The Bend Editor.

The Bend Editor is an interesting palette that is part of the Shadow Window. Bend Editor allows you to use a Shadow to distort the underlying Texture. This effect creates an illusion of the Texture bending around the Shadow’s light/dark areas, which better simulates 3D surfaces such as drapery.

Modify your bitmap.

Once you have selected a Shadow, you can open the Bend Editor's Edit menu to make changes in a few ways.

Control the distortion. Bend Amount controls the amount of distortion that's applied to your Texture. The higher Bend is set, the more the Texture appears to wrap around the Shadow’s dark/light areas.

Blend shadow with texture. Bend Amount also blends the Shadow with the Texture. This creates new dark/light areas in the Texture.

Load your own image. You can use your own grayscale image as a Shadow by importing a JPEG, BMP, or PICT image. For instance, load in a photograph of folded white cloth. The Shadow is no longer resolution independent, however, this a great way of combining the flexibility of Backdrop Designer with real world images.

Load your own shadow.

While Backdrop Designer generally works with imagery that it generates, there is a Load function in the Bend Editor. This allows you to use your own graphics as a Shadow.

Let's say you have a photograph or a stock image of drapes or folded cloth. Just click on the Bend Editor's ?Load? button and browse to select your image.

You can load in any JPEG, BMP or PICT image. The only downside to using a Custom Shadow is that the Shadow is no longer resolution independent. You must work at the resolution and physical size of your imported image.

LEFT: Our photo of white sheets.
CENTER: A Texture preset in Backdrop Designer.
RIGHT: The Backdrop we made by combining a Texture preset with using the photo loaded through the Shadow Bend Editor.