Annotate A Bar - Make Into A Circle or Ellipse
This is such a fun project and so many different ways of using Distort. (You can use flower lines or even words to do this project but here I show how I did it with a "bar").
Step 1. I started with a transparent background of 247x36. I used the PC Ornaments at Image Magick under Fonts. In the box I used (t8T) that's a parentheses first - letter t - number 8 - and capital T then another parentheses ( turning it opposite). These symbols made up the design for the bar. Five parts to the bar. The first symbol from using a ( the second is the small t, the 8 is the flower - the capital T is the same as second only goes opposite direction using the capital T and then another ) for the other end. Point size 50 Stroke Color #9c8c59 Stroke Width 1 Now you Output as a Gif. Save url. Step 2. Back to I.M. and put on a transparent bg 3 times the size of your bar, so in this one I did (W)741x36(H) Composite the bar you made +0+0 Northwest Again +0+0 Center and once more +0+0 Northeast. You now have the bar comped 3 times.
Step 3. Go to Draw and make a LINE across using same stroke color you made the bar with I used a gold #9c8c59 (this is for the purpose of closing up any leakage in the bars so if you want to matte etc. nothing will get outside of this circle or oval you make). So for my example it was Line 0,18 741, 18 (0 is from edge the 18 is middle of the 36 and 741 is width of your image and 18 again is middle of the 36). Note: You can composite another color over what you drew by going to Atop and Misc since you have no bg color. (you drew on a clear bg)
Step 4. Now we go to Distort (It's under FX) and put in the box 362 (a circle is usually 360 but that extra 2 keeps from leaving a gap) down to first box and use Arc second box Transparent third box All Click Effect. If you click on Reset Geometry you can view what it looks like. Output as a Gif At this point you can go back to Image Magick and put it on a background and resize etc. - your option. With sample I matted out the center and put in a JPG using Dstover. Another example I made was same thing only resized it larger making it into an ellipse shape and used 300x355.That's it folks.
http://www.wtv-zone.com/MsLee/Bars/goldPCbar.gif
ADDED 12/01/2008 another style:
I used this bar: 
http://www.wtv-zone.com/MsLee/Bars/silverarrows.gif
Now I went to Image Magick with the bar and resized it to 700x25 (use the exclamation point after the numbers when resizing). Next I did the Distort method like above. Now I have a circle made. I put a background (clear) of 400x400 and composited "center"You can save this or use your back button to get back to it. I had to take the url again back to cut it in half and resize smaller to composite it on each side of the center one. I then did Replace - Color - made it honeydew. I matted out circles and added image using "Dstover" Center. Now to fit the image, had to do a little manipulating of making it bigger to fit and then I just cropped off excess bg I didn't want and resized it smaller to finish it off.
Finished size was 350x315 but made it smaller for this tute page using smaller numbers (click to see original): 
Added another showing you can use Text and arc it. The bigger the number the more it will arch.
I did everything like above but used 110 in the box.
Example: 
Lee's Tutorials
June 17, 2008
