The Artfkt collection library
Soft Geometry
Elastic spaces and sculptural image surfaces
Soft Geometry turns an image into elastic space and sculptural surface. Wrap it through a projection, join incompatible views, pull its tones downward, or extend its detail into lit relief and ribbons.
Use recognizable source features to judge how the transformation changes proportions. The source can remain a subject or become material for an abstract object-like composition.
Included in Artfkt for Mac. All collections, one desktop studio.
Choose the spatial rule before the distortion
Anamorphic Projection wraps the picture through a cylindrical mapping. Displaced Horizon joins independently projected upper and lower spaces. Folded Space connects reflected views across sharp planes. Each changes how the image occupies space rather than merely adding surface texture.
Straight architectural edges or a simple graphic shape make those projection changes easy to see. Decide which feature should remain recognizable and where the join or center should sit before pushing the geometry further.
Give an image weight or relief
Liquid Sag pulls tonal structures down through a coherent gravity field. Soft Relief lights a smooth height field derived from the image. Ribbon Extrusion extends sampled strips into curved overlapping ribbons with shading. Compare downward deformation, raised surface, and constructed strips as distinct material ideas.
Broad source tones generally give these effects a clearer large-scale form than uniformly noisy detail. A simple word or shape can become a sculptural study, while a busy photograph may produce many equally strong small forms.
Let lighting explain an already clear form
Set deformation scale and orientation before increasing surface depth or lighting. Highlights are useful when they show how a form bends; they become distracting when they make every small source variation appear equally important.
Compare the treated silhouette with the original and inspect the frame boundaries after large changes. If the composition includes a title that must remain readable, keep that title separate from the image being wrapped or extended. The rendered result is an image treatment, not an exported modeling asset.
Effects in Soft Geometry
6 effects to explore and combine.
Liquid Sag
Pull tonal structures down through a coherent gravity field.
Anamorphic Projection
Wrap the image through a cylindrical anamorphic projection.
Folded Space
Join incompatible reflected image spaces across sharp planes.
Soft Relief
Light a smooth image-derived height field as sculptural relief.
Ribbon Extrusion
Extend sampled image strips into curved, overlapping shaded ribbons.
Displaced Horizon
Join independently projected spaces across an authored horizon.
Creative applications
- Develop elastic typography studies from large simple letterforms.
- Turn a photograph into a smooth lit relief for a cover image.
- Build an abstract ribbon composition from a deliberately chosen strip of source color.
Starting workflow
- For a sculptural relief study, start with a simple image containing broad tonal regions and a clear silhouette.
- Apply Soft Relief and increase the image-derived height until the main forms become legible as a surface.
- Set scale and orientation before strengthening the lighting. Look for a coherent large shape rather than many competing bumps.
- Compare with Liquid Sag as an alternative if the image should feel pulled downward instead of raised.
- Inspect the result at final size and around the frame boundary, then leave space for separate supporting typography.
Make it part of your next composition.
Combine Soft Geometry with other collections, images, and editable text in Artfkt for Mac.