Astro Lesson #32: TV.or.not.TV

Seeing as we just spent ages learning how to make a picture appear interlaced or TV-screenish, we thought retrogrrl outta show you how it's done. It's an effect that's popular, easy to do and fun to show at parties. Let's go, shall we? Don't know what the heck we are jabbering about - have a look ...

 

See the pretty lined background? That's it. Exciting, isn't it...

The easy way create this effect is to use a custom filter in whatever graphics program you use. A comprehensive list of filters can be found here many of which cost buckaroonies. One on this list is however FREE, yes, say it with us, FREE. Entrelacement can be downloaded FREE and stuck in your program's plugin directory. I guess we should mention that the whole thing is in French, but we managed to get along with it just fine and dandy, and besides, in case you missed something - it's FREE.

Begin with a pic of some sorts. This effect looks more convincing when used with a photo, but there is no reason not to try it with a flat graphic. Well, what have we here? Retrogrrl's award no less - that will do nicely.

It is a good idea to utilise your graphic program's ability to operate in layers, or objects as Photopaint terms the concept. When applying any effect there is often a good deal of tweaking to be done and keeping your original image on a separate layer allows you to experiment and get it 'just right', or scrap it and start anew.

We want to end up with 2 layers for our project - the original pic, and a flat fill color, treated with the scan line filter.

And here she be in Photopaint, with a little green arrow pointing to the new object (or layer) button

Now we want to add a fill to the new object/layer. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the scan fill effect filter needs to have an active selection, meaning it needs to have something to operate on. Now you could just select the image straight off and run the filter over it - nothing wrong with that. Just remember to keep a copy of the original somewhere in case things go horribly wrong, as they are apt to do in the world of graphics. This FREE plugin has quite a few controls, including red,green, blue color sliders (rouge,vert, sacre bleu); spacing of the lines (espacement); opacity (opacite); vertical or horizontal alignment (verti/horiz), however you may want to be a little more fussy and choose a more exact color as an overlay and therefore use Photopaint's (or whatever) merge modes, opacity etc controls. This is what we do. And that was our second reason in case you missed it.

In our example we used a nice greeny fill and dropped the opacity to about 30: this gives the image a hazy look, in keeping with the TV screen effect.

Now we have 2 objects/layers, one being a fill of green. The opacity slider at the bottom is at about the 30 mark. This fades out the fill to a subtle glow. (Note that we had to make sure the fill layer was selected, indicated by it being highlighted in the objects rollup window). Now it's time to do the deed.

Simply select your program's filter menu (Effects in Photopaint) and choose the Enterlacement filter - called 'Jeux de Lignes' in this case. The controls for this filter will popup. You can have a play with them or simply accept the defaults.

Here is our result - all pretty simple really. The fun part is playing with Merge Modes, which are simply calculated methods of applying one layer to another to sharpen up the result.

The following example was created using the 'add' merge mode. It has come up a little brighter in some areas, and defined the scan lines further.

This tends to give the image a little more character and depth. And what a lovely trophy it is too. And no, RG did not pick it up at a garage sale, as has been bandied around in some lunar circles. She got it legit.

If for some reason you are a control freak or simply thumb your nose at filters, or perhaps have a more basic graphics program that won't play nicely with certain filters, you can create your own scan 'fill'. This is then used as a normal fill selection - fill a new object/layer with the 'scanfill' and twiddle the opacity etc as per usual. (In Photopaint, select a new object/layer, Edit > Fill > Bitmap Fill, then point to where you have stored the handmade scan fill.)

An excellent and straightforward tutorial on how to make a scanfill (or video lines) can be found across the galaxy at Grandpa B's place. As he says, you can play with brightness, contrast and lightness to get the exact result you are after.

Ah such fun to be had by all. Til next time when retrogrrl has had her fill of scanning the known universe and makes a landing once more.

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