Excentro is a simple but advanced tool that can create guilloche designs like backgrounds, borders or rosettes.
The guilloches are vintage design elements that were frequently used for anti-counterfeiting security purposes on banknotes, passports, checks and certificates during the past two hundred years. As the times changed and digital copy and printing technologies perfected, guilloches no longer presented sufficient security measures that could prevent forging and counterfeiting of valuable papers. Today the main part of security technology lies in the special paper or tricky inks the designs are printed upon or with.
Still, it is too early to say that the days of guilloche designs are over. They can still be used to prevent the counterfeiting of products that do not require the highest level of security (i.e. theater tickets, diplomas or gift certificates). Or, they can just be used to decorate and add some aesthetic value to a product giving the ‘money-like’ look and value.
Excentro Features
1. Excentro interface
Each document in Excentro has three distinct areas to display: ‘Preview’, ‘Structure’ and ‘Layers’.
‘Preview’ and ‘Layers’ are similar to the windows of other graphic design applications: ‘Preview’ displays guilloche graphics with the magnifications specified, ‘Layers’ shows back-to-front order of paths and allows the designer to arrange which objects are below or above.
The ‘Structure’ area is the key highlight of Excentro. It illustrates the process of guilloche construction with graphic objects presented as interconnected ‘bases’ and ‘elements’.
2. Fast guilloche creation
With Excentro you can create all popular kind of guilloches: backgrounds, bands, frames, rosettes. The underlying principle is similar to that of mechanical guilloche machines from the past and is based on the ‘movement’ of drawing an ‘object’ over a path created in a similar way in previous steps.
Using Excentro requires some hands-on learning and browsing through the user guide and other reference materials. After becoming familiar with Excentro you will find it quite easy and even fun to work with …
3. Versatile step & repeat sets
(Step & repeat sets in Excentro Lite version are limited to single ‘Step & Repeat’ set per design object and have only one ‘Constant’ type of increment.)
Excentro allows you to duplicate its graphic objects any number of times with the individual attributes of the objects modified by user defined values.
With this ‘Step & Repeat’ feature, you can create intricate guilloche designs in almost no time with few mouse clicks and keystrokes. If the design needs to be modified or reworked later, you can just change several attributes of existing objects and their ‘Step & Repeat’ sets to get a design that looks different.
4. Automatic frames and tiles
(These features are only present in full Excentro version and are not available in Excentro Lite.)
Excentro can cut a part of the existing design, then reflect and repeat this part to create complex borders or backgrounds with symmetrical patterns. You can even automatically create a complete rectangular frame for a certificate or diploma in this way.
Adjacent path segments and corners are accurately joined and stitched together to create continuous paths without overlapping line caps. This feature can also be used to crop a background or a border to certain area.
5. Stroke width modulation and reliefs
(These features are only present in full Excentro version and are not available in Excentro Lite.)
The stroke width of background paths can be changed by either modulation settings specified by the user or by the pixel value of the underlying grayscale image. In the similar way portions of paths located over non-white areas of the underlying image can be offset to create bas-relief like effects.
Any graphics file in common image formats (raster TIFF or vector PDF) can be imported into an Excentro document to be used with this feature. You can even apply Step & Repeat sets to the images to vary its position, size, brightness or contrast.
6. Export after you finished
When a guilloche work in Excentro is over you can export the finished design in generic PDF, Adobe Illustrator format or create a preview in TIFF, JPEG or PNG.
A PDF file can be directly printed or placed into a page layout application. An Illustrator file can be opened in the Adobe Illustrator application to add some effects. Excentro layers and document settings are fully transferred to this format. Preview image files can be sent to customers for design approval or placed into web pages.
Excentro Lite is a simplified version with the features set close to the original Excentro from mid 90's. It does not have Tiles, Frames, Reliefs or Pen tools of full Excentro version, but it has a very affordable price point and is made for the users who need to create designs for occasional jobs or just to do some guilloche experiments.
