” (C).
So everything turned out to be much more complicated than expected. Now we face a problem of four unexpected defects formed when turning the photo.
What can I do to leave as much of the original photo as possible? We need have to a “drew” photo.
And we will do this according to the old and very common technology. Use the “Clone” (C) tool. It allows you to clone a specific piece of editable photo and draw the selected piece of photo as a brush. It’s hard to explain this, but believe that is one of the most important and powerful tools with which you can solve a lot of simple and complex tasks when editing photos.
Then the “Clone” (C) tool is located on the left toolbar.
The “Clone” tool has several properties that can be changed to customize the tool.
When you select the “Clone” tool in the lower-left corner, you can change the three properties of this tool. You can select the brush used when cloning, for example, softer around the edges, so that there would not be any river boundaries when drawing. This is exactly what I choose. You can also set the size of the brush and its transparency.
By the way, in the very left corner is an icon with the image of three small vertically standing squares. With this button you can remove the toolbar that is located on the left. Sometimes it’s useful when you do not need to change the editing tools often and that would expand the workspace for the edited photo.
Zooming image.
Now I need a draw the missing pieces of photo. Since the bokeh on the photo is well much blurry, there should not be big problems.
On the top left you will need to finish the corn shrubs (there is actually on a photo a garden background and of tall and rare corn shrubs), and piece of the sky and trees.
So we zooming the photo to an acceptable size in the working window Pixeluvo so that you can easily edit the desired section of the photo. You can zoom in on the photo by using the tool in the upper right corner.
To zooming the photo on the screen it is possible as a slider under the mini-photo (to the right of the slider the scale in % is displayed). Or we can move the cursor on the mini-photo and for encrease/decrease use the mouse wheel.
By the way, when the cursor is in the working area Pixeluvo, the mouse wheel performs the function of increasing/decreasing the size of the brush.
The Tool “Clone”. The technique of using the tool.
After zooming the image on workspace, select the “Clone” tool, set the desired brush size and start working!
Only before the work I need to explain to you the function of the “Clone” tool and the technique of use this tool.
Well, since we’ll be painting the sky? We need to take a piece of the sky with the photo (in the screenshot the approximate zone under the number (1) and clone it into the empty space, in the screenshot the approximate zone (2).
Use the “Clone” tool to move the cursor to the zone (1) and hold down the Ctrl button and left-click on the desired zone. When you hold Ctrl, the cursor turns into a cross, and after clicking on the selected area, you can see of the sign remains, so that you can see which piece is currently being cloned by the brush.
(Ohhh… This is really hard translate my thoughts to English. If you not understand me I really sorry!)
Well, now you can try to “paint” the sky on an empty photo area. Carefully we click several times on the empty photo area. Shall we try?
In the same way, we “finish” the trees and corn, and also the area of the forested garden. In the background, it is an overgrown former vegetable garden. The intermediate result is approximately the same.
Okay, it’s not that hard, right?
Finish the “painting” and the top left corner of the photo is fully over. For a diversity, take pieces from different parts of the photo.
Fill in the details on right corner of image.
Repeat the same thing in the upper right corner of the photo.
In the process, such a result.
Upon completion, the result is approximately the following.
Now take the lower right corner of the photo.
Problems should also not arise. The sketch during the work looks like this.
The completed version looks something like this.
“Restoration” of rotten stump.
Now it’s time to finish the last left bottom corner.
At first glance, the task here is more complicated than usual. The stump in focus and should be more precise. But in practice, using the “Clone” tool, this task becomes quite easy and is solved in a matter of minutes.
First, we need to “draw” the border of stump, since it has clear boundaries.
To do this, take pieces of photos from the top of the stump, but so that the clone part was half from the “grassy” side and a definition border of the stump. You need to take pieces from different zones, well, for example, as on the screenshot from the first zone and for example the lower zone designated as zone number two. At least I always do so.
It should look something like this. This will be the boundary of our stump.
Now “paint” herbal bokeh in the corner of the photo. Than taking from different places fragments of stump, carefully restore the missing piece of photos of our stump. In the process of work, you can sometimes using zooming decrease the photo in order to evaluate the result of the work done.
Now we are finishing our little masterpiece. In the end, now the whole composition looks like this.
The Tool “Resize Canvas” (Ctrl+Alt+C). Increase the size of the canvas photo.
Okay, as you can see, a new problem has arisen from the result!
Now the stump is very strongly on the left side! If I crop the right side of the photo, then in my opinion it will not be very nice view. Therefore, the conclusion suggests itself, I need to add the left part of the photo to about the same size as on the right.
To begin with, we need to increase the size of the canvas (not to be confused with the size of the photo) of our photo of the left part of the photo. This task is performed using the “Resize Canvas” (Ctrl+Alt+C) command. This function is located in the “Image” tab on the top menu bar.
When using this function, a menu with settings is displayed.
Well, here is everything easy, the parameter “Width” is the width of the photo, respectively “Height” this is height of the photo. And this square, where you need to choose which side will be the original photo, and accordingly on the other side the specified number of pixels will be added to increase the canvas of the photo.
Well after increasing the canvas, we have a large transparent piece of the photograph on the left side.
Functions “Copy” (Ctrl+C) and “Paste” (Ctrl+V). And a little bit about layers.
Since I need to “draw” a fairly large space here you can use a slightly different tactic. The tactic of my actions is as follows: simply using the tool “Box Select” (M) highlights a rather large piece of “green” on the left side of the photo and drags these pieces to empty places to the left. Thus, and fill the empty parts of the photo.
After the selection, copy this piece of photo to the clipboard by pressing the “Copy” (Ctrl+C) combination, you can also use this function via the “Edit” tab on the top toolbar.
Okay, select on the left toolbar, the tool “Box Selected” (M) and select a fairly large piece of “Green” in the target zone. That would copy this piece of photography, use a “Copy” (Ctrl+C) hotkeys.
Then, to insert the selected piece of photo, press “Paste” (Ctrl+V), this is the “Paste” command. Also do not forget that these commands can always be found in the tab “Edit” in the top menu of the program.
The copied piece of the photo will appear on a new layer with a transparent background, and the selected piece of the photo will be exactly in the same place where it was selected on the original main layer.
Since obviously not enought one selected piece to fill the empty part of the photo, I immediately executed five “Paste” (Ctrl+V) commands and I formed five pieces of “green” on five new layers.
Now I need to move all pieces of “green” to an empty space that would fill as much as possible of empty space, this will have to be done with each layer separately.
To drag the parts, we need the “Move” (V) tool. I select it on the toolbar and select the layer which I decided to work “move” the pieces of the photo to the intended places.
The list of layers is in the lower right corner of the program interface Pixeluvo.
Final problems solving and a little bit about the function of the layers “Merge All Layers”.
After dragging the “green” pieces of the photo into the desired place, the photo looks something like this.
At the top landscape is a little different on the “green” zone, so I did not touch now the top section.
It turned out that I needed only three pieces of “green” to fill the desired zone, the rest were superfluous. But now, the connections between the “green” pieces are clearly highlighted.
To start masking these connections, I need to “merge” all the individual layers with the main photo layer. To do this, hover the mouse cursor on any layer and right-click, and in the drop-down menu we select the “Merge All Layers” function.
After “merging” all layers, select on the right panel of tools “Clone” (C) and mask the seams in the photo.
Okay, now we finish proccess of “painted” our masterpiece the upper left corner of the photo with the help of the technology known to us and the tool “Clone” (C). I hope this material is already learned.
Polishing the photo and again a bit about the layers.
Now the artistic idea must be brought to the end and finally bring the photo to the desired condition. Fortunately that in Pixeluvo it will not be difficult.
In order to make the photo a bit “gloomy”, we need to duplicate the layer with our photo.
Okay. When mouse cursor is hovered over the desired layer, after clicking the right mouse button in the drop-down menu, select the “Duplicate Layer” command. After executing this command, a duplicate of my photo appears on the new layer.
Then, with the help of the layer property called “Layer Blend Mode” change to “Multiply”. When you click in a mouse, a menu with a list of properties drops out.
Since the photo has become very dark, change the transparency of this layer with the slider to adjust the transparency. Set the value to 61%.
In the end, we get this result.
Final Editing and “Monochrom”.
Now it seems to that something else is missing for the finishing result, in my course of understanding.
I need add a little vignetting for the dramatic. This is the same effect at the edges of the photo that appears due to the decrease in the brightness of the light beams that pass obliquely along the lens of the lens when shooting. Which results in a darkening of the image along the edges of the photograph.
And I will a little change the intensity of colors.
In fact, it’s very easy to do this in Pixeluvo using the “Monochrom” function, which is in the tab of “Color” on the top menu of interface Pixeluvo.
In the properties menu that opens, you can select the desired effects.
I liked the following settings.
I will not describe everything, but I mention that the box “Show Preview” allows you to display the effect on the edited photo in real time. By unchecking this box, you can see what the photo looks like before applying the “Monochrome” effect.
Okay, we get this result in the form of an edited photo. I seem the photo pretty interesting it turned out. From the literally rotting apple lying around under my feet. And I do not even remember what prompted me to take this picture. But I see it turned out very much good.
Personal impressions of Pixeluvo.
Yes, at the moment I noticed for myself a few obvious flaws (NOT ERRORS! ONLY MISSING TOOLS OR FUNCTIONS I NEEDED) in Pixeluvo.
Okay, for example there is no support for the format PSD.
Also there is no possibility to edit EXIF metadata for example, and this which makes it necessary to search for this purpose other software.
Or you can not open several photos at once for editing in different windows. You can switch between projects using the “Window” menu, but this is very not demonstrative and not convenient.
Or, for example, there are no styles for layers, as implemented in Adobe Photoshop.
Also, several suggestions that I would like to see implemented in Pixeluvo , I left in this message on the developer’s forum -> Pixeluvo Forum[www.pixeluvo.com].
I very happy with the interface. At first glance seemed to me even very poor, in fact it was very convenient and thoughtful despite its ascetic and unusual. And I really liked the design of the program itself and the colors used in the interface.
Much in Pixeluvo certainly is not enough! But those functions that are in this program is it performs qualitatively and 100% useful! And for this price – this is a piece of gold with diamonds! This not a joke! =)
In general, I can honestly say I’m very pleased with Pixeluvo on, even perhaps all 86%!
By the way, sometimes in Steam you can get a discount on the program and it can be purchased at a discount, but the discount is not so often as on games, just once or twice a year. Therefore, if you see an active discount and you think about Pixeluvo, I would strongly recommend it. And by the way on the site www.pixeluvo.com you can download a trial version to try and decide for yourself whether this program for you.
A small example of restoring an old photo with using a tool “Clone” (C).
A little history of this photo.
In the photo, my grandfather, he lies on the grass on the left with his first wife. During the Second World War (1939-1945) in 1942 he was taken prisoner and was in the concentration camp of Stalag 316. In general, he was lucky to survive. And I was lucky enough to restore this photo.
P.S: Thank you for your interest and your time for reading the text to the end.
Trond Berntsen.