Working with Interactive Warps

[Synthetik]

The interactive warp operation mode allows you to dynamically warp the current layer, source image, or selection based on the movement of your mouse or pen cursor.

To generate an interactive warp, you just mouse down in the canvas. Then as you move the moise while still holding the mouse button down your mouse movements will dynamically generate the warp. When you release the mouse cursor (or press the space bar) the dynamic warp will stop.

 

Some warp effects will only be affected by the horizontal movement of the mouse. Other warp effects are influenced by the  horizontal and vertical movement of the mouse.

 

Many warp effects are also dependent on the initial starting point where you clicked the mouse (this would be the center point for a rotation warp). If you press down the t key while you are in the middle of an interactive warp, your mouse movement will then move the center point of the warp as opposed to adjusting the warp effect (t for translate).

 

The popup control at the top of the Editor palette when in interactive warp operation mode displays the kind of warp you will be generating. You can use that popup control to choose a large variety of different warp effect. You can also use the Operation : Warp main menu commands to select the different warp options.

 

The best way to get a feel for what the different interactive warp effects do is to try them out.

 

The Interpolator parameter in the Warp Editor controls the quality of the effect. 0 Order runs faster with hard pixel edges, but 2 Order gives better quality with anti-aliased pixel edges (while running a little slower).

[Synthetik]

There are lots of different kinds of kaleidoscopic warp effects. The example shown below was generated by using the Kaleido Distance Symmetry warp effect.

This warp generates kaleidoscopic patterns, where the symmetry of the kaleidoscopic effect depends on the distance of the mouse cursor from the initial point where you started the warp by pressing down the mouse button. Where you mouse down also determines the center symmetry output point for the kaleidoscopic effect.

I generated the above effect by mousing down in the center of the canvas, pressing down the mouse button, and then moving the mouse around the canvas until i found a kaleidoscopic effect i liked.

 

[Synthetik]

Here's what the canvas would look like when running the Sphere warp shown above. This first screen snap shows the mouse cursor positioned in the middle of the right eye.

If i then mouse down and pull the mouse cursor to the left i get the following warp effect.

If i had moused down on the right eye and pulled the mouse cursor to the right i would get the following warp effect.

The radius of the sphere warp is determined by the Local Radius parameter in the Editor. It was set to 200 in the above example. If i set it to 400 and then performed the same right movement for the interactive warp i used for the above example the sphere warp would be bigger as shown below.

Note how the size of the sphere warp is now bigger.

 

If you have a pressure sensitive pen and tablet, then the pen pressure will also modulate the extent of the sphere warp.