[XeTeX] Could Adobe Photoshop's "blending options" for text be supported in a future {Pdf|Xe}TeX variant

[Ross Moore]

Hi again Phil,

On Apr 5, 2018, at 8:39 AM, Ross Moore <ross.moore at mq.edu.au<mailto:ross.moore at mq.edu.au>> wrote:


  *   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.

I was able to extract the “underlying graphics” from the 1st of your PDFs.
Here is the one for the 2nd line of text.

[cid:F4531BBB-B66D-4E0C-B6BC-F8AE8E276DB3 at mq.edu.au]

You can see the need to have a clipping path, created from the text using the same font that was “blended” to make this image.
The need for exact positioning can also be appreciated from the image.


Below is the image for the gold text in the 3rd PDF.
Again the need for clipping is apparent.

[cid:3F4B8FAD-7EA9-4891-AA17-7205E30FB42C at mq.edu.au]


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

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