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TRACE / Tonal posters

Red tide.

A wave cut into three inks: warm paper, red and deep teal.

Hide the red plate to inspect its shapes, then give that plate your own ink.

Choose the included images or your own inside the studio. Applying keeps your current work as a local copy.

A wave cut into three inks: warm paper, red and deep teal.

The transformation

From source to study.

The result below is an actual studio export with this recipe. The source image is part of the result; changing it creates a different work.

Original A for Red tide
Original A
Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei) · Katsushika Hokusai
Public domain · The Met Open Access (CC0) ↗
Download this source ↓
A wave cut into three inks: warm paper, red and deep teal.
Finished study
TRACE + the settings below.
Inspect the full preview ↗

The recipe

Structure first. Finish second.

TRACE structure

  • 3 ink plates · Tonal bands
  • Solid inks · high detail
  • Exposure 0 · Midtones 1.10
  • Lightness boundaries: 25% / 62%
  • Aligned plates; no registration shift
#f9eacb#f03b24#13282a

Compose passes, in order

No photographic finish. The ink plates themselves make this image, so its colors and shapes can remain editable in SVG.

Your first change

Hide the red plate to inspect its shapes, then give that plate your own ink.

A flat PNG or editable SVG. Free single SVG keeps the actual vector paths. Photo finishes do not appear in SVG.

Develop this into a finished work.

An editable two-ink poster

A composite PNG, a two-plate SVG and an editable project backup.

Follow the project →

A focal print with offset impressions

A clean PNG, an offset PNG, a layered SVG and a project containing the versions.

Follow the project →

Another direction.