TUTORIAL THREE:THE WORLD OF STENCILS In the following set of exercises you will learn how to create and use stencils within DeluxePaint III. Although stencils are primarily used for producing quick,uniform lettering by amateur signwriters,they have uses that go far beyond that. Airbrush artists,for example,use stencils(which they call friskets)to cover certain areas of their work while they airbrush other areas. DeluxePaint makes it easy to create a stencil for any part of an image,without the need to redraw the image. All you do is specify the colors that make up the stencil,and DeluxePaint does the rest,even if the image is intricate. Here's how it works:when you make a stencil for a particular set of colors,you lock(and thus protect)any parts of the picture that are made up of those colors. This means that when you have a stencil for a particular set of colors, you cannot paint over those colors until you turn the stencil off. It also means that you can essentially paint a picture backwards,from the foreground to the background,because you can use stencils to mask any foreground objects from the colors you are using for the background objects. BEFORE YOU BEGIN Choose Load from the Picture menu and load the picture named StencilSet from the Lo-res/Tutorial drawer on the Art disk. DISTANT SNOWCAPS The left part of the Stencilset picture shows a distant mountain range behind a green field and under a colorful sky.(If you followed the preceding tutorials, you'll notice that both the sky and the field were created with a Gradient Fill,in a fraction of the time it would take using more traditional techniques.) Note that the mountain range is actually made up of three ranges, with the more distant ones painted in lighter shades than the nearer ones. In this exercise,we will put a snowcap on the most distant range without distrbing any other parts of the picture. This would be a tall order for any other graphic medium,but is surprisingly easy with DeluxePaint. Let's see how DeluxePaint does it: Choose Stencil Make from the effect menu to display the Make Stencil requester. Click Clear,click on Color 9 (the one at the top of the second column),click Invert,and then click Make. MAKE STENCIL LOCKED: CLEAR INVERT MAKE CANCEL Figure 6.6 Make Stencil requester With four simple clicks of the mouse you have created a stencil that locks every color in the picture except Color 9,the color of the most distant mountain range. The first click cleared the picture of any stencils,the second selected the stencil color,the third click inverted the stencil configuration (making everying except Color 9 a stencil),and the fourth made the stencil. To let you know that you have a stencil active,an "S" appears on the Menu Bar. Note that clicking Invert simply inverts the current stencil configuration, saving you the trouble of clicking all the colors except the one you want to paint on. This is useful if you want to paint on one or two selected colors to the exclusion of the rest;if you want to create a stencil to lock only one or a few colors,you don't need to use invert. The next step is to paint the snow on the distant mountain range: Select white as the foreground color,and then select the one-pixel brush and the Airbrush tool. Move the cursor over to the distant mountain range and spray a snowcap on it. Because every color except that of the most distant mountain range has been locked,you can spray without fear of splattering any adjoining colors. Note that although the white you are spraying on the mountain range is one of the locked colors,it is not itself locked while you are applying it. This means that you can paint over it with another color(such as the original color of the mountain,if you don't like the look of the snowcap)just as though it were unlocked. To lock a recently applied color,just select Remake from the Stencil submenu. You don't need to display the Stencil requester again,because the configuration is still as you want it. This also means that you can use the "Again" key (a) to update your stencil,if Remake was your last menu command. The Again rule is simple:press a whenever you want to repeat the immediately preceding menu command,to save you moving the mouse up to the Menu Bar and through menu and submenu options. If your last menu command produced a requester,then pressing a will produce that same requester,without the need for menu selections. SUNRISE IN THE ROCKIES In this exercise,we make the sun rise behind the mountains,so we need to lock every color excep the sky. Here's how: Display the Make Stencil requester.(Color 9 should be the only unlocked color in the requester.) Now click Color 9 to lock it,and then click Colors 1 (black) and 13 through 18(the sky colors)to unlock them.(Color 13 is halfway down the second column,and Color 18 is the second from the top of the third column.) Click Make. You have now locked every color in the landscape except the sky colors. Now let's make the sun rise: Choose Stencil>On/Off from the Effect menu to turn the stencil off. In DeluxePaint III,your stencil affects picking up a brush--you can only pick up areas that are not in the stencil. Since the orange shades in the sun are part of the stencil,you turned off the stencil mementarily to pick up that area of the picture. Click the Brush Selector with the left mouse button,move the large cross-hair over to the sun image(on the far right of the screen)and pick it up with the left mouse button. Move the brush over to the mountain range. Choose Stencil>On/Off from the Effect menu to turn the stencil on. Did you see the sun move behind the mountains and then peek through? This is because every color--except the sky colors and the background--is locked,and so will not accommodate the sun brush. When you are satisfied with the placement of the sun,click the left mouse button to stamp an image of it there. CUTTING SOME Z'S In this exercise we will explore further aspects of DeluxePaint's powerful stencil editor. In particular,you'll see how to turn stencil colors on and off from any part of your picture,not just from the Make Stencil requester. Display the Make Stencil requester and click Clear to clear the stencil. Now move the cursor outside the requester and click the large Z shape with the left mouse button. Click Invert and then click Make to return to the painting screen. Did you notice that when you clicked the Z the Make Stencil requester responded by locking on that color? This means that you can lock and unlock colors directly from your image just by clicking them. Note that each click of the mouse toggles the locking function on and off,just as it does in the requester. And to make it easy to find the colors you want to lock or unlock,you can move the Make Stencil requester to any part of the screen just by moving the cursor to the top of the requester,pressing the left mouse button,and dragging it to a new position. Now let's see what we can do with the stencil we just created: Press the ~(tilde)key to turn off the stencil. Pressing ~ is the same as choosing Stencil>On/Off from the Effects menu. This is a very important keyboard equivalent for working with stencils. Click the Brush Selector and pick up the textured area to the right of the Z. Press the ~(tilde)key to turn on the stencil. Move the cursor over to the Z and watch what happens. Did you see the textured brush appear behind the Z? Because all the colors except the Z are locked,it looks like you're viewing the textured brush through a Z-shaped window. Now,when you place the textured brush behind the Z and click the left mouse button,you will the Z with the textured pattern. THE EYES HAVE IT You may have trouble finding a practical application for this next exercise,but it's fun nonetheless. Display the Make Stencil requester,click Clear,and then click the following colors:7,8,24,28,29,30,and 31. Click Make to complete the transaction. Turn off the stencil. Pick up the two blue circles at the lower right and move them to the face. Turn on the stencil. Because all the colors in the face are now locked,the two circles appear to move behind it. When the circles are directly behind the eyes,you can make the eyes appear to move around just by moving the cursor. You can set the eyes in any position you like just by clicking the left mouse button. If you don't like it,click Undo and try again. FIXING THE BACKGROUND By using a combination of stencils and fixing the background,you can define a stencil by area rather than color. This lets you confine a stencil to a particular area of the page,without forcing you to lock every instance of a particular color. Let's take a closer look: Pick up the small clump of pine trees from the right-hand side of the page(above the blue circles). From the Effect menu,choose Background>Fix. You have just fixed the picture to the background(the "B" in the Menu Bar tells you so),which means you can always return to that picture by clicking CLR. Thus,you can stamp pine trees all over the landscape and then return to the original picture at any time. You can also fix the background successively, updating the picture from the previous "fix." As we saw earlier,you can use the "Again" key(a)to repeat the immediately preceding menu command. For the purpose of this exercise,go ahead and stamp a few clumps of pine trees in front of the closest mountain range. Now let's turn that collection of pine trees into a stencil: From the Stencil submenu,select Lock FG. This last action turned the foreground(i.e.,everything you added to the picture since fixing the background)into a stencil,but without affecting any other part of the picture that uses those same colors. Try it and see. Move your pine-tree brush over to the pine forest and you'll see that your brush goes behind the forest but in from of everything else. You can remove this stencil either by turning the stencil off(selecting On/Off from the Stencil submenu)or making a stencil by locking colors. The color and area methods are mutually exclusive,so using one method automatically negates the other. And as is the case with regular stencils, clicking CLR does not clear the stenciled area--it is protected until you turn it off,just like the fixed background.