ImagesMagUK_July_2021

The final outcomes aren’t based on the tools used, but they can be arrived at faster with the use of more efficient tools, or at least the tools that work best for you also prompt users to add holes for complex fill shapes and require that you set stitch angle on completion. Straight stitches, bean stitches, and motifs are set with similar linear curves as the single-width satin, but are automatically set to their stitch type on creation. These shapes can be reassigned to other stitch types and converted to editable vector objects, but they lend themselves specifically to the stitch to which they are assigned. These traditional tools can reinforce reasonable stitch-type choices and help new digitisers to understand the various properties of the stitch types that they can manipulate. New lines The newer graphical tools are more universal: they can create open shapes, closed shapes, and columns. In truth, there’s very little difference between the tools used to create these shapes and their stitch-specific counterparts apart from the immediate option to create any shape with a selected, applicable stitch type immediately and the ease of applying linear stitch types to the edge of any area-defining shape. Open shapes are essentially central line inputs, closed shapes are fill areas, and columnar inputs usually act like one of the primary satin stitch tools. That said, the modern tools require a digitiser to understand stitch types a little more readily as they don’t prescribe a stitch type to the input. They are versatile, but also perhaps somewhat less instructive to the novice. With traditional fill input styles, it’s easy to add holes to create a complex fill area without using graphical transformation tools Whether you use traditional or Bezier tools for input, multiple suites will still give you the benefit of editing elements using Bezier curves, though traditional input points may have to be thinned out to make the smooth curves easier to manipulate www.images-magazine.com JULY 2021 images 63 KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES