Thursday, July 31, 2008

Advanced Tip #2 - How to combine multiple effects

This tip takes advantage of the new clipboard support introduced in version 1.6.

I will show you how to combine two effects (pencil + painting 3) and also some source image improvements to produce a new style of painting.

1- First step
Open an image and choose 'Pencil Sketch' rendering and untick all three boxes 'soften edges', 'add frame' and 'Texture'.

Click on the 'Sketch It!' button to produce a coloured pencil sketch with some dark edges as shown below:


2- Second step
Press CTRL-C to copy the sketch then CTRL-V to paste it as a new source image (you can also use the menu items 'Edit|Copy drawing to clipboard' and 'Edit|Paste image from clipboard').

You now have your pencil sketch as a source image:


3- Third step
Now in the drawing parameters, choose 'Painting 3 (median + bilateral filter)' and click the 'Sketch it!' button:

4- Fourth step
Now press CTRL-C and CTRL-V again, and go to 'Edit|Modify source image|Increase contrast' and 'Edit|Modify source image|sharpen source image'.
Then in the drawing parameters choose 'Frame and texture only' and tick all three boxes 'soften edges', 'add frame' and 'Texture'.

5- Final step
Now click on the 'Sketch It!' button to produce an image like the following one:


Hope you like it!!!

Best regards,

David

New website - with sample images gallery

Hi!

The homepage of FotoSketcher has been redesigned and now sports a gallery of pictures made with the latest version.

Here's a screenshot of the 'about' page:

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

FotoSketcher 1.6 is released

Version 1.6 of FotoSketcher is now ready for download (at http://www.fotosketcher.com/).

(photo credit : Stock Xchng)

Here are some of the new features in this release :
- more options to improve source image (resample to desktop size, simplify, increase contrast...)
- new rendering : painting 3 (median + bilateral filtering)
- full screen preview (by double-clicking the drawing)
- clipboard support (copy and paste)
- optimized painting 2 rendering (almost 40% speed increase from version 1.5)
- set as wallpaper function
- colour frames: if a white frame is chosen, a cutout effect is applied. If a different frame colour is selected, a white edging is applied.

Best regards,

David