I have been intending to write a review of the Glass Eye 2000 stained glass design creation software for some time, so here it is.
I absolutely love this program! It makes pattern creation soooo easy. Take a look at this example of a finished design and the photo I started with. This afternoon I brought up the Glass Eye 2000 program and imported a photo of one of our pets, Lucky, a loveable stray dog we rescued a few years ago.
Here is the original photo of Lucky. (This is a big file so, if you click on the thumbnail to enlarge, give it time to load.)
In a short time, using the GlassEye 2000, I was able to create a stained glass design of Lucky. I was even able to select specific glass by major art glass manufacturers and view the pattern as it would appear with the glass that I selected.
Glass Eye 2000 allows you to import a .jpg (among other formats) and trace the image to form a pattern. You can also create designs from scratch. You will get faster and better at using the program with practice, but it really is fairly easy. The Dragonfly Software people include a tutorial with the software program that is easy to follow and will get you started. I will warn you - this can be addictive.
Here is a picture of my pattern as it will look when completed in glass. Click on the picture to enlarge it for the best view.
I love playing around with the glass choices. The GlassEye 2K has (last time I looked) over 2600 glass samples from nine of the largest glass companies that you can select from, and it allows you to change the selected glass with the click of a mouse. It is a simple matter to select a general color range and scroll through choices. You can also be specific about a type of glass, (baroque, for instance,) or texture (vecchio, seedy, reed, ripple) and see only that glass in all available colors, or limit glass choice by the manufacturer’s name.
You can export a picture of your finished pattern as a .jpg, such as the picture of Lucky dog, above, so that you can show your friends and family (or potential clients) how the finished piece will look with different colors and textures of glass and get their reaction or advice. My family is used to me saying “how does it look with the Armstrong granite or the Gecko gluechip? Are you sure it doesn’t look better with this Spectrum blue cathedral or the opal wispy?”
You can also see how your finished art work will look with different lead and solder line widths, lead or foil techniques, and different patinas.
You may have noticed that I can label my patterns and the exported pictures with my copyright or other information. You can add text for directions or title right on the pattern. You can also label your pattern pieces with numbers, or color codes that you select.
You can use the ruler to control the size of your pattern and you can resize it, if necessary, with remarkable accuracy. There is even an option to maintain proportions when you resize. There is also grid you can bring up on the screen and remove with a mouse click that helps keep things square.
There are so many great features to this software that I could go on and on, but the best thing you could do would be to check it out yourself. Click here to visit the good folks at Dragonfly software. They have a FREE 30-day trial that will give you a better idea than I can of how great this program is.
Have fun!
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