PE5

Aviary Pt. 2

Unfortunately, My good fortune did not last with Aviary. I imported a piece of stock photography that I downloaded from another Web 2.0 resource, PhotoXpress. and attempted to create a piece for their artist showcase.

Tutorial (Intermediate)

My interpretation

From the initial glance, it would seem that I was successful, however this is not where I stopped on this piece, this is where Aviary got on my last nerve. I wanted to do something with the negative space behind the model and play into the desaturated pice motif a bit more.

it took a few attempts to get this where I wanted it, most specifically with the program not allowing me to paste into layers like I wanted. Other times I could not see the work on the layer yet when I was giving the computer instructions there were things going on behind the scenes (at one point I had cut a whole square out of the lady's face, but I did not know it until I had a "window in her head"...yet undo wasn't accessible.

I could dismiss my concerns with the Phoenix program of Aviary as just being lack of familiarity with the platform, yet the interface is very user friendly in terms of streamlined desktop functions and buttons. In addition to that, I am not convinced that I am that far out of the learning curve to get in there and produce considering be that most image manipulating programs do essentially the same things (Photoshop, Gimp, Phoenix, etc)

 at present I am 1-1 with Aviary, (I give the loss, with prejudice, since the tutorial was reproduced fairly successfully, but I wasn't able to move as  fluidly through the program as I though i should be able to)....... I still am unwilling to write Aviary off...I just am not going to get into a gotta be done yesterday project and go there expecting to produce  (not without out a BIT more experience)

JCIII

PE4

Aviary

I've had Aviary as an account yet I have never really used it.  Today seemed to be a descent time for me to play around with to see how significant a tool it is for me to use.

In a nutshell, Aviary, is an online based open source version of Creative Suite, playfully names after various bird species. (That is the best way to explain it). There is a Music Creator, Audio editor, Vector image creator, Image manipulation tool and a color editor and a few other tool available for beta testing for those die hard souls who pay to play on the platform. 

As a simple exercise I went to my most regularly used tool of any design software tool, the vector editor....in this platform, that's Raven. as a regular logo designer, and a old schooler who still likes to actually draw out a concept I prefer the vector editors because may of them will allow me to convert scanned pictures, bitmap images and photos in and turn them to vector images.

After inserting the bitmapped image into Raven, I went to Object menu. (From working with illustrator and Freehand, I know that converting to paths is another way of saying changing a bitmap to vectored objects I pulled in the first bitmapped image I had available (in this case a pic of my sone from one of my last iMovie projects) and used vector editors to convert the bit mapped images to a paths (or vector based images) Raven on of my most frequently used functions

 I actually played with the effects for only a minute or two (and about two unsatisfactory attempts)

Original

Vector

after a playing with the parameters a little bit, I recreated the Bitmapped image in Vector based form. The image is converted to about 32 colors, but the recreation is very good looking for a trial run.

  This image is just to show how the pic was recreated in vector form. The green areas are layers that were highlighted when the I moused over them. 

Not Bad for a trial run......Gotta really take this thing out for a spin.

 I am not the best fan of the fact that this is solely online, as i usually prefer much more freedom with my work, but the results I have by just playing with it for a few minutes merit a further look.
JCIII