Table of Contents
Here is the original picture: The Layer Types The Top Menus Edit contains the following: Selection contains the following: Paint contains the following: Image contains the following: View contains the following: Window contains the following: Help contains the following: Gradients Other Odds and Ends
Also, I didn't talk about the other options on the pen size yet. There's a teal button that looks like a megaphone to the far right of the pixel size area.
Now, the different brushes. If you're in the default mode, not the custom mode, you might see that it says GROUP1. If you click this, you'll see a drop down menu, with GROUP1 through GROUP5 and Oblique. Each has 12 different brushes. That means pixia has a total of 72 different preset brushes you can use! Also, if you click on the "Edit" button when in normal mode, it will open the file of that certain pixel so you can make your own custom pixels easily.
Finally, you might see two bars over the colors area. If you read through this entire tutorial, and you still don't understand Pixia, just try to figure some of it out on your own. I think I covered every inch of pixia there is, not to mention when I downloaded pixia for myself, there was no way of reaching help for the program. Back to top
NOTE: for each effect, I used the FILL TOOL to apply it to the picture. You select "Add", and then "End", and then you press the fill tool.
Utility:
BiorythmGraph - Makes some sort of graph instead of the picture. Use it if you want to put a biorythm graph into a report, something like that..
Calender - This one is pretty neat. It puts the picture you chose in the right hand corner of a premade calender that's actually accurate. It's for the current month.
EdgeLine - Puts a black box in the middle of the picture, just four black lines.
GraphPaper - As its name suggests.. It makes the image gridded by black lines. I'm guessing this would be good for the "gridded image" approach of drawing. To change the size of squares, click "Settings".
Transparent
Thick Transparent - This seems to have little or no effect. If you notice anything that I don't about this effect, please tell me.
Lose Transparent - This seems to have little or no effect. If you notice anything that I don't about this effect, please tell me.
Standard
Edge - Makes the entire picture black except the main contours, which are white or other light colors. Pretty neat looking..
Blur - Blurs the entire image smoothly. It reminds me of those scenes in animated movies where something is so close up that it's very blurry. This gives the same effect.
Reverse - The good old "Invert" that's even on MSPaint.. Makes the entire image the opposite colors of those that it once was.
Relief - Creates a "relief", or emboss, of the current image. Very neat.. it doesn't look as good on the picture I chose though.
Sharpness - Makes the image slightly more vivid, or sharp.
Shadow - Appears like it's trying to make a cast shadow..? Seems like a colorful version of Relief, almost..
Noise
RemoveNoise - This has little effect, just makes it a little less "jpeg"ish.
AddNoise - I saw no effect with this one. If you find anything I didn't, tell me about it.
Effect
Artistic Dither - Interesting effect. Makes it look like it's printed onto a newspaper, or something.
Button Tile - Tiles small 3D squares over the image. It looks pretty neat. And pretty believable too.
Button - Makes the entire image one large square "button", like a large size of the "button tile" effect.
Circle Button - Puts a large button, this time in the shape of a circle, in the center of the image. It's pretty believable, though not as much.
Cube Button Tile - I don't know why it's called that, I think it was a typo. This puts small tiled circle buttons over the image. It looks like a Lego piece. x)
Japanese Tile - I like this one. It grids the picture with pretty thick white lines, but it makes the image appear to be in square pieces.
Half Tone - This "fades" the image. It would be the same effect as if you were to make a new normal layer at 60% opacity or so, and fill it in white. As you can see, pressing the half tone effect is easier.
Stir - This one is very useful.. It looks just like a reflection in water. Brilliant effect..
Mesh - This seemed to have no effect. If you find that it does, tell me.
Monotone - This one is very useful too. Makes the image either black and white, or a color of your choice. I have two examples for this one, one that's black and white, and one that's red.
Mosaic - I don't like this very much, honestly. It's supposed to simulate a mosaic, or stained glass window, but it ends up looking like a small JPEG image that's zoomed up too far..
Random Dither - This one is like watching the picture on a static TV. It looks pretty neat.
Sepia - Just like the Monotone color, except you can only choose to make it either goldenrod or orange.
Sphere Mosaic - This one looks better. It's like it says, a mosaic of spheres.
You know that there are Normal, Hybrid and Overlay layers by now, and how they function, but what about the other types of layers?
Here are the layer types:
Hide - Hides the current layer, making it invisible.
Normal - A basic layer. It overlaps anything that it draws over.
Hybrid - Basically used for coloring and shading. It's overlapped by layers beneath it. It makes areas from other layers darker when colors from the hybrid layer intersect another layer's colors. It can also be used, because of this, to make the entire picture darker. To do this, make a new hybrid layer and fill the entire layer with a light gray. It will make the entire image darker. This looks best if your image already has a background.
Lighten - This is another form of Overlay, basically. It's effects are much more stark, though, and color changing is necessary. In other words, if you want a highlight on blue, you need to choose a bluish color for it to look right. I find Overlay easier to work with, and that's why I introduced you to Overlay, rather than the Lighten layer.
Darken - Same exact thing as lighten, except it's vice versa. Color changing is still necessary. It's another form of shading, or the hybrid layer. I prefer hybrid layers to this, as one color gets the job done, unlike the darken layers.
Luminosity - This one is another highlight layer, but it's good for things that, as it's name states, illuminate, such as the moon or sun. I use this layer a lot when I'm drawing full moons. However, it is rather hard to work with. It shouldn't be used alone. I usually have about 1 normal layer, 3 hybrid layers, and 1 luminosity layer when I draw a moon on pixia. So, a lot of layers should be built up on the item you want to seem to be illuminescent before adding that quality. I do NOT reccomend this layer as a highlighter for normal object or characters, since it's extremely hard to work with. It's the starkest of all the highlight layers.
Hue and Saturation - This layer is another form of making your picture monotone. It's similar to the monotone filter. I think it might be easier to use this if you want it to be a very specific color. It also looses a lot of its middle grays, though, doing it this way. You might like that look, though.
High Light - Sort of a combination of Overlay and Lighten. Almost as stark as Luminosity. Obviously, it's a form of highlighting your objects, but I wouldn't reccomend it. You could use it if you like, but for beginners, again, I wouldn't reccomend anything but Overlay..
Difference - Makes the picture colored in the analogous scale of the color chosen.
Overlay - The most workable of the highlighting layers. You can choose to make the highlights very stark, by choosing white or yellow, or very faint, choosing a darker gray color.
What I mean by "top menus" is the usual, File, Edit, etc... except for Pixia, there are a few added ones so I need to discuss this. I'll only discuss the ones I need to.
File contains the following:
New..., Open..., Open from Clipboard,
PixExp - A program that lets you save files. Opens up a new program.
Save, Save As...
Close
from Camera or Scanner...
Acquire TWAIN... - Allows you to scan a picture with your scanner.
Select TWAIN... - Allows you to select which scanner you want to use.
Print..., Preference..., Customize Tool Bar...
Clear History...
Exit
(Your recently opened files)
Undo, Redo
Copy, Paste, Delete
Copy To File... - Copies your current file and pastes it onto another saved file of your choice.
Paste from file... - Pastes a file of your choice onto your current file.
Copy to Partsbox... - Brings you to another program type of thing, has a few saved images which come with pixia. That's the partsbox.
Paste from Partsbox... - This does the same as Paste from file,only you pick a file from the partsbox.
Select All, Select by Layer Size, Deselect, Invert Selection,
Detect Selection... If you see the selection box go away, and you didn't pick Deselect, then you can pick this to see it again. It also brings up a box to change some things, but as hard as I've tried it seems unusable. I can't change the RGB colors, and even when I pick Inverse and pick Execute, nothing happens.
Convert to New Layer, Convert to Bezier, Edit Bezier
Fatten Selection, Slim Selection, Blur Outside Selection, Blur Inside Selection
Trim Selection
Load Selection... - Allows you to load a selection you saved before.
Save Selection... - Save a Selection for later use.
Show Outside Border (Hide, Check, or Darkened)
Fill, Line
Tone Filter... - Allows you to use a Gradient
Flip Vertically, Flip Horizontally, Rotate..
Magnify....
Text... - This allows you to add text to your image.
Color Adjustment... - Use this to change the color settings and contrast of the image at the same time. Like the Color and Contrast and Color Balance, only I find it harder to work with.
Color and Contrast... - You'll use this one a lot. You can raise and lower the contrast and brightness, it's great for scanned images.. the maximum of each is 40, but you can pick OK, even if it's at 40, and the brightness or contrast will start at 1 again and still raise the brightness or contrast. So honestly, the maximum is endless.
Color Balance... - Use this to change your picture to a certain hue, mainly if you want it to be vivid too.. I find the Monotone in the filter effects to be easier than this.
Tone Balance... - Yet another color changing setting. This one's really hard to work with. I think the only good reason to use this is to make a photo more natural of colors.
Automatic Adjustment - Slightly changes the colors to make it more vivid and lively. I don't really think it improves pictures much.
Copy Between Channels - Switches colors with eachother. For example, if you choose to green >> blue, it will turn all the green on the image blueish, etc.
Double Accuracy, Smooth Zoom...
Merge Layers..., Merge with lower...
Blank Sheet - Clears the current layer completely, with your color of choice. Exactly like choosing that color with the fill tool.
Initialize Mask... - Clears the Mask.
Initialize Transparency Color... - Clears the Transparency.
Negative - Makes a negative, or inverted image, of the current image.
Duplicate - Opens up a new file of the same image, so you have two of the same image open.
Make Resized Duplicate..., Duplicate on Resized Canvas..., Make Rotated Duplicate...
Filter, Settings
Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zooming Ratio
Display Position, Ruler, Grid, Darken outside boundary
View Setting...
Adjust Window Size
Change Panel Positions
Cascade, Tile, Arrange Minimized Windows
Close All - Closes all files currently open in pixia
(Your currently open files)
Help...F1 - Doesn't work.
About Pixia...
You'll notice that the fourth "set" of color swatches isn't a set of swatches at all. It has a "G" next to it. This is the gradients area. There are three different styles you can choose from, the second being the most popular.
The first stretches horizontally, with the colors going down vertically, like how most people express something with the colors of the rainbow.
The second is the one with colors on each of the four sides. I find the second the easiest to work with, since you can choose which color each corner is by left clicking that corner.
The third stretches horizontally too, but it has a graffiti look to it.
The four squares to the left of these three are preset gradients that you can use. Once you've made your own gradients, these sort of place holders so you don't have to keep changing one over and over. You have four to change or keep.
The black bar with gray lines on it can be changed. As you might notice, it rotates the center of the colors (for the second type), and changes the entire direction of the colors for the first and third type.
There are a few things I still haven't covered yet.
In the lower left hand corner, there's a small box that says "100%". If you click it, you'll see a menu pop up that lists from 25% to 1000%. This is a very convenient way to zoom in or out of your picture.
If you click this, you'll see that the pixel area has changed. It lists different circles on the left, and a gray box with a small circle in the middle on the right.
The circles on the left are different types of brushes. There are more, I'll tell you about the others in a second.
The gray box to the left is an area for custom brush sizing. The only downside is that the maximum is only 105x105 pixels, which isn't half as big as the biggest default brush. Click the circle and drag your cursor to resize the custom pen size. I prefer the default brushes, but I know most prefer the custom ones. When you find one you like, you can also Add this one for later use. Do this by clicking the little box that states the size of your brush. (51x51, etc..)
To exit this mode, simply click the lower right-hand button that shows a grid with some black boxes on it.
They go from black to white, one of them have a t infront of them and the other, a d.
The t one is for setting the transparency of your brush strokes. This is good if you want to have a "watercolor" effect.
The d is for making your pen strokes more graphiti-like. The lower the number, the more graphiti-like the brush strokes.
Finally, transparency in layers. Just like making a layer hybrid or overlay, or any other layer type, in the window that pops up, you can adjust the opacity of the layer.
The less opaque, the more transparent it will be. This is very good for things such as water, in which part of a character or animal can be seen underneath the liquid, or the extreme shine inside of eyes. If you want something to be more white (or any color, for that matter) than overlay makes it, you should add a new normal layer with about 48% opacity. Try it! It might suit your artistic situation better.
The only thing I didn't cover was MASKING. I don't know anything about masking, to tell you the truth, and it IS something you can do on pixia. Through my whole time of using pixia I've never used it, so I don't think it's that important. But you can find a brief tutorial on masking in pixia here.
Thanks for reading my tutorial. If you ever get confused when using pixia, feel free to come back and check on my tutorial for help.
Copyright 2005 RaggedRook. Do not use this without my permission.
