Questions: text and transparent backgroud

[dkummerow]

Hi,

I purchased PhotoBlend a while ago now, but have only just begun to play around with it. I've got a couple of questions.

First, is there a way to add text to a composition?

Second, is there a way to set a backdrop as simply transparent? That is, I see that creating a mask with PhotoBlend is very easy and powerful. So what I would like to do is get the part of the image I want, set the background as transparent, and then import the image into RealDraw Pro so that I can use other features of that program on the nicely 'cut out' image.

Thanks,
David.

[dkummerow]

Hi,

Does the lack of response mean that these two things are not (yet?) possible?

Thanks,
David.

[elivarz]

Hi! Regarding text - yes, this isn't possible, for text you need other editor. About exporting transparetn 32-bit png with masks you can find something in PhotBlend help manual (page 66) - I've found this manual downloadable here:
http://www.mediachance.com/photoblend/photoblend.pdf

[dkummerow]

Hi elivarz,

Many thanks indeed for your reply.

I wonder whether anyone else might find being able to add text useful. If so, it could be a suggestion for a future version.

Regarding exporting a transparent PNG, thanks for pointing that out. I've figured out what was going on. I had purchaced v.1.5 a while back, but hadn't really used it. When I received an email about the release of v.2, I downloaded the trial and installed that (it overwrote my v.1.5 install). It seems that exporting to PNG is disabled in the trial version, which is why I could not figure out how to get the image with mask copied into another program.

Now that I know it's possible, I may as well upgrade.

Thanks again,
David.

[dkummerow]

I purchased version 2 -- it's great!

One thing I've discovered is that the 'save' button only works when in the 'editing source' mode. If you are in the 'edit composition' mode it doesn't work. This means that I can't see how you can export a picture with mask plus the adjustments made to it (fuzziness, etc.) in the 'edit composition' mode. That is, you can only seem to save with picture plus mask ONLY. It would be great if a working 'save' button in 'edit composition' mode could be implemented.

Regards,
David.

[Oscar]

There may be a bit misconception how this works. It is the special blending mode that does the blending. It is not the object that has good mask. When you create rough mask, the mask remains rough. If you would bring the object to photoshop, it will have rough edges because photoshop doesn't have the photoblend blending mode - when you export object with mask from the mask mode - this is exactly how the object is represented in photoblend except thanks to the special blending mode, when it is stacked up with other objects it doesn't look rough.
So as such there is no blending against transparent background because the blending must merge foreground and background colors using the mask as a guide. if there are no background colors then that's it, there is no blending, one variable is missing.

Think of it this way, when you move object, photoblend will re-blend the whole stack (that's why you see the progress bar). A normal photoshop way of putting transparent object against background is simple, it takes very little time in any of photoshop blending modes. Photoblend is doing it in frequency domain to blend foreground image frequency with background image frequency - as a result we have smooth transition on edges. But it is much slower - so even moving object has to calculate lot of things. But there is no good mask created in the process.

One way would be to simulate this by artificially creating mask from the difference between layers in photoblend. We would end up with object that would have some halo around its edges and the halo will have texture of background under the object. So even if we bring this to photoshop you would not be able to do much, if you would replace background in photoshop, boom the object will look weird with a partial halo of the old background.
I was thinking about this for long and maybe I will do some more experiments to have some "baked" export to photoshop with layers, but the usefulness of this would be very questionable.

[dkummerow]

Hi Oscar,

Thanks for taking the time to explain. That helps me to understand and makes sense of what the software is doing.

Still, adding text to a composition would be a good additional feature.

Regards,
David.

[Oscar]

It has been there since half of march. (version 2.1)

pblendtext.jpg (160.25 KiB) Viewed 6967 times

[dkummerow]

Hi Oscar,

Fantastic! Thanks for adding the feature.

I hadn't realised the new version was out with this feature. Downloading now..

Thanks,
David.

[megabizzy]

Hi! Oscar!

Question:

Where is the PhotoBlend 'update' link ($18) for the Version 2.1 ???

I only see the update to get the Version 2.0 on the mediachance.com site.

I think that text option would be good for the work I am doing using PhotoBlend.

Yes, please post or send me a link to your upgrade Version 2.1

Thank you,
Hope to hear something when you have time to get back to me.
Lyn
(megabizzy)