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1. The next three commands change the display of the stencil image in the stencil image well Show Stencil Size toggles the display of the size in pixels that 1s shown by default in the lower left corner of the stencil image well if you find that size tag annoying or distracting just turn it off Show Stencil Bounds toggles display of a frame around the stencil image so you can see its exact dimensions Scale Display To Fit toggles whether the stencil image is always shown at full size or is shrunk down to fit inside the stencil image well when it is too large to fit otherwise When you are working with a very large stencil image both options may be useful for different purposes The last two menu items Use Dave Stencil and Use Dave s Foot Stencil set the stencil image to premade stencils that are useful for testing and demonstrations You have already seen the Dave stencil Dave s Foot is an advanced stencil discussed in a later section of this manual The final image action menu Fig 23 is essentially parallel to the stencil action menu with a variety of commands aimed at working with the final image and its image well Copy Image Save Image Show Image Size Show Image Bounds Scale Display To Fit White Background Light Background Dark Background Black Background Checkered Background Figure 23 The Final Image Action Menu The Copy Image and Save Image commands will export the final imag2. Aquatint User Manual Last modified September 1 2004 By Ben Haller Copyright 2004 Stick Software This is the PDF version of Aquatint s manual for printing and offline use For an online HTML version of this manual that may be more up to date please visit http www sticksoftware com software AquatintManual html Aquatint is an application designed to assist you in creating images that fit in with Apple s Aqua user interface appearance This manual assumes that you have already downloaded a copy of the latest version of Aquatint version 1 1 if not visit Aquatint s main page at http www sticksoftware com software Aquatint html It also assumes that you know all the basics of using the Macintosh in Mac OS X including using the mouse menus and windows and opening and saving files Finally you will need a graphics application of some sort to create your stencil images this is described in more detail below in the section Making a Stencil This manual is somewhere between a tutorial and a reference manual If you are using Aquatint for the first time it is recommended that you read through the sections in order as they do build on each other However once you have the gist of Aquatint you can jump into any section for a refresher on the topic it covers The sections kind of assume you are working through the tutorial in Aquatint as you read but enough example images and UI snapshots are provided that you probably don t n
3. The Action Menu Buttons These buttons pull down into menus when clicked The same menus are also available as context menus by right clicking or control clicking on the stencil and final image wells but it is easier to just use the action menu buttons for most people The stencil action menu Fig 22 has a variety of commands aimed at customizing the stencil image Paste Stencil Open Stencil Invert Stencil Adjust Stencil Size Show Stencil Size Show Stencil Bounds Scale Display To Fit Use Dave Stencil Use Dave s Foot Stencil Figure 22 The Stencil Action Menu The Paste Stencil and Open Stencil commands will replace the stencil image with the image on the clipboard or in a file You can also drag a new stencil image into the stencil image well from the Finder if you like Once you have opened your stencil image you may want to alter it in some simple ways Invert Stencil simply swaps black for white and white for black in your stencil image making the inside of the stencil outside and vice versa This can be useful if you accidentally drew your stencil in white on black instead of black on white as well as for other special situations Adjust Stencil Size can make your stencil image larger or smaller by adding or subtracting margins on its edges this can make room for a shadow effect that is larger than you had planned upon or can fine tune the centering and alignment of your final image
4. Bug The point in Aquatinted Dave that is directly under the Rainbow Bug will receive the Hue slider s chosen color As you move away from that point the hue will shift going around the color wheel to visit all the colors of the rainbow The setting of the Rainbow Speed circular slider governs how quickly the hue changes in different directions When a circular rainbow is chosen with the radio control the pattern made by the rainbow will form circles or ovals sometimes very flat ovals that may look linear around the Rainbow Bug point When a linear rainbow is chosen the pattern will be linear changing fastest along the angle the Rainbow Speed slider is set to and not changing at all at 90 degrees off of that angle If this still isn t clear try playing with the controls a little bit more The basic point is since the Rainbow effect is based upon the hue chosen with the Hue slider changing the value of that slider gives you a multitude of rainbow effects to choose from When you combine that with the ability to move the center of the effect and to change the speed of the rainbow a virtually infinite variety of rainbows from the most subtle nuances of hue to garish multicolored extravaganzas are possible Even if the controls don t make a great deal of sense to you you can just fiddle with them until you get the effect you want it works for me gt Also note that if you want to adjust the position of the Rainbow Speed circular slider mor
5. Once you have received your code you should click the Enter Code button in the Registration panel and enter your registration name and code You can request that your code be resent if you have lost it or never received it at http www sticksoftware com register lostcode html Comments on Aquatint suggestions for future products and other feedback are welcomed at support sticksoftware com And if you make cool tinted images that you think we d get a kick out of send em on Thanks for your support
6. in the previous section This is because they are based upon the Hue slider so it seemed wise to cover that first The Rainbow controls are found below the Appearance sliders at the bottom left of the window They are shown in Fig 18 Rainbow Ww Apply rainbow f Linear J Circular 0403 0244 Figure 18 The Rainbow controls The checkbox on top is the basic on off switch for the Rainbow effect as a whole The radio buttons on the bottom switch the Rainbow effect between being linear and being circular Finally the circular slider on the right is called the Rainbow Speed slider and you guessed it controls the speed of the Rainbow effect in a way that is somewhat hard to describe but quite intuitive after a few seconds of playing with it Turn on the Rainbow effect with the Apply rainbow checkbox and then try changing the two other controls to see what they do A few examples of the Rainbow effect are shown in Figure 19 Figure 19 The Rainbow effect A little explanation is in order on this one The way the Rainbow effect works is simple The hue chosen by the Hue slider is pinned to one spot on your image By default that spot is in the center of your image but it can be moved It is indicated by the small orange bug on the source image view where Original Dave 1s displayed Fig 20 called the Rainbow Bug You can click anywhere on the source image to move the bug around to different spots Figure 20 The Rainbow
7. panel Fig 24 can be brought up using the Preferences menu item in the main Aquatint menu It provides a few customizations aimed at more advanced users who want to streamline the application for themselves Ww Show tooltips in Aquatint document windows wv Show a rainbow strip under the Hue slider to aid color selection When saving or copying aquatinted images Default to flattening onto a white background _ Default to flattening onto a black background _ Default to using transparency for experts only Figure 24 The Preferences Panel The first checkbox Show tooltips turns tooltips in Aquatint s document windows on and off Once you re familiar with the app the tooltips can get annoying since they pop up helpfully whenever your cursor is over any control in the document window If you get to the point where you no longer want them turn them off here The second checkbox Show a rainbow strip turns the rainbow strip under the hue slider in the document window on and off It is intended as a helpful cue to the user regarding what color corresponds to each point of the slider but it might be a little flashy and obtrusive for some users and so it can be turned off The final control When saving or copying governs the choice Aquatint defaults to when you are saving or copying the final aquatinted image You will still be asked what you want to do about the transparency of the final image every time y
8. Aquatint from the disk image it is distributed on into the folder where you wish to install it After it has been copied you may eject and throw away the distribution disk image It 1s recommended that you do not run Aquatint directly off of the disk image If you are unfamiliar with the use of disk images dmg files you can read more about disk images at http www sticksoftware com register diskimages html To uninstall Aquatint simply drag Aquatint from your hard drive to the trash No further setup is required Once you ve got Aquatint copied to a standard location just double click it in the Finder to launch it It will come up with an untitled window for you to work in Introducing Dave An introduction to Aquatint s document window The untitled window you get at startup is already set up with a stencil image on the left a black stick figure silhouette which happens to be the Stick Software logo Fig 1 His name is Dave he ll be our companion throughout this documentation Figure 1 Original Dave On the right side of the window is the Aquatinted version of Dave Fig 2 This image was just created by Aquatint from the stencil in the fraction of a second after Aquatint first launched Aquatint can apply this effect with a wide variety of different parameters to any stencil image you give it That s the whole point of Aquatint to create aquatinted images like this one of Dave These images are 100 ready to be used
9. Fig 27 MI use stencil s Saturation 0 500 emer use stencil s _ Brightness 0 500 f use stencil s Figure 27 The Override Sliders When each of these is checked it indicates that that value hue saturation or brightness should be taken from the stencil not from the slider s value The value of the slider may still be significant in some respects in the Dave s Foot example the color chosen on the hue slider is used for the hue of the main sole of the foot because that part of the stencil is black i e has no hue information in it to communicate to Aquatint As you may be gathering advanced stencils are complex and well advanced The faint of heart meaning anybody who does not know off the top of their head how to make a 24 bit color TIFF with an 8 bit alpha channel the file format for advanced stencils should not attempt this and should not expect tech support from Stick Software if they do Every image editor Photoshop GraphicConverter etc has a different way of making images with alpha channels such as those required for advanced stencils and they are always changing their user interfaces and we simply can t help users through using other applications beyond our own If that warning didn t faze you however here s a little more information The alpha channel of the stencil defines the inside and outside information for advanced stencils It is effectively the same as the 8 bit grays
10. as the icons for files or applications images for web pages corporate logos or any other purpose Figure 2 Aquatinted Dave The main thing to notice about Aquatinted Dave right now besides how groovy he is is that he s much smaller than Original Dave the stencil This is because of the setting of the Final Size slider located in the lower right of the window Fig 3 Final size 0 500 0 0 0 25 0 50 0 75 1 0 Figure 3 The Final Size slider Try playing with that slider now to see what it does Notice that if you select a size close to full Aquatinted Dave s edges get somewhat rough and chunky looking As you get down towards 1 2 he gets much smoother This is unfortunately part and parcel with the way Aquatint does its magic internally For this reason it is recommended that you start out with a stencil image somewhere from two to four times as large on each side as the final image you want to make The shrinking down of the image in the final step is called antialiasing and it allows Aquatint to smooth out the rough edges seen near full size As you move the Final Size slider notice the numbers in the lower right of the final image well Fig 4 Those are the size in pixels of the final image you are generating The numbers in the lower left of the stencil image well are the original size the size of your stencil in other words You can use these numbers to ensure that you are generating a final image
11. cale information in a standard stencil The other 24 bits of color information define the hue saturation and brightness for each pixel in the usual way If you only want to define hues and leave saturation and brightness up to the sliders in Aquatint that s fine just check the override sliders according to the usage you want We here at Stick Software don t actually have any idea what the possibilities are for what you could make an advanced stencil do It might be interesting to take full color photographs logos and such slap an alpha channel onto them to define which parts of the image you want to tint and let Aquatint go wild with it It is obviously a very powerful technique it is up to you to figure out how best to wield that power We ll close this section with an example stencil and final image Fig 28 that we made to test advanced stencils STICK SOFTWARE SOFTWARE Figure 28 An Advanced Stencil and its result If you make any really cool advanced stencils we d love to see them Notes A few additional thoughts Here s the place in this manual where we ve thrown the miscellaneous items that don t fit anywhere else e John Geylense of Apple has asked that I add a cautionary note to this manual please don t make custom Aqua style user interface elements unless absolutely necessary One of the great things about the Mac is the consistency of its user interface from app to app and if every app starts having its own weird li
12. e onto the clipboard or into a file this is how you get your aquatinted image out of Aquatint and into wherever you plan to use it You can also drag the final image out of the final image well with a click drag mouse action When you copy or save the final image you will be asked whether you want the final image to be flattened onto a white or black background or to keep its full transparency if you drag the final image out you will always get the full transparency version of it Please note that images with transparency can be difficult to work with many applications do not correctly support them at all and those that do are often confusing and idiosyncratic in their treatment of the transparency information Please do not contact Stick Software about difficulties in working with transparent images this is a support issue for the company that made the application you re trying to use the final image in not for us We cannot provide support in how to use Photoshop which we can t even afford a copy of or wherever else your final aquatinted image ends up in your workflow It is recommended that you simply flatten your aquatinted images onto a black or white background to avoid these issues entirely unless you are experienced in working with image transparency The next three commands change the display of the final image in the final image well Show Image Size toggles the display of the size in pixels that is shown by default in the lower ri
13. e precisely you can hold down the lt option gt key while you drag its knob and the movement of the mouse will be scaled down to produce a smaller change in the control Making a Stencil A quick guide So far we ve worked only with the default stencil Dave But of course the great power of Aquatint lies in the fact that it can perform all of these effects on any arbitrary stencil not just on Dave This section will describe how to make and use your own stencil Stencils are very simple they are just grayscale images Point which are black are considered inside the stencil points which are white are outside Shades in between may be used to make the edges of the stencil fuzzy but that is not necessary a sharply black and white stencil will work fine particularly if you re using the Final Size slider to reduce and antialias your final image as is always recommended So to make a stencil you would typically start by deciding what size final image you want You might want to make an OS X icon for example which would mean you want a final image of 128x128 pixels Then you multiply that size by the antialiasing reduction you intend to apply with the Final Size slider a 4x reduction is a good idea when possible so that gives us a stencil size of 512x512 Now go to your image editing application Photoshop GraphicConverter whatever make a new 512x512 image draw your stencil into it and save it somewhere as a TIFF or JPEG file Your
14. eed to do that if you don t want to Please send comments on this manual to us at support sticksoftware com Thanks Contents Page 2 Installation amp Setup Where and how to install Aquatint Page 3 Introducing Dave An introduction to Aquatint s document window Page 5 Shadowing The shadow controls Page 7 Transparency The alpha control Page 8 Glossiness The margin control Page 9 Color amp Contrast The appearance controls Page 11 Rainbows How to capture your very own Page 13 Making a Stencil A quick guide Page 14 The Action Menus Power user operations Page 17 Presets Duplicating standard Aqua appearances Page 18 Preferences Expert customizations Page 19 Documents The Aquatint document model Page 20 Advanced Stencils Limitless possibilities Page 22 Notes A few additional thoughts Page 23 Registration Aquatint and the Shareware model Installation amp Setup Where and how to install Aquatint To install Aquatint simply copy it to your local hard drive It does not need to be installed anywhere in particular you can put it wherever you like However Applications and Applications are standard folders for applications in Mac OS X which may be used where the symbol represents the current user s home directory Typically Applications contains applications that are installed system wide for all users of the machine while Applications contains applications private to the current user Drag
15. elves using the Blue theme or the Graphite theme they can draw themselves the way Aqua controls look in an active or an inactive window they can correctly change appearance when disabled and their knobs highlight correctly when they are being dragged All of these appearances were generated very quickly and easily using the Presets feature of Aquatint If you are interested in reading more about SSCircularSlider which is an open source class that may be used free of charge in applications you write go to Stick Software s page on it at http www sticksoftware com software CircularSlider html Presets are very easy to use With your stencil of choice open in a document window go to the Settings menu and select one The appropriate control values are changed to match the preset you chose Only the settings on the left hand side of the window are changed the Rainbow effect is turned off and the Hue Saturation Brightness and Contrast sliders are set to the values for the preset chosen The settings on the right hand side of the window are not changed you would typically want to set them up to make your stencil look the way you wanted it to look and then not change those settings again as you generated different tinted images using the presets This allows you to generate multiple different tinted images from different presets while maintaining a consistent margin alpha shadow and final size Preferences Expert customizations The Preferences
16. eparately using the buttons in the document window this model may seem slightly confusing at first However it is really no different from any other application s document model Advanced Stencils Limitless possibilities The simple picture of stencils painted in the preceding sections is not the whole story In fact Aquatint supports a more complex type of stencil called an advanced stencil You can see an example of an advanced stencil by choosing the Use Dave s Foot Stencil menu item from the stencil action menu As you can see Fig 25 this stencil has color information it is not a simple black and white silhouette Figure 25 The Dave s Foot Stencil The idea here is that the stencil can dictate more information to Aquatint than just inside or outside In the Dave s Foot stencil for example the stencil is communicating the colors of the individual toes and those colors are preserved in the colors of the toes in the final image Fig 26 The stencil can also communicate saturation and brightness information to Aquatint Figure 26 The Dave s Foot Final Image When using an advanced stencil the values chosen on the hue saturation and brightness sliders may be overridden partially or completely by the information in the stencil or the values chosen on the sliders may override the stencil Which happens is controlled by checkboxes that appear to the right of the sliders when an advanced stencil is being used
17. get annoying you may have several changes you know you want to make and waiting for Aquatinted Dave to redisplay is getting you down In that case just click the Aquatint button to disconnect Aquatinted Dave from the controls make all of your changes and then click the Aquatint button again to turn tinting back on and see your new final image Shadowing The shadow controls Having started by explaining the Final Size slider we re now going to work our way backwards through the controls because the controls in the upper left of the window are the hardest to understand so we want to have as much experience under our belts as possible before we try to tackle them So the next controls we ll look at are the shadowing controls Fig 6 Shadow 0 500 none dark TES diffuse sharp Figure 6 The shadowing controls There are three controls here The top slider is the Shadow Density slider it controls how dark the shadow generated is The bottom slider is the Shadow Diffusiveness slider it controls whether the shadow generated has sharp edges or very diffuse edges The control on the right is a circular slider you may not have seen this sort of control before since it was invented for Aquatint although it has been released by Stick Software to the public as open source so by the time you read this manual you may in fact have seen it in some other application It works exactly like a normal slider click and drag the thu
18. ght corner of the final image well if you find that size tag annoying or distracting just turn it off Show Image Bounds toggles display of a frame around the final image so you can see its exact dimensions Scale Display To Fit toggles whether the final image is always shown at full size or is shrunk down to fit inside the final image well when it is too large to fit otherwise When you are working with a very large final image both options may be useful for different purposes The last five items in the final image action menu control the background shown behind the final image it can be anything from white to black or it can be a checkerboard pattern that can be useful in seeing the effects of partial transparency in the shadow and edges of the final image This setting is only for the display of the final image it does not affect the appearance of the final image as exported to the clipboard or a file on disk Presets Duplicating standard Aqua appearances Aquatint can be used to make images that bear a very close resemblance to the sorts of images Apple has made for Aqua For example the Rainbow Speed and Shadow Position circular sliders use a custom control written by Stick Software that use images generated by Aquatint to draw themselves To my extremely perfectionist eye they are not an exact match for Apple s images but they are close enough that most users probably wouldn t notice the difference The circular sliders can draw thems
19. igher With JPEG you may notice compression artifacts that will decrease the sharpness and quality of your final image However if saved at the highest possible quality JPEG images are a reasonable stencil format too and are typically smaller on disk than TIFF images for what that 1s worth Finally it should be noted that other bitmap file formats such as GIF and PNG can also be used as stencils Which file formats are supported for stencils is actually governed by OS X not by Aquatint so it 1s subject to change in the future primarily by addition of new supported file types one hopes Once you have made your stencil image you can get it into Aquatint in lots of different ways You can drag it from the Finder to the stencil image well in Aquatint s document window You can use the Open Stencil command in the stencil Action menu covered in the next section Or you can paste the stencil in having copied it to the clipboard in your image editing application this may not work depending upon how your image editing application represents images on the clipboard however the other two methods are more recommended As soon as your stencil is in Aquatint it will automatically be analyzed and tinted according to the current control settings just like Dave The Action Menus Power user operations There are only two controls on the document window we haven t discussed yet the stencil and final image action menus Fig 21 Figure 21
20. l action menu to open a new stencil image This is not opening a new document it is merely replacing the stencil in the document you already have open Similarly you can choose the Save Image menu item in the final image action menu and save your tinted image this is not saving the document as a whole but just the tinted image On the other hand if you save your document by hitting Command S or by selecting the Save menu item from the File menu you are truly saving the whole document stencil control settings and final image When you re open that document by hitting Command O or by selecting the Open menu item from the File menu you will get back all three of those components So it is quite possible to use Aquatint without ever opening or saving an Aquatint document You can use the new untitled window as your work site import a stencil in change your control settings and save your final tinted image to disk all without opening or saving an Aquatint document The problem is when you quit Aquatint those intermediate steps will be lost If you wanted to change your settings just a bit and generate a new tinted image you would have to go through the whole process again For this reason Aquatint lets you save Aquatint documents to disk They preserve your stencil and your settings so you can recreate your tinted images exactly and refine them over time as works in progress Because you can open stencils and save tinted images s
21. lider in action can be seen in Fig 12 Figure 12 Different degrees of margin How much margin you want depends upon your design goals of course You may want to be careful with high margin settings when working with stencils that have sharp corners or any sort of concavities however at high margin settings the aquatinting process can start to display artifacts that you may not like These are a consequence of the way the program works internally but you can think of the problem as being that liquids naturally tend to produce more convex gently curving shapes and that because of that Aquatint has a hard time molding the shape of the liquid to some stencils That s not really far from the truth Color amp Contrast The appearance controls Next we re going to look at the Appearance controls These are the four sliders on the left side you can see them all in Fig 13 Hue fj Saturation 0 500 Brightness 0 500 Contrast Figure 13 The Appearance controls From top to bottom we have the hue saturation brightness and contrast sliders Also note the small color well to the left of the Hue slider this is the Hue well The rainbow strip under the hue slider may not be visible for you it can be turned on and off in the Preferences panel Before you play with these sliders go back to the default settings by pressing Command D and then turn off the Rainbow effect by unchecking the Apply rainbow to hue checkbox below
22. mb around to wherever you want it The only difference is you can drag the thumb to any position on the circular base of the slider it moves in two dimensions This circular slider is the Shadow Position slider it controls the position of the shadow relative to the tinted image The best way to learn how these controls work is to play with them Just try moving all three controls around freely within their limits you can t hurt anything If you want to return all the controls in the window to their original settings you can press Command D or select Default Settings from the Settings menu at any time Note that moving the Shadow Density slider all the way to the left to none makes the shadow disappear completely Also note that if you want to adjust the position of the Shadow Position circular slider more precisely you can hold down the lt option gt key while you drag its knob and the movement of the mouse will be scaled down to produce a smaller change in the control A few different shadow effects applied to the standard Aquatinted Dave can be seen in Fig 7 Figure 7 Different kinds of shadows You may have seen while playing with the shadow controls a little red exclamation point button appear below the label Shadow Fig 8 Figure 8 The out of bounds shadow warning This indicates that your shadow has gone beyond the boundaries of the final image The final image size is calculated by directly scaling the original s
23. of exactly the size you intend If these numbers are not visible to you they may have been turned off by a preference this will be covered in a later section 58 x 119 Figure 4 The final image size Also as you move the Final Size slider notice that the little textfield just to the left of it is changing its displayed value ranging from 0 000 to 1 000 All of the sliders in Aquatint have numeric textfields associated with them you can use these textfields to see the exact number you have chosen for a setting and you can click and type new values into them as well to get more precision than you could achieve using the sliders All of the numeric textfields work in the same way so they will not be mentioned again in this documentation One last thing to try before we re done with this section Click on the big button dead center in your Aquatint window called the Aquatint button Fig 5 Figure 5 The Aquatint button Notice the message that just appeared over Aquatinted Dave What that message is trying to tell you is that all aquatinting has been turned off Go play with the Final Size slider a bit more and notice that Aquatinted Dave doesn t change at all Now click on the Aquatint button again and notice that Aquatinted Dave immediately updates to reflect the change you made to the Final Size slider The point of doing this is that on slower machines the way that Aquatinted Dave continuously updates as you change controls may
24. ou Save or copy it the choice here is merely which option will be selected by default in that sheet Advanced users typically want to export the final image with full transparency so they can flatten it onto the background of their choice or in some cases never flatten it at all so they can avoid having to choose that every time by choosing it once as their preferred default here Unless you are experienced in working with transparency in images you should probably leave this setting on one of the two flattening options so that the transparency of the final image will be flattened out for you by Aquatint If you find after working with Aquatint for a while that there are other preferences you d like to see in this panel please let us know As anybody accustomed to our apps knows we are not averse to the addition of more preferences gt Documents The Aquatint document model We ve put this off until the end because it helps to understand the basic model of Aquatint before looking at how Aquatint documents work As you ve seen the process of generating an Aquatinted image involves several parts a source image which acts as a stencil a bunch of control settings and a final image generated by Aquatint All three of these parts are shown in an Aquatint document window because all three parts are considered to comprise an Aquatint document With an Aquatint document window open you can use the Open Stencil menu item in the stenci
25. ownload Link to Disk or whatever similar menu item you get you want them to be downloaded to your local hard drive not just displayed in your browser Your browser may not even support display of TIFF files many don t http www sticksoftware com software aqimages DaveStencil tiff The Dave Stencil http www sticksoftware com software aqimages DaveFootStencil tiff The Dave s Foot Stencil Registration Aquatint and the Shareware model As a closing note we d like to remind our readers that Aquatint is a shareware product It is required that you pay the shareware fee if you use Aquatint beyond a trial usage Aquatint costs 15 for non commercial uses 50 for commercial uses defined as using it to produce art for any commercial or for profit use We trust you to correctly differentiate between commercial and non commercial uses If in doubt or if you are using it commercially but feel 50 is too much pay as much as it is worth to you 15 is better than no payment at all Information on how to pay and other registration details can be found at http www sticksoftware com register html or you can pay online by clicking on one of the payment links in Aquatint s registration panel Or if you wish you can mail a check or money order in US made out to Stick Software to Stick Software P O Box 610121 Redwood City CA 94061 0121 USA You must include a valid email address with your payment in order to receive your registration code
26. st this out first go back to default settings by pressing Command D this should reset the changes you made to the shadow in the previous step Now try moving the Alpha slider all the way to the left and then back to the right watching Aquatinted Dave as you do so A few examples of the Alpha slider as applied to the standard Aquatinted Dave can be seen in Fig 10 Figure 10 Different degrees of alpha Usually you will want the Alpha slider all the way to the right at opaque Occasionally you will want it all the way to the left at transparent because you will be using Aquatint simply to generate a nice diffuse shadow image from a stencil You may never need the positions in between but they re there for you just in case Glossiness The margin control The next control we ll look at is the Margin control Fig 11 This control is at the heart of what Aquatint does it controls the glossy liquid appearance of Aquatinted Dave Margin 0 500 emmm narrow Wide Figure 11 The Margin slider A picture being worth a thousand words let s just try it out Reset to default settings again by hitting Command D And then move the Margin slider back and forth and see what happens As you can see it takes you from a very flat looking Dave with an embossed edge all the way to a glossy rounded Dave more liquid in appearance than even the appearances of the controls that typify Apple s Aqua user interface A few examples of the Margin s
27. stencil is done Because Aquatint uses the stencil as a grayscale image ideally your stencil would be an 8 bit 256 shade grayscale image You can typically set this in your image editing application either at the point you first create the new image or at any time thereafter Usually the command to do this is something like 256 Grays in GraphicConverter in the Grayscale submenu of the Colors submenu of the Picture menu or Grayscale and Indexed Color an Photoshop Elements in the Mode submenu of the Image menu However this is not essential you can actually use a full color 24 bit or millions of colors image as a stencil and Aquatint will convert each color pixel to a shade of gray that most closely matches As long as you stick to drawing with shades of gray you shouldn t be surprised by the result you get And even if you draw in color or simply use a color image like a digital photo the stencil Aquatint derives will just be a grayscale version of the color image The passing reference to TIFF or JPEG is also important Aquatint needs stencils to be in one of these bitmap file formats not in a resolution independent format like PDF If you want to use a resolution independent application like Illustrator to make your stencils you may need to export the stencil to a bitmap format as the default save format will not be compatible with Aquatint As for whether to use TIFF or JPEG TIFF is recommended as its quality is h
28. tencil size by the setting of the Final Size slider no extra margin is added to make room for the shadow So depending upon how much margin your original stencil has around the edges there may not be much extra room for the shadow effect and the shadow may fall partially outside of the final image s bounds This is what the red exclamation point warns you of To fix this problem you would typically either add margins to your original stencil to make room for the shadow you wanted or use a less diffuse shadow positioned closer to the tinted image Either of these actions might give you enough room so that your shadow fits nicely If you decide that you want to add margins to your stencil image to make room for your chosen shadow effect you can simply click the shadow warning button and confirm the Adjust Stencil Size sheet that is then presented to you The values filled in on that sheet will adjust your stencil to exactly make room for the current shadow effect Transparency The alpha control The next control moving backwards through the window s controls is the Alpha slider Fig 9 Alpha 1 000 y transparent opaque Figure 9 The Alpha slider Alpha in the language of image processing refers to transparency Something with full alpha is completely opaque something with no alpha or zero alpha is completely transparent And that s exactly what this slider lets you control the transparency or opacity of the tinted image To te
29. the Appearance controls You can see that this changes Aquatinted Dave to have a more solid consistent color that matches the color shown in the Hue well This will make it clearer what the Appearance controls do Now that the Rainbow effect is off try sliding each of the four sliders to the left to the right and finally back to a position close to where it started so you have a fairly normal starting point for looking at what the next slider you try does The Hue slider as you have found changes the basic color of Aquatinted Dave Although it s a linear slider what you re doing in essence is moving around the rim of the color wheel as you change this control you are moving in a circle For this reason you end up where you began Aquatinted Dave is red when the hue slider is both far left and far right In between are all the shades of orange yellow green blue purple and magenta that you would expect The rainbow strip under the hue slider shows the color you will get for each point on the slider A swatch of the hue chosen is shown in the hue well to the left of the slider to make it easier to tell what variation is due to Aquatinting the Rainbow effect and other factors Examples of the Hue slider s effects can be see in Fig 14 Figure 14 The effect of the Hue slider The Saturation slider controls how saturated or strong the colors in Aquatinted Dave are At one end Dave becomes composed of shades of gray with no color informa
30. tion in him at all At the other end the colors become so vivid that some detail in Dave may become washed out Examples of the Saturation slider s effects can be see in Fig 15 Figure 15 The effect of the Saturation slider The Brightness slider controls the image brightness in the same way as it does on your TV At one end Dave will turn black or nearly so At the other end he will become as bright as he can be not necessarily white but rather the brightest possible shades of the color chosen by the Hue and Saturation sliders Examples of the Brightness slider s effects can be see in Fig 16 Figure 16 The effect of the Brightness slider The Contrast slider is also similar to the one you may have on your TV It makes the darkest areas even darker and the brightest areas even brighter Alternatively moving it the other way it washes everything out to a more or less medium brightness Low contrast images tend to appear sort of dusty flat and matte high contrast images tend to appear shiny or metallic Examples of the Contrast slider s effects can be see in Fig 17 Figure 17 The effect of the Contrast slider The examples given so far all changed just one slider from the default values so you could see what these settings did in isolation But of course they can all be changed together for a wide variety of effects Rainbows How to capture your very own As you may have noticed we skipped over the Rainbow controls
31. ttle custom Aqua UI widgets this will be lost I in return would note that this goal would be easier to achieve if Apple provided a more complete set of UI widgets gt However I do basically agree with John s point Use this app cautiously folks We don t want to end up crappifying the whole Mac UI for the sake of a little flash e Those who want to use Aquatint to make Finder icons for apps or files will this to be fairly easy on 10 3 You can copy the final image using the Copy Image final image action menu item select the file folder or application you want to iconify in the Finder do Get Info on that Finder item click on the icon at the top of the Get Info window and paste the copied image in In 10 2 this procedure did not work as I recall but in 10 3 it does at least for me If you have difficulties making this work for you you might find the freeware utility Pic2Icon helpful for you it s a great little app that makes icons from pictures very smoothly e A fun thing I ve been playing with is aquatinting images made by Fracture Stick Software s fractal screensaver http www sticksoftware com software Fracture html I ll leave you with an example this is an unretouched final image from Aquatint e If you want to examine the Dave and Dave s Foot stencils to see how they were constructed you can download their original TIFF files from our website Use the links that follow but control click on them and select D
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