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Using Excentro

CREATING RELIEF DESIGNS WITH EXCENTRO 1.6

Excentro version 1.6 has a new relief generation feature that allows you to create simple
reliefs backgrounds based on underlying grayscale image. This chapter explains in short
steps that could be followed to create relief backgrounds, it also covers attributes fields
in Excentro Control inspector of new image object and attributes of Bas-relief
effect.

CASE STUDY
Relief backgrounds are very frequently used in security documents design. In simple case
they represent modified areas of original guilloche background paths that were offset
with certain distance and angle relative to the original paths. Pictures below illustrates
the case: the left picture shows original background (very simple parallel line pattern) and
the right picture shows the same paths after relief modification (the background was
embossed with the text string):

To explain how the relief background was created let us introduce some terminology
and distinguish four different parts in a relief path:
Original Path Relief Path

Start Joint Segment End Joint Segment

1: Original Path Part. This part of the path was not modified by the relief
effect and remains identical to the path of original background.
2: Relief Path Part. This part of the path was modified by the relief effect and
was offset with certain distance and angle relative to the original paths.
3: Start Joint Segment Part. This part represents additional path segment
that was created between original path part and relief path part (when
embossing starts).
4: End Joint Segment Part. This part represents additional path segment that
was created between relief path part and original path part (when embossing
ends).

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To create relief backgrounds underlying grayscale images are usually used. The whole
idea of relief creation process is to place the grayscale image below the original back-
ground and retrace every path of the background calculating the pixel value of underly-
ing image:
In areas where pixel value changes from white to dark, start joint segment
should be inserted in the original path and subsequent area of the path that goes
above the dark pixels area will be the relief path (with certain angle and offset
distance).
In areas where pixel value changes back from dark to white, relief path ends
and end joint segment will be inserted between relief path and original
path.
The explanation above is probably oversimplified but it shows the mechanics used to
generate the relief backgrounds in Excentro.
So, to create the relief background you should perform two basic steps:
Step 1: Create grayscale images and place them in Excentro document as image
objects.
Step 2: Activate relief generation attributes for original guilloche paths of the
background.
Two sections below explain how to perform these steps.

WORKING WITH IMAGE OBJECTS


Image objects in Excentro are special kind of objects that are not part of guilloche
structure tree (well, you can use them only for relief generation and not for guilloche
paths construction process as bases or other elements). As a result you will not see
placed image objects in structure pane of main document window, their rectan-
gular representation will appear only in layers list.
To place new image object on selected layer of Excentro document choose Place New
Image (Cmd-I) command from Images submenu of Structure menu:

Standard Mac OS file navigation dialog will appear, where you can select existing image
file of TIFF or PDF type:

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Click Place button and the image will be placed in the center of the current document.
The rectangle representing new image object will appear in the layers list of the docu-
ment:

Now you can set attributes of the image object in Excentro Control inspector. The
attributes allows you to specify Width and Height of the image, its rotation Angle and
position of the center. You can also adjust Brightness and Contrast of the image if you
want to. Two buttons below the image preview well allows you to Select another source
TIFF image (this is identical to the command Structure>Images>Select Image, or
drag-and-dropping another file from Finder window to image preview well) or Update
the image if its source TIFF file was changed (same as Structure>Images>Update
Image).
Before going further and creating the background paths you should choose the type of
the image and limit the number of Levels Excentro will distinguish in source image data.

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The basic guideline is to set Levels value to 2 for images with text or logo graphics con-
tent (this way you will get the sharp transition between white and black image areas).
For photographic images when smooth transition between gray gradations is desired
you can set Levels to higher value, like 10, 50 or 256.

CREATING RELIEF PATHS


After you placed and positioned the image object in Excentro document you can create
the backgrounds paths using standard paths construction procedure of Excentro appli-
cation. For example you can make a set of parallel lines that will cover the area of the
image object:

After the original paths are constructed switch to Effects panel of Excentro Control
inspector and select Bas-relief effect. Activate this effect by switching Active check
box On.
The reliefs will be created only for paths of the elements that are located above the
image object in layers list on the same layer. This allows you to isolate background
relief paths on separate layer and control relief generation for different elements and
image objects on same layer.

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Relief generation attributes of Excentro Control inspector set the following effect on
the relief paths:
Relief Height. This attribute defines the distance from original path to the relief path
maximum offset in the darkest area of the image.

Angle. Angle attribute set the angle of the offset direction. This could either any fixed
value or special value Path that makes relief path offset parallel to the original path
direction. Do not use Path option for paths that have too many twists there might be
overlaps and nasty coils.
Stroke Increase. This attribute defines if the path should change its stroke width in
relief areas and how much this change should be. In white areas of the image the path
will keep its original stroke width value set in Path panel of Excentro Control. In dark
areas of the image the path expand (or shrink) by the specified value.

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Start Joint Width, End Joint Width. These attributes specify the width of start
joint and end joint segments:

Start Joint Type, End Joint Type. These attributes might have one of four values
that define the type of start joint and end joint segments:
Line:

Spline:

Up:

Down:

Creating Relief Designs (draft)

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