Saturday, March 7, 2015

FotoSketcher 3.00 is officially released. 100% free as always.

Dear all,

FotoSketcher 3.00 has been a bit long in the making but your patience is now rewarded :-)

You can download the official version (with setup or standalone) here: http://www.fotosketcher.com/download-fotosketcher/

New features and changes in version 3.00:
- New Painting 10 (brushstrokes) effect
- New "invert colors" function (in the Edit menu or CTRL+I shortcut)
- Integration of the "invert colors" function in the script mode (F5)
- Improved Painting 4 responsiveness
- Cosmetic changes to the user interface (especially when the program is maximized)
- New keyboard shortcuts (left, right and up keys) to move the divider between the left and right panes. Works when the main window is focused, even if an effect is running.

Here are a couple of examples of the new effect:



Have fun with FotoSketcher!

David

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely fantastic! Thanks for the continous improvement!

David said...

You're welcome. I'm glad you like the new version :-)

Anonymous said...

Yes!!! Very Cooool!!!

Anonymous said...

I do wonder if there will ever be a plugin version, a 64bit version and/or the ability to do do RAW files.

David said...

Hi,

I doubt that I will create a plugin version or add RAW file support, but there will definitely be a 64bit version at one point. However, I have so far found no improvement over the 32bit version, either in speed or memory usage.

Cheers,

David

Anonymous said...

Care to share the settings you used for the still life? Was it a mix of effects?

Riccardo said...

Hi David,

Great job with the new effect, thank you!

BTW... I think there is a problem with the home page of Fotosketcher.com, right now: the panel on the right where images used to appear remains blank (at least for me, - using Chrome).

Best,

Riccardo

David said...

-> Anon: It was indeed a mix of different parameters (only in Painting 10 though), which I applied using the manual brush.
-> Riccardo: Thanks! There was indeed a glitch on my webpage. Hopefully it's solved now.

Peter said...

@Casey, if you read this: Can you share your settings (script) for the English landscape painting (http://i.imgbox.com/HcV0f12j.jpg)

@David: Great job! It's beginning to look more and more like a "real" painting package!

As a suggestion: Can you share some scripts in a specific "Tutorial" page? Something like "Before & After."

Riccardo said...

Hi David,

there is still a problem with the home page of Fotosketcher.com, right now: the panel on the right where images used to appear remains blank (at least for me, - using Chrome)

David said...

-> Peter: Thank you. I do need to set up a proper tutorial page indeed (will do one day, I promise).

-> Riccardo: I've just installed Chrome to test and my page looks OK. Can you try a cache reset (CTRL+F5 or SHIFT+F) just in case?

Andrew Finnie said...

thank you so much, it;s great!!

Andrew Finnie said...

absolutely wonderful!

Casey said...

For Peter: (sorry for the delay)

If I remember rightly, all I did was invert the image then run Painting 10 with 20-80-20-130-130

I might have had the second last 130 up to about 180 (strength of effect), and the actual values don't matter too much - 20 can be 17-25, 80 = 75 to 85 (this one also increases the render time a lot, so maybe leave it at 50).

Texture 9 [] Strong.

Then run it and re-invert back to normal when it finishes. The invert seems to increase contrast and force FS to place strokes in edge-defined areas (buildings, leaves, etc).

Example, with those settings above: (yes, it took ages... worth it though)

http://i.imgbox.com/wNlIMR4o.jpg

David said...

Thank you, Andrew!
Casey, thanks for taking the time to share your process.

Peter said...

Casey: Thanks for sharing.
Painting, as creative imagination, always live in the now. So no problem with the delay :-)

Riccardo said...

The Home page is now only showing as a simple HTML page, both in Chrome and in Firefox. I'll take a screenshot and send it to you

David said...

Hi Riccardo,
Thanks for letting me know. There seems to be a problem with the theme I use and which is no longer supported. I will have to update my website.

Casey said...

Mate - can I make a small request?

When you save an image and it saves as the default name "FotoSketcher image"...

How hard would it be to read the folder you're saving to and auto-increment a number afterwards? Or maybe even have a "save format" - "default name"# or "default name"## (for FotoSketcher image01)

So you can save
FotoSketcher image.jpg
FotoSketcher image1.jpg
FotoSketcher image2.jpg

and so on, without having to manually add the 1,2,3 all the time.

Or is that just a complication?

David said...

Hi Casey,
That should not be too hard to program. I'll look into it for the next release.

Casey said...

Front page works fine in Opera now (and FireFox).

David said...

Thanks Casey, that's good news. I've been changing some parameters with Cloudflare, so maybe that helped.

Riccardo said...

Hi David,

The site now looks good in Chrome

Riccardo

David said...

Hi Riccardo,

That's good news! Thank you for your feedback.

Cheers,

David

Casey said...

Hi, mate.

this isn't a negative comment, but I was wondering if you had a method to control "spill", when the brush bleed from one colour/area into another.

To avoid it, I found a neat tool for irfanView - "WireWorm", free, I recommend it.

David said...

Hi Casey,

Yeah, the rough strokes are sometimes unwanted. I found they usually don't look too good in sky areas close to the ground, buildings or mountains. The way I try to solve this is with the manual brush (using different parameters or effects), but it's sometimes hit or miss. Thanks for the tip about WireWorm. I use Irfanview, so I'll test it.

Casey said...

Since you use IrfanView, a little tip for you.

Open FS
Open Irfanview - use IV's thumbnail page to view thumbnails of a directory. (File menu - thumnails)

When you find a thumbnail of a picture you like, left click it, hold and drag it onto the FS icon on the taskbar.

Wait for Windows to pop FS to the foreground and then drop the "carried" image in.

It's like drag and drop from windows explorer but it's done from inside IrfanView, giving FS a "thumbnail browser mode" for the picture directories.

Cool, hey?

Casey said...

An interesting tip.

Run FS - the new painting 10.

Settings
min - 25,
iterations - 100,
abstraction - 35,
strength - 170
sat - 130 (default)

NB: differences -/+ 10 won't matter.

Save picture, open IrfanView (or your chosen paint editor, but it needs a good quality resize algorithm)

Resize to 200% and save.

The resize expands the brush areas and adds a sort-of sharpness to the edges, making the brushes look 3D.

Finished example - the original looked OK, but just check out the 3D brush effects!

http://i.imgbox.com/KBIL1vVo.jpg

(Umm... I think I already said this before.. damn my memory, sorry if it's a repeat)

David said...

Hi Casey,

That looks great! Thanks for the tips :-)

Cheers,

David

Casey said...

I've updated my examples with the newer styles:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/5ailmga3ds5z/Fotosketcher%20Examples.rar

Rar5 format, about 11 MB

Standard zip format, 11 MB

http://www.filefactory.com/file/60l9e8ez143l/Fotosketcher%20Examples.zip

28 pictures including original.

Having done this, might I suggest than new filters can replace the older (less useful) filters like bilateral/median/etc.

Casey said...

Larger examples (took longer to make)

http://www.filefactory.com/file/75iwktadnpld/Fotosketcher%20Examples.zip

David said...

Hi Casey,

Thank you for these beautiful examples. As you suggested I will probably replace some old (and a bit crude) effects with new ones in future releases of FotoSketcher.

Julia said...

Hi,

I really like your program and it worked very fine! But suddenly, when I try to run a filter over my pictures, "debordement d entrier" appears always. The first 5 times it all worked well, but now nothing is working anymore. I deinstalled the whole program, but after re-installation it does not work again. When the error appears, the processing stops and does not continue after I close the error.

Hope you can help me..

Cheers, Julia

David said...

Hi Julia,

"Débordement d'entier" means "Integer overflow". It could happen if you use a very large source image (try to resize using CTRL+R before running an effect).
You could also download the portable version of FotoSketcher and see if it solves the problem.
If all fails, don't hesitate to contact me here: http://www.fotosketcher.com/contact-us/

Regards,

David

Casey said...

I tried it with as large a resolution file as my memory would allow (with the portable version) and got this error:

(Google translated) error of extended verification.

Casey said...

Please excuse the extra post - I tried it again after a reboot.

Up to 18000 x (whatever it was), about 216 megapixels (!!!) it worked fine, I didn't try higher.

Just out of interest, a resized larger image, worked on, then sized back to the original... gives a finer dispersal of strokes.

Poetic Artist said...

First of all, let me say I love your program!

I am requesting a feature I would like to see that I think would be awesome if you can do it, perhaps to scripting. A feature to ignore the original images color pallet, and change colors for each brush stroke to a different value and pallet, to give a simulated painting affect such as this following example.

http://afremov.com/image.php?type=P&id=19154

Thanks for your great work!

David said...

Hi William,

Thank you for your kind comment. I was aware of this type of painting but it is actually more difficult than it looks to emulate. I did experiment with using a specific color palette, but so far the results have been a bit disappointing. I'm still working on it, though :-)

Regards,

David

Casey said...

I fear that PA's desire might be more than Fotosketcher can attain.

Afremov's work woul require an almost AI "understanding" of strokes and such - the human touch to know what colour to switch in and where.. and why.

This is the output from Dynamic AutoPainter - it uses analyses strokes to define the new image, not quite AI but it has an semi-understanding of the concepts of what to out and where.

Fotosketcher IS brilliant, but not in that same arena as AutoPainter (and a lot smaller and FREE (haha)). Nor should it be, really - there is place for both.
I use Photoshop, sometimes, but also, more often, use a free photo program called LazPaint - it has many PS features (no plugins, sadly)... both have their merits.

The same goes for FS - it has its own merits, complicating things to try to attain the human-touch-painting might be counter-productive.

http://i.imgbox.com/kZ55tVJ8.jpg

?

Still - suggestions:

1 - semi-random variation from image-derived colour values. Preferably based on larger-than-pixel size sample (maybe 5x5?)

2 - Remap colours... read image colours and semi-simplify - then swap reds to oranges, blues to yellows, etc.

3 - Simplify then complete palette exchange (what you said didn't work too well) - maybe with optional palette choices. Choosing between 3-5 options might fix the fault.

PS - the new capture thing is bloody annoying!!!!!! (It doesn't work at all in Opera)

David said...

Hi Casey,

Thanks for your remarks and suggestions. I agree that DAP is in another arena. I was actually very interested when I discovered Arcimbolder (the ancestor of DAP). It gave me ideas for FotoSketcher ;)
I'm currently doing some research on various subjects around image segmentation, image analogies and image moments. I also have a new algorithm idea for a new painting effect. It still needs to 'gel' before I start coding though.

Cheers,

David