Many years ago, just after he learned how to use bitmaps to create textures in EnRoute, my father was eager to see just what he could do with them. He began looking everywhere he could to find inspiration and he found it in his collection of old National Geographic magazines. He spent hours scanning the old photos and see what the images would do in the program. By trail and error, he figured out what worked the best and how to tweak and adjust the pictures to work even better.

For instance, he found a picture of a fossilized fish and pulled it into Photoshop to adjusted the picture’s contrast and add a few details.

Then he created a quick vector file in Illustrator — drawing the vectors for a circular sign.

He imported these files into EnRoute and set to work.

The basic file is quite simple. He made a relief wth a circular outline and modified the relief to add borders and some lettering.

Then he added the fish fossil and some texture using bitmaps.

He added the fish first. (The photo’s white skeleton was raised by the 0.15" and the black sections remained unchanged). Then he layered a second bitmap called splotches (from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection) over the entire file to add a little more texture. The texture was applied wth a subtle 0.05”. As you can see below — the texture is a very effective addition to the sign!

See you next week!