The Photocopy effect shows an image as it would look after being photocopied. Large areas of darkness tend to copy only around their edges, and midtones fall away either to solid black or white, as is characteristic of photocopies.
Detail
Move the slider to the right for a more detailed image and to the left for less detail.
Darkness
Move the slider to the right to make the image darker and to the left to make it lighter.
The Photocopy effect uses the host program's current foreground and background colors (if available) to color the final result.
Tips
• To create a high contrast, cartoon or psychedelic-color photocopy effect:
1. In the host program (if capable), separate the original RGB color image into three channels: red, green and blue.
2. Apply the Photocopy effect to each channel.
3. Recombine the three channels using the facilities of the host program.
• You can simulate the effect of photocopying an image several times, where the quality of the image degrades each pass. To do so, apply the Photocopy effect on an image twice. The first time, use the default settings. Apply the effect again on the resulting image—but this time decrease the Detail control to the point where amounts of the black areas (created in the first pass) start to dissolve.
• To create an excellent pencil sketch effect:
1. Apply the Photocopy effect once or twice as mentioned above.
2. Apply the Colored Pencil effect to the result.
3. Using the host program’s brightness and contrast controls (if available), increase the brightness and contrast of the resulting image for the desired look.
• It’s a classic animation technique to photocopy isolated movie film frames and then re-photograph the photocopies on an animation stand. To cut down on the amount of work, frames are chosen that are from one half to one second apart. To create the same look using the Photocopy effect:
1. Digitize frames from a video sequence that are either the same number of frames apart (say, 30) or a slightly varying number of frames apart.
2. Apply the Photocopy effect to each frame. For a slightly more variable final animation effect, you can randomly alter the brightness and contrast of each frame before and/or after applying the Photocopy effect using the host program’s brightness and contrast controls.
3. You can optionally add grain to each final image with the Grain effect.
4. You can optionally hand-color areas of each final image with a paint package.
5. Edit out the same number of frames for each final image as there were between each image.
