Hi Friends,
I've just been getting an image ready to post, following the Competition #4 theme of birthdays. At 1st I thought I might actually enter the competition, but I'm not sure I'm good enough to have my work in the Open Clipart Library So I'm probably about ready to post it in the Work in Progress forum, for comments, suggestions and/or advice. But in finishing it up, several questions come to mind, that I haven't had to handle yet, since this is the 1st really "finished" work I've done. I've done a lot of practicing with bits and pieces and various studies with certain tools and/or processes, but I haven't actually ever considered presenting anything, until this.

So this image has a lot (or what I consider a lot) of both shading and highlights. As far as highlights go, using gradients in some areas, and blurs in others, in this case it's mostly white or slightly off-white. Parts of the gradients and/or blurs fall outside the outline of the image, but since it's basically white on white in these areas, it doesn't show. And until now, I thought that was fine, because it still looks like what I want. But as I think about "finishing" it for "presentation", I realize maybe I, or a potential user of the image, might want to put it on a dark background. But if they did, then little pale blurry blotches and wisps are going to show up where the ends of the highlights fall outside the outline of the image.

So how do professionals finish their work, so it can be used on any background? Mostly I've been thinking they must clip or mask the whole thing, after it's finished, to exclude these areas from the final product. But I'd be interested to hear any comments about this.

As I was cleaning up the canvas of all the bits and pieces where I created various parts of the image, and did a really lot of experimenting, I thought I should do something to kind of "lock" my image together, so it doesn't unintentially "come apart". Because my goodness, there ended up to be 19 layers, some with up to 10 subpaths and others with 10 or 12 gradients. (I'm sure it could be done with less, but I'm still learning.) So I rubberband selected the whole image, and Grouped it. I thought that would keep it from coming apart, and so far it has. But it also crammed everying into one layer, and so far I haven't been able to ungroup it, to edit. I may eventually figure out how to undo this mistake But for now, I'm thinking there must be some way of making sure finished images "stick together" all the layers, objects, paths, etc. so that I or any other potential users of the image can't inadvertently change it, yet still have it remain with all the original layers, etc, and still remain editable. (Btw, I did save a "backup" copy of the image in all its parts and pieces, so I'm still ok, if I can't undo the grouping.)

How do professionals handle this? So far, I haven't come up with any reasonable guesses, so I would really appreciate comments about this.

Is there some way to attach the artist's name to the image? Not exactly like signing a painting, but just part of the file, so that it goes with the image, where ever the image is used? Also, I've noticed that most graphic artists don't sign their work...none that I've noticed, anyway. Why is this?

Also, if anyone wants to share other related gems of computer graphics/graphic artist wisdom, I would be most appreciative

And as always, many thanks for your generous and most excellent help and support

Hi Brynn. I think you basically answered your own question for the first part.

The vector format is designed for scaling. So if someone intends to print a vector as a raster type image, they would use the original vector, scale it to the intended size...then convert it to a raster format that supports transparencies. PNG, TGA, Gif.

After that conversion it is possible to edit or erase out the ghostly parts of the converted vector in it's own layer in a raster program like Gimp, Photoshop, Artweaver, etc...

The other way to make sure everything will work out is to design your image so that nothing spills over the intended viewing area. It really depends on if you want to scale and reproduce the image as a 'cutout' or a traditional scene.

I hope you get what I mean...It's sort of hard to explain

brynn wrote:Is there some way to attach the artist's name to the image? Not exactly like signing a painting, but just part of the file, so that it goes with the image, where ever the image is used?

You can fill in the Creator field in the metadata dialog (File -> Document Metadata). But this will usually be lost if the file is converted to some other format.

Hi!
It would be nice to see your creation in different stages so it be easy to comment each part of it.
In addition, after a long work with Inkscape I reduced the usage of the gradients dramatically, so now it takes less time and less CPU... and it looks nice!
My advice is to separate each completed object (such as a cake for example) to one layer (with sub layers) and when you don't need it just "switch it off" to free CPU a bit...
In such way you can edit each object alone (because of sublayers) without other objects.
In addition, you CAN add your signature with some cool small image (it's CG after all). It will add some charm to your creation. And you will be able to show it to anyone who will doubt that this is YOUR picture
Hope it helps...

But I'm not a real pro

Thanks for your comments, Grant, sas and DenDem.
Very helpful

"how do the pros handle these issues?" --coz they're pro! lol