Thursday, August 2, 2012

FotoSketcher 2.31 beta available

Hi all,

After quite a lot of fine tuning and tweaking, a beta version of FotoSketcher 2.31 is finally available for download.
You can get it here: www.fotosketcher.com/FotoSketcher_beta_231a.exe

The main change is the new Pencil Sketch 5 filter. Here is an example (in colour and black & white):

Original image cropped (photo credits Gayle Lindgren - http://www.sxc.hu/profile/grngobstpr)


black & white sketch 


parameters used:


and colour sketch


parameters used: 


This version is an early beta and there is still a lot of work to be done. The elusive bug which only occurs on some Windows XP machines (and on none of the ones I tested of course) is still there (error message 'débordement d'entier'), so I might have to revert to version 2.25 and rewrite everything up to 2.31...

But at least you can play with the new Pencil Sketch 5 filter.

Also the next version will be translated in Chinese.

Best regards,

David


26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you. Lynda.

David said...

You're welcome, Lynda. Have fun :-)

Zakir said...

Really love it getting improved everytime

David said...

Thank you, Zakir :-)

Anonymous said...

Any chance we can get a date when we can expect the Mac beta? It has been a while.

David said...

Hi Phil,

I am sorry to disappoint you and other Mac enthusiasts, but I have dropped Mac development. There are technical reasons (it was very time consuming to rewrite FotoSketcher from scratch), but there are also legal reasons (due to an agreement I have with a large company). The good news is that I will continue Windows development and FotoSketcher will remain 100% freeware for PC users.
I will write a more detailed post in the coming weeks to let Mac users know.

Unknown said...

Hello David,

Like the new pencil sketch 5. Two gnats (small bugs) in Win 7 64 bit:
1. Drawing parameters window must be moved to see new drawing style window

2. Test on Emergence style shows a different style (maybe previous one?)

Thanks for your wonderful software.

Kempton

David said...

Thank you for your feedback, Kempton.

I will change the position of the parameter window in the next beta. The test button is actually used by me when I test a new effect, before I incorporate it in the list of filters. Therefore, it only runs the latest effect I'm working on. I will disable the test button in the next release.

Best regards,

David

Zakir said...

Hello David

Will FotoSketcher be compatible for windows 8 in the furture when windows 8 comes out and for microsoft surface tablet.

David said...

Hi Zakir,

Yes, FotoSketcher will run on Windows 8 for desktop PCs (I don't yet know if I will need to make extensive changes, but I will do what's necessary). However, I have no plans to support Microsoft Surface.

Pierre (BC, Canada) said...

Salut David,

Great! A new toy in my file basket :-)

But it was broken when I tried it :-(

OK, more seriously, I had MANY errors, like these:
Upon clicking on the file, I received :
- Error creating form1.
- Exception class name = EReadError
- Exception message, etc.

I had 7 errors message, and FS 2.3.1 couldn't open.

I am "still" on Windows Vista (not for long I hope!) Maybe it's the culprit.

Any ideas?

Pierre

David said...

Hi Pierre,

This is baffling as I have had no problem whatsoever on the different PCs I have used for testing. I suspect some strange corruption in the source. I think my best bet is probably to go back to version 2.25 (which seems to be free of these strange errors) and put all the new functions in to get back to 2.31. I will do that in the next couple of weeks.

Zakir said...

Hi David,

I know that Microsoft Surface has a desktop view and a tablet view swicting to the clssic view or the morden tablet view which ever one you like.

there will be two version's of Microsoft Surface a windows RT version and Windows 8 Pro version

with Windows 8 Pro version you have access to full desktop capability.

so Im thinking FotoSketcher might work on Microsoft Surface tablet cause it's running Windows 8 as you said FotoSketcher will run on Windows 8

David said...

Hi Zakir,

Yes, what you say seems logical and I believe you are right but I can't confirm yet as I have not had time to test Windows 8.

Casey Fluffbutt said...

I've found a 'sort-of' bug that wasn't there in the previous versions.

When you click on the drop-down list box of styles, if you have the main style window too low on the screen, the box listing extends too far upwards and disappears off the screen.

It's fixed by dragging the main style window upwards, then the drop-box list extends downwards and is OK.

If I'm not clear, just say so and I'll find some way to post a screenshot.

Casey Fluffbutt said...

Other than my last post, I have seen NO errors or problems here, Win7 x64

Casey Fluffbutt said...

Since we're here discussing this, any chance of an addition to Fotosketcher?

Would it be possible to change the "soften strokes" tick box to a slider to adjust how much to soften the strokes?

Soften looks good generally, but I 'feel' that a bit more softening could make the "pen and ink 1" effect look like charcoal..

David said...

Hi Casey,
Thank you for your testing and feedback. The dropdown menu issue is known and I should be able to solve it easily. I might (in future versions) reduce the number of effects and put "legacy" filters elsewhere. As for the "soften" tick box, I did not want to add another slider in order to keep the interface rather simple, but you can adjust the blurring level by using the modify source image tools (F9). Just press F12 first to use your drawing as a new source image.
Regards,
David

Pierre said...

Hi David,

Now that you are awake :-)
Did you have time to fix some issues regarding the problem I had earlier?

- Error creating form1.
- Exception class name = EReadError
etc.

Thanks for "still" trying to figure this out.

David said...

Hi Pierre,

I have not been able to reproduce this problem. Do you use XP? Can you run FS in administrator mode and tell me if that changes anything?

Regards,

David

Pierre said...

Bonjour David,
I re-downloaded 2.31a, in case I had a bad download, and I still have the same problems.

I have full Admin privileges, and I'm using Vista.

To help you, do you have some sort of "Dump" software that I can send you so you can check how it works on my system?

David said...

Bonjour Pierre,

I have almost finished rewriting the new version of FotoSketcher, based on the last version which apparently did not have the problem (2.25).
Can you send me an email with the dump anyway?

Merci d'avance ;-)

Gavin said...

I'd love to be able to try this out, but every time I try to run both the full and portable editions, no matter the version number, the program hangs at 90% loading and stops responding. I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Any thoughts?

David said...

Hi Gavin,

That's strange... Have also you tried version 2.35 beta?
Don't hesitate to send me an email via the contact form on www.fotosketcher.com and I'll send you a specific test version.

Regards,

David

Manu said...

Bonjour,
Votre logiciel est vraiment très bien.
Mon ordinateur fonctionne sous Windows XP SP2, et en effet il apparaît le message d'erreur "débordement d'entier" à l'ouverture du logiciel ( j'utilise la version portable 2.35 ). Ce message apparaissait également avec la version précédente.
Mais je clique sur OK du message d'erreur et le logiciel s'ouvre alors normalement et fonctionne normalement, idem avec la version précédente ( également portable ).
Je vous le signale au cas ou ça pourrait vous être de quelque utilité.
Merci pour ce logiciel gratuit et très performant.
Manu

David said...

Bonjour Manu,

Merci pour l'info, qui corrobore ce que m'ont remonté d'autres utilisateurs. Je n'ai jamais réussi à reproduire ce message d'erreur, mais je suis en train de réécrire l'interface de FotoSketcher dans l'espoir que le problème venait du code tiers que j'utilisais pour améliorer l'apparence des fenêtres (skinning).
La prochaine version sera à 100% mon propre code, donc si le bug persiste ce sera de ma faute :-)