Thursday, June 13, 2013

FotoSketcher 2.45 is officially released

Hi all,

FotoSketcher 2.45 is now officially released. As usual you can download either the full version (with setup, uninstall and optional community toolbar) or the portable version here: http://www.fotosketcher.com/download-fotosketcher/ Both are 100% free.

What's new in version 2.45:
- improved brushstrokes placement in Painting 7 (brushstrokes) to give a more painterly effect.
- added a new stylized effect called Emergence 2, based on calculating an approximation of the source image using shaded triangles. The result is different from Emergence and can look a bit like knife painting.  
- solved a bug in the custom brush code used for Painting 7 and 8 effects.
- solved a few bugs in the script (F5) code

In Emergence 2 you can double-click on the number to the right of the slider for the number of iterations (80 by default) and this will change it to MAX. This provides maximum quality for the effect, but is very slow. 
Default value:


MAX value:

I have also made available some scripts for FotoSketcher. You can download the zip file here: http://www.fotosketcher.com/scripts.zip
Simply unzip the files to your hard drive and open them in the scripts window of FotoSketcher (press F5).

Here is an example of the updated Painting 7 effect (click on image for full view):

and here is an example of the new Emergence 2 effect (click on image for full view):
original photo credit Sias van Schalkwyk (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1181840)

Have fun!

David


16 comments:

derryatlanta said...

Really looking forward to checking it out. Thanks so much!

David said...

You're welcome :-)

Peter (BC, Canada) said...

Salut David,

Thanks a lot for this wonderful tool.
That's my little toy for the Summer!

Peter

David said...

Salut Peter,

Thank you for your comment and your beta testing ;-)

Anonymous said...

David, greetings from Croatia!FotoSketcher is an amazing tool and I LOVE IT! I make paintings from my own photos, put them in old photo frames (virtually) and it looks great!
http://imageshack.us/a/img443/5203/v9p.png

David said...

Thank you :-) Nice work with the perspective!

Casey Fluffbutt said...

Might I request a small favour?

In "Pen & Ink 1" there sometime appears a regular thread-like pattern on the output.

http://i.imgbox.com/abbUorVc.jpg

You can see it here in this close up, look to the trees - it almost looks likes stitches.

This is without any changes to the preset or adding any canvas, etc.

Now.. my request..

While this looks good on some images, it also spoils others..

Can we have a tick box to enable/disable the pattern?

Is that even possible?

David said...

Hi Casey,

The repeat pattern you mention happens in areas of similar luminosity. It is unfortunately due to the compressed textures I use and can not be easily avoided at present. If you load images with no large areas of similar luminosity you should not see these artefacts so much.

Peter said...

Salut David,

Would it be possible to have the setup (configuration) you used to create the landscape on your Home page? (The picture above the zebra). I am trying to emulate that type of painting, but it seems I don't have the right setup.

Merci beaucoup !

David said...

Hi Peter,

If I remember correctly, I used a custom brush to achieve this effect. I'll try to find it and will post a link to the brush image if I do.

Cheers,

David

David said...

Hi again,

I've run some tests and I have found a custom brush which gives similar results (not exactly the same, but close). Download the brush here: http://monimag.eu/upload/1226/fotosketcher%20brushstroke.jpg

Then run the Painting 7 effect with the following parameters:
5, 200, MAX, 30, 230

I hope this will give you the result you want :-)

Peter said...

Hi David,

I used your brushstroke, and did a few experiments. The original picture was taken in front of my home, in BC. Nice place, isn't it?

For my first test, I used exactly your setting: http://monimag.eu/upload/1227/test-1.jpg

For the second test: http://monimag.eu/upload/1227/test-2.jpg

I used the result of the first image, and combined it within another software (Sagelight) I have. I think it gives it a bit more pizzaz!

The effect is quite nice. But what I'm really looking for is a thick paint brush... like the impasto effect found in some (very expensive) plug-in. I'm sure you'll get there some day!

Thanks again for your help.
Peter

David said...

Thanks for your feedback, Peter. You certainly live in a very nice place :-)

Peter said...

David:
I was wondering about the manual brushes. What are the min-max specs to create them?
I noticed you are using a 250 x 250 pixel brush. Can I use a rectangular one, like 250 x 125?

What happens if you use a very small or very large brush? Maybe 10 x 10 pixels, or 1000 x 1000 pixels?

David said...

You can use any size you wish, but for quality I would suggest a minimum of 100x100. The image can be rectangular or square. You could also use a color image, but it would not be useful as only the grayscale values are used. White parts are completely transparent and black pixels completely opaque. Any gray value in between will have a corresponding transparency level.

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