Hi Phil. On Apr 5, 2018, at 4:38 AM, Philip Taylor (RHUoL) <p.tay...@rhul.ac.uk<mailto:p.tay...@rhul.ac.uk>> wrote:
I have been playing with Adobe Photoshop's "blending options" for text recently, adding a gold or metallic texture to otherwise plain text. The results are visually very striking, and I therefore began to wonder whether similar functionality might one day be added to Pdf/XeTeX, in the former case natively and in the latter case via \specials and an extended (x)dvipdfm(x) driver. Three examples of the sorts of effect I have in mind can be seen at : * https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7a1383rb1dx2vp/Ao%20dais.pdf?dl=0 * https://www.dropbox.com/s/7s6s7n9w8popiyg/MENU%20001%20new%20ellipse.pdf?dl=0 * https://www.dropbox.com/s/smmcjy9zuuxa1nu/MENU%20001%20%28metallic%20gold%20text%20demo%29.pdf?dl=0 I would be interested in others' reactions to this. These are using PDF’s concept of “Text Rendering” modes. In particular 7 Tr meaning mode 7, which uses the outlines of characters to be the clipping path for an underlying graphic. Thus the letter shapes restrict what parts of the graphic come shining through. This is essentially already available with pdfTeX; viz. https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/250156/problem-with-pdfliteral/250162#250162 There is one part missing: how to make the underlying graphic correctly? e.g., to have letters looking like they are embossed, or standing out in 3D, etc. You need to construct the desired view in an image, and then place the actual characters, with appropriate rendering mode, exactly over that image so that only the desired parts are shown. This requires external image-processing software, which is what you paid Adobe to do with Photoshop. Philip Taylor Hope this helps. Ross Dr Ross Moore Mathematics Dept | 12 Wally’s Walk, 734 Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia T: +61 2 9850 8955 | F: +61 2 9850 8114<tel:%2B61%202%209850%209695> M:+61 407 288 255<tel:%2B61%20409%20125%20670> | E: ross.mo...@mq.edu.au<mailto:rick.min...@mq.edu.au> http://www.maths.mq.edu.au<http://mq.edu.au/> [cid:image001.png@01D030BE.D37A46F0]<http://mq.edu.au/> CRICOS Provider Number 00002J. Think before you print. Please consider the environment before printing this email.<http://mq.edu.au/> This message is intended for the addressee named and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, and are not necessarily the views of Macquarie University.<http://mq.edu.au/>
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