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Set Designer Employs Ulead PhotoImpact

Retired History teacher, Michael Rogers, discovered stage productions while teaching at York Sixth Form College. He took that experience, along with his computer and Ulead PhotoImpact, to amateur theatre productions as a set designer.

The York Settlement Players as well as the York Festival Mystery Plays have used the combined assets of Mike and PhotoImpact for various aspects of their set designs.

"People really appreciate how PhotoImpact has helped me enhance my work," Mike emphasizes.

Creating a Set

To create his stage designs, Mike goes through a few simple steps. First, he scans in a rough sketch and saves it as a Ulead PhotoImpact UFO file. He enjoys the ease with which he can manipulate this file type. Second, he uses line tools and a grid to improve and align the sketch. Next, the image is pasted into the work space and resized against the ruler found in Ulead PhotoImpact. Then the project is developed by modifying the shape and size using the transform tool. Lastly, the details, such as texture and color, are added to the drawing.

Mike, who first started using PhotoImpact at version 3, has also used it for editing digital photos and creating projects such as Christmas cards and posters.

"Ulead PhotoImpact has often been described as intuitive," says Mike, who adds, "I have found this to be certainly true."