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FxFoto
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FxFoto Tips by Susan White >>Digital Photography with FxFoto - A Quick Tour
What you need First, you need some basic materials - software, photos and a digital kit. For software, FxFoto Creative Edition offers the all the tools you will need to create layouts. FxFoto Creative Edition comes with nine digital kits and a huge number of background papers created by designers at Scrap Outside the Box www.scrapoutsidethebox.com and by Clara Wallace of Matter of Scrap www.matterofscrap.com.
Requires Windows 98/2000/ME/XP, 256 MB Ram (512MB Ram recommended)
Quick tour of FxFoto
Here is what FxFoto looks like when you are using it. So let's take a quick tour around so you know where things are located.
Upper toolbar pane
Folder pane Main pane
There are three main areas of FxFoto Creative Edition which we often call panes
Folder pane (on the left) which contains all the folders plus a timeline Main pane (on the right) which is where we work on photos or collages Upper toolbar pane (on the top) which is where all the tools are located
In the screen shot above, you can see an open photo in the Main pane. In the folder pane, some folders are closed and some are open. The folders with green backgrounds, like the Party folder above, are digital kits.
Let's take a closer look at the Upper Toolbar Pane.
In the Upper Toolbar Pane are all the various tools for FxFoto Creative Edition - there are lots and lots of cool things to do and we will be going through this step by step! This pane always remains open so you have access to all your tools all the time.
The upper pane has four areas. On the far left are a number of commands which open up wizards. These wizards are designed to help you through a process such as printing or uploading. There are wizards for Collages, Upload, Print, Email, Viewer, Import, Search and Folders.
In the middle of the toolbar are the tools which make up most of the upper pane. Each area such as Correct or Crop may contain multiple index tabs labeled with more detailed tools. For instance, the Correct has been selected above. In Correct, you will find Improve Image, Remove Red Eye, Remove Blemish, Clone Brush, Color Brush, White Balance and Filter Effects. When you click on these tabs, say for instance, Remove Red Eye, a new box opens with all the remove red eye adjustments. Here below is the Remove Red Eye box.
It would be impossible to go through each box one by one and even if you watch us demonstrate it, it would be tough to remember how to use everything! So each and every box has a Help button.
In the box above, Help is located in the lower right hand corner. Clicking on the Help will bring you directly to that specific section of the Help file. So here, clicking on Help would bring you to the section on Remove Red Eye which explains all the settings and how to use them. You don't have to search through the whole Help file looking for how to use Remove Red Eye - the instructions are right there for you.
Here's a bit of a breakdown as to what each of the main categories of tools do
Correct Improve Image (includes Auto Improve and spot lightening/darkening) Remove Red Eye Remove Blemish Clone Brush (allows you to cover over unwanted areas) Color Brush (recolor a photo or part of it, also changes opaqueness) White Balance Filter Effects (contains a myriad of special effects - watercolor, sepia, B&W etc.)
Crop Oval (oval shape with or without feathering) Rectangle (square or rectangle with or without feathering) Pull or Adjust Pattern (crop in all sorts of edge shapes - waves, torn paper, bumps) Cutters Library (crop in cookie cutter shapes like horse, butterfly, and letters)
Frame All sorts of frames from simple to ornate
Text Dialog Balloons Text boxes (captions, titles and text within a photo or collage; use any font)
Draw Pens (straight, dashed, dotted lines of any width) File Stamp (use any image element as a stamp) Clip Stamp (stamp images from your clipboard) Eyedropper (to pick up a color from an element or photo)
Slide Slide Settings (controls for making slide shows) Special Effects (transition effects between slides) Tour Panning (more slide effects) Image Click Link
Info Picture Description (enter keywords, descriptions (kit name, designer etc.) Image Object (advanced tools for object placement) Image Placement Add Shadow (create shadows to make elements 3D)
Mouse mouse drag modes
Navigation Buttons
On the right of the upper pane is the navigation joystick, Undo and Redo arrows, Collage add button, and speed controls
The [+] and [-] allow you to zoom in and out of your photo or layout. Zooming in lets you get very close to inspect a detail. In FxFoto, the zoom is continuous so you aren't limited to certain levels. When you are clone brushing a tight area, it really helps to very zoomed in so you can make you edit invisible. For digital scraping, making a paper clip or charm look real involves zooming in and using the color brush to make part of the element transparent.
Sometimes it is nice to zoom out and see how your layout looks from a distance - the digital equivalent to stepping back and looking at your work.
The arrows surrounding the [+/-] let you move around your photo or layout. It is something like moving over your photo as if you were in a balloon flying over it! This lets you look at your whole photo or LO from any zoom level without having to zoom in and out again. The slide bar lets you set your speed - you can zoom in and out really fast if you like! If your mouse has a wheel, then rolling that will let you zoom in and out too.
The Undo and Redo arrows are just below the slide bar.
The Collage Add button is used to add more than one photo to the main pane to create a collage. It will automatically be depressed if you are making some types of collages.
Picture Information This is the last area of the upper pane on the far right. Here you will find all sorts of information about the picture like pixel size, camera used, the folder in which it is located etc.
Now let's gets some photos into FxFoto so we can try it out!
Importing Photos into FxFoto
You may import photos into FxFoto from a number of different sources - your camera, a scanner, a CD or from other places in your computer. So if you have photos in My Pictures, you may easily use them in FxFoto.
When you first install,l FxFoto asks you whether you would like it to scan your computer and find all your photos. If you have a lot of photos, then this may take a long time and you may end up with thousands of photos in FxFoto. While you may eventually decide you want all your photos in FxFoto, it is sometimes better not to let it scan. You can always do a full system scan if you want later.
Importing
from your Camera
5. Press
the
6. Choose
the camera photos to be imported. Photos with green
7. Press
the
Importing from My Pictures
Click on the Import button with the camera icon. Instead of Camera or device, click on Scan local folders at the bottom of the dialog box. Then click on Browse to locate the file that you want to import, then click Scan. Your pictures will be in a folder that has the same name as the one you scanned. Don't worry you can rename and re-organize your folders later if you want.
Now we have everything we need to have some serious FUN!
When you first start using FxFoto Creative Edition, use some ‘junk' photos - photos that you really don't care about. That way you can try all sorts of things without worrying about losing a photo. But FxFoto Creative Edition keeps a backup of your original photos, so don't worry too much!
Editing a Photo
Often the difference between a so-so photo and a great one is just a matter of editing. This, of course, is the beauty of digital. With your computer, you can edit your photos at home. What used to take hours in a darkroom, now takes only seconds. Remove unwanted objects, crop to emphasis a subject, lighten or darken a photo and change it into black and white, watercolor or a sketch all can be done with the click of a mouse. How cool is that?
Remember that you just click a photo in the left pane folder to open it into the main window for editing.
Let's get started by looking at some of the FxFoto Creative Edition tools in detail.
Correct
Under this tool, you will find a myriad of other tools to fix and enhance your photos. Here, you will find Improve Image, Remove Red Eye, Remove Blemish, Clone Brush, Color Brush, White Balance and Filter Effects. Let's learn how to use each one.
Improve Image
When a photo is too dark or too light, a lot of detail can be lost. Even if you have adjusted your camera for the light conditions, sometimes the photos are still too light or too dark. In the days of film, you had no choice but to toss the photo or just deal with it. But now, you can correct them. Auto Improve which you use by simply clicking on the Auto Improve button, corrects the whole photo and you can keep clicking on it to see if it gets better. Clicking on the Undo button will take you back a step at a time.
On the left below is a photo of a topiary animal which was taken against a bright sky. Because of shadow, the details of the legs in the lower right corner are missing! On the right is the same photo with Auto Improve applied. The legs have reappeared, making it a much clearer photo.
You can also choose to lighten or darken just a small area of the photo using the Circle Click Tool. Here is the same photo but instead of using Auto Improve, the Circle Click tool has been used to lighten just the body. Now compare the photo below to the Auto Improve one above. In the Auto Improve, the sky was lightened along with the whole picture so it appears less blue and more washed out. With the Circle Click tool, the sky remains a bright blue rather than being washed out because only that small area was lightened.
There are also manual controls for adjusting brightness, contrast and Gamma as well as color balance controls. As you get more into digital photography you may find these very useful for modifying photos and finely adjusting the lighting.
Remove Red Eye
How many perfectly good photos have been ruined by the red eye? Although digital cameras often have a setting to reduce red-eye, it is by no means perfect. So how do you get the red out?
Below is a screen shot with the left eye corrected and the right with red eye. First, click on the Remove Red Eye tab and then, zoom in a bit. Using the slider on the left, make your circle about the size of the red eye. Then place over the eye and right click.
Remove Blemish
This tool is similar to Remove Red Eye except it is meant for removing small areas. Make your circle a bit bigger than the blemish and add some feathering to the edges and it will blend right in.
Clone Brush
Sometimes the camera sees what we do not see. It records the world accurately but our eye is on capturing the subject and so we often don't see things like telephone poles and trash on the ground. But the camera does and so we are left with a less than perfect photo. With the magic of a clone brush, you can get rid of distracting objects like telephone wires.
Take a good look at the two photos below. The one on the left is the original photo - complete with all sorts of stuff lying on the carpet which is very distracting. After all the idea was to capture an orphan in the cast of Annie and not her water bottle and bags! In addition, the background of the room is busy and competes with the subject. And there is flash glare. We will be working on this photo a bit with the clone brush, filter effects and cropping to make it much better. Let's start with clone brushing the stuff on the ground to remove it. In the photo on the right, you can see the result. We could even clone brush the dog out of the photo too!
The clone brush works by using one part of the photo to cover unwanted areas - a sort of camouflage. Another analogy is to think of the clone brush as a paint brush which you are using to paint over the area. Depending on what you want to remove, it can take some time to do it well. I have some hints below for the clone brush.
First, click on Correct and click on Clone Brush. Next, using the slider, decide whether you want a circle or square clone brush. In general using the circle gives a more natural and rounded effect while the square is useful if you are cloning out objects with straight edges such as a building or telephone pole. Decide whether you want to feather the edges. A little bit of feathering is helpful to blend the edges. We will skip the advance settings for now. Chose the photo you want to work on. It is best to clone before you do anything else to the photo such as crop or frame. In particular, if you have rotated the photo and try to use the clone brush, you will find the brush very slow. So it is better to clone with the photo in its original orientation and before cropping and framing. Using the mouse, the cursor now appears as a blue dotted circle with a + in the center. Right click on the background the sofa near the water bottle and a green circle will appear. This is your "brush" and the part of the photograph within the circle is the "paint" you will be using to paint over the waterbottle. The cursor will still have a blue circle, so move the blue circle to the object you want to remove and push down the left mouse button at the place you want to start and hold it down. Brush the circle as you would a paint brush and the background will start to paint over the person. Letting up on the left button will stop it so that you can move the mouse to a different area. One thing to keep in mind is that the green circle of "paint" moves with the blue circle on the brush, so you need to keep an eye on it. If the green paint circle overlaps the area that you just painted away while you still have the left button depressed, then the green paint circle will pick up "paint" from the original area that you brushed. So the part of the person's head that you had brushed away may start to reappear. This will not happen if you keep your paint brush strokes short and do not overlap. Once the left button has been lifted this will not happen. The program and brush will recognize the brushed area and not the original photo.
Clicking the left mouse button will give you spots of the background rather than a brush. You can change the "paint" on your clone brush by right clicking on another area to gather "paint" and the green circle will move to that area. Then you can start painting with the new "paint". Here are some hints that may help you and that I've garnered by frequent use of the clone brush. The bigger the circle or square, the faster the cloning goes but you lose some subtlety and control. This is particularly true if the photo has some shadows because the subtle changes in color and shadow will look out of place. Use the square clone bush shape when brushing out objects with a straight edge Work in small areas by zooming way in on the object you want to remove and remove small areas at a time. Keep the green "paint" circle right next to the area you are removing. This gives you the best match for variations in light and shadow within the background and hence the most natural effect. You may have to move the green circle frequently to do this. The Undo button undoes anything you brushed from the when you depressed the left button until you lifted it up. So to avoid frustration, make your brushing strokes sessions short by lifting up on the left button frequently as if you were using very short strokes with a paint brush. To get the most natural edge effect, zoom way way in. Like to the blurry pixelated stage. This means it will take some time to remove the area but allows you to remove very small objects or to work with a very complicated background.
Above you can see the clone brush in action. The green box and half of the water bottle have been removed by painting the sofa over them using the square brush. Next we will move the green "paint" square to the carpet to remove the rest of the water bottle.
Color Brush
The Color Brush tab is used to change both the color and the opacity of a photo. With FxFoto Creative Edition, you can make all or part of your photos slightly transparent or even completely clear. You can also tint the photo any color you wish.
Changing the opacity allows you to overlap photos and have some of the bottom photo show through the top photo. You can determine how much you want to let show and vary it to get different effects. This allows you to make montages like the one on the left below. And it lets you mute a photo to produce an interesting foggy or dreamy effect such as the background of the collage on the right.
You can also use color to make some interesting effects like below:
In the photos above, you can see the effects of increasing transparency. First, select your photo and click on Color Brush tab. Click on Set Transparency for Whole Picture and the New Color bar will be gray. Move the slider to the level of transparency that you want and then click anywhere on the photo.
For color, you can either flood color around a point that you click or you can change a clicked color everywhere on the photo. You can see the difference in these choices by looking at the two pink photos. You can also apply some transparency to mute the color and the last pink photo shows that effect.
There are brushes here too. The color brushes can which you can use to make an area of you photo colored or more transparent. You can select the color by clicking on New Color and choosing one of the basic colors. Or click on Custom Colors to get the full palette. You can even use the Get Color tool on the Draw toolbar to use a color in the photo with the color brush to make a perfect match. Decide on how wide you want your brush and how much feathering you want along the edges. In the example below, the scribble on the left is partially transparent, the one in the middle has no transparency and the one on the end is fully transparent.
In digital scrapbooking, the fully transparent brush is used a lot to make part of an element clear so that it looks more real. The best example is a digital paperclip where parts of the inside clip need to be invisible so that the clip really looks like it is attached to the paper. In paper scraping this part of the metal clip would be behind the paper. But in digital scraping, we just make that part of the clip transparent.
First, click on the paper clip to select it and then zoom way in on it as shown below. Click on the Square color Brush and move the Transparency slider all the way over to the right (255) and your brush will make whatever it touches transparent. With this amount of zoom, we chose a Brush Width of 15.
Move your cursor to the section of paper clip that would be behind the paper - that is the middle section. Hold down the left button and move the brush along the area you want to make disappear. In the screenshot below, you can see we have removed part of the clip. Just keep going until you have erased the middle of the paperclip.
Filter Effects
Filter effects are lots of fun and make your photos truly unique. They range from filters like B&W and sepia to distortion filters like swirl and fisheye. You can get a funky or as artsy as you wish with the click of a mouse. And you can do the same photo any number of ways depending on your tastes.
Since FxFoto Creative Edition has over 50 filter effects, it would be hard to go through all of them here. Maybe the best way to see some of the possibilities is to look at the photos below. Keep in mind that this is only a few of the filter effects available in FxFoto Creative Edition.
You will notice that several of the Filter Effects in the list have the word (Rope) after them. These effects allow you to draw a line either by hand or by using a preset shape and have the effect applied inside the roped off space or sometimes outside it. On the right side of the Filter Effects tab is the area where you can choose a rope. It can be a rectangle, oval or a hand drawn loop. Or you can choose any of the patterns in the Cutters library which includes over 100 shapes like butterfly, heart, horse or any letter of the alphabet. In the example below, an oval was selected and the filter effect is Wash Out (Rope). To have the wash out applied outside the oval, check the Outside box. You can add some feathering of the edge to make it blend in. Then click on Apply. If it is not enough Wash Out, click on Undo and repeat but this time, check the More or Most box. If you want the Wash Out applied inside the rope, then make sure the Outside box is unchecked.
Once the rope is drawn you may move it over your photo to get the right position. Simply move your mouse over the rope until you get the move sign (the + sign with arrows pointing in 4 directions), then drag it wherever you want. You may stretch the rope by moving your mouse over the rope edges until you get the double pointed arrow, then drag that edge wherever you want.
Now we have finished with the Correct tool! It has a lot of different tools for one button, doesn't it? Let's take a look at cropping and text.
Cropping
Cropping is a very important facet of photo editing and scrapbooking. It can remove distracting elements so the subject of the photo is not lost. Cropping can also allow you to enlarge one area of the photo - say a person's face - so that it is the sole focus of the photo. In film photography, cropping was done by physically cutting the picture. And if you were planning to focus on just one area then you had to order enlargements and crop them, otherwise, the resulting photo was too small to see well. Cropping in a shape meant a steady hand with a knife or scissors or perhaps the use of a die cutting tool.
With FxFoto Creative Edition, you can crop before you print your photos so the photos come to you ready to scrap. And you can order several copies at once, without having to cut them all yourself!
Select the photo or paper you want to crop and click on the Crop button. Take a look at the box - you can crop in a rectangle or oval by clicking on the button. Then go to the selected image. Your cursor will now look like a + sign in a dotted box. Left click on the upper right corner where you want the crop to start and drag the mouse down to the right. A box or oval appears as you drag your mouse with the left button down. Stop and release the mouse where you want to stop. Did you get it just right? Great! Click on Crop Image.
Not quite where you wanted or the edges aren't quite right? You can move or adjust the crop. Move your cursor along the dotted crop edge. You will see it change to a double pointed arrow or to the move symbol. Once it does, left click and hold and use your mouse to move it.
Want to try a fun shape? Click on Pull or Adjust Pattern, then click on the down arrow to produce a drop menu. Choose Cutters Library at the top of the list for a large selection of shapes.
Here is a partial list of the shapes you can use to crop photos or papers in FxFoto:
And many more shapes including the Alphabet.
Feathering: You can create a feathered edge when you crop. Find the Feather at Outline Edges slider and use it to give a professional edge to your photo. Be sure to set the feathering before you crop.
Above is the photo that we made by cloning brushing out the stuff on the floor surrounding the girl. Using the Wash Out (Rope) filter, a rope was hand drawn around her and the Wash Out filter was applied outside the rope. You can see how it mutes the background so that she stands out better. Now a rectangle crop has been drawn which will crop out some of the distracting background of the room and the camera flash glare which is seen in the picture on the wall behind her.
So let's take a look at where we started with the original photo and the final one. The original photo was taken quickly on the way to dress rehearsal and the water bottle, bag and green box were all for backstage use but the busy mom-photographer didn't see them. The one on the right has the stuff on the floor clone brushed out, the red eye removed, the background muted by a Wash Out filter and the photo cropped to show off the star subject.
Which photo would you rather use in your layout? The one on the right, of course!
Text
Adding text to your photo or digital scrapbooking page allows you add facts like a date and place as well as your personal journaling. After all, scrapbooking is not just about photos, it is about preserving our memories. So journaling is very important.
To add text, click on the Text button. In the dialog box, you will notice that there are several choices. You may add text above your photo as a title or below it as a caption or you can add text on top of the photo. You can use any font you have installed in your computer and FxFoto Creative Edition contains a lot of effects which you can apply to the text. And for fun you can add dialog balloons too!
First, select the type of text you would like - title, caption, dialog balloon or text box. The text box can either be free-form or a box which is overlaid on the photo. Overlaying the text box means that when you move the object or photo, the text will move too. This is really helpful in digital scrapbooking where you would like to ‘glue' some text to a tag.
Click on the text type and the box below will open up.
Click on Text Font to choose the font you would like and to set the size.
Click on Text Color to change the font color. The familiar buttons of Word are
there too for setting text where you would like in the box and for bold,
italics and underline. Right next to the underline button, there are two
buttons:
After you have typed, grab the text box and drag it. You can place it anywhere! If you want to change it, simply click on the text box to select it and then click on Edit the Selected the Existing Text Object. You can then change the wording, color or whatever. By grabbing on to the rotation corner of the box, you can rotate the text!
Congratulations! Now you can make your photos pop!!
So what's next?
What else can you do with FxFoto Creative Edition?
Digital Scrapbooking for one! This is a hot new area and really growing. FxFoto Creative Edition comes with nine digital kits and a huge assortment of digital backgrounds so you can try it out. Many scrapbookers use a combination of digital and paper scrapbooking. Often they add some embellishments to the photo, print it as 8x8 and use that on a paper layout. That gives you the best of both worlds!
Journaling can easily be done in FxFoto Creative Edition and you can print it out and use it on your layout. Add some digital embellishments too if you like! Our website has some recipe pages that were done using FxFoto Creative Edition.
Many of the filter effects can make your photos really special! Try framing them or uploading to a site that does printing on mugs or other objects to make a special present.
Saving your Photos
In FxFoto you may save your photos as either a collage or as a static image (jpg file) or both. What is the difference? If you save it as a collage, then you can go back and edit it later but you cannot edit a static (jpg) image. You may also save it as both by saving the collage first and then the jpg file. For FxFoto, a collage can either be a multi-photo scrapbook page or a slide show or a combination.
To save as a collage, click on the Collage button on the top tool bar. Then click on the fifth button down which reads Save Collage Document. Decide whether you want to save it as a new collage or if you are replacing an old one and name the folder where you would like it saved. Then click Next. Make sure the Multi-photo Collage button is depressed and then click Next. On this dialog box, there are a number of options which you may want to play with later but for now just click Finish.
To save as an image, click on the Collage button. Look down the menu for Save Image File. In the dialog box, click on Entire Collage and then click Next. Decide whether you are replacing an old image or adding a new one and also select the folder. Then click Finish.
Printing Your Photos
On your printer:
Click on one or more left-pane photos to open them. Press the Print button and a thumbnail of the collage page will appear. Select your photos by clicking to add a green tag and press Next. Choose various Printer Settings, such as title and caption text to print at the top and bottom of each page, and press Next again. Press Finish and the final printer control dialog appears.
On a Web Print Site:
The Upload command in FxFoto makes it easy to send photos to online printing and sharing sites. Click on one or more left-pane photos to open them. Press the Upload button and thumbnails of all open photos appear. Select one or more to be uploaded by clicking to toggle on their green tags and press Next. Choose the upload service from the available list. FxFoto can automatically send files over the Internet to the listed services.
The Generic choice places your selected photos in a special folder to make it easier to manually upload them to other services. This folder is called FxFotoUpload and is located in My Documents. After pressing Next again, choose the style of the images to be uploaded and see them previewed. Also choose whether to Deresolve for faster uploading (but too much deresolution can make prints fuzzy). Press either Next or Finish and follow the instructions for the selected service. For most services a web browser window appears after selected photos have finished uploading so that you can organize them online or order prints.
When you print your photos which have text, you need to make sure that the text is not right up against the edge of the photo. If it is, then you may find it is cut off when they are printed. Here is what Mpix (www.mpix.com) says about this problem, "Digital printers have what is called oversizing. Oversizing is a process in which the image being developed onto the photo paper is magnified by a certain percentage in order to counteract paper shift within the printer. Photographic paper is loaded into the printer in rolls. As the paper travels from the roll through the machine it can drift up to 1/8 inch by the time it reaches the lasers that expose the paper with the image. No amount of calibration on the paper path can prevent this drift." They therefore recommend leaving a margin of about ¼ inch on your edges. The bigger the print size, the more margin you need.
Emailing
Click on your photo to open them. Press the EMail button and thumbnails of all open photos appear. Select one or more to be e-mailed by clicking to turn on their green tags and press Next. Choose the style of the images to be e-mailed and see them previewed. Also choose whether to send Small or Large images. Smaller images have less detail but are faster to send. Press OK and your default e-mail client is called with the chosen photo images already attached to a new message. Just address and add any message text before sending.
Click here to return to the FxFoto Tours page. |
and
. These
buttons are used to make the text box wider or narrower so you can get text all
in one line or so you can fit it in a particular space.
