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8 6 G R A P H I C S P R O • J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M T H E D I G I T A L E Y E | S T E P H E N R O M A N I E L L O Stephen Romaniello is an artist and educator who has taught computer graphics since 1990. He is Professor Emeritus and the founder of the Digital Arts program at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. Stephen is a certified instructor in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Premier and the author of numerous books, articles and media on the creative use of graphics software. Stephen is the founder and CEO of GlobalEye systems, a company that offers training and consulting in graphics software and creative imaging. See Through It Working with transparency T he ability to see through solid objects is a superpower. e "Man of Steel" that we all know, aka Superman, who has X-ray vision, can see through closed doors and solid brick walls. (Fig. 1) It's a power that he possesses and fortunately to our bene- fit, uses his extraordinary powers only for truth, justice and the American Way. Of course, Superman is fictitious, dreamed up in the late 1930s by writer Jerry Siegal and artist Joe Shuster for DC Comics, so X-ray vision is simply a wild fantasy like flying, leaping a tall building in a single bound, super-human strength or the other powers that Superman possesses. In the real world we have amazing gad- gets that can perform see through magic such as X-ray machines, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) devices, and CT (com- puterized tomography) scans, unfortu- nately for normal humans X-ray vision is not a power that we have … or do we? (Fig. 2) Virtual power It shouldn't come as a surprise that in the relatively new world of computer graphics; yes indeed, X-ray vision is a virtual power that exists in many forms. Furthermore, it is user friendly, extremely powerful and completely at our disposal. All we need know is where to find it and how to control it. is Digital Eye will reveal the secrets of seeing through walls, doors or pretty much anything. Software Any software that manipulates images has features that control transparency. I'll be using Adobe Photoshop CC to demon- strate this idea, but similar features are available in Adobe Illustrator, CorelDR AW and PaintShop Pro. Even simple drawing and photo apps for cell phones and tab- lets have transparency controls. Weather the software is vector or pixel based, there is always a mechanism that controls the illusion of diminished visibility. B U S I N E S S S T R A T E G I E S Fig. 1: Superman, who has X-ray vision, can see through closed doors and solid brick walls. (Images courtesy Stephen Romaniello)