Hi all,
I was hoping to officially release v4.60 this weekend, but the macOS version still has quite a few bugs - a side effect of moving much of the visual processing over to Metal for better performance. I'm about 95% there, but it needs extensive testing and I'd rather not ship a buggy binary.
So please bear with me a little longer. In the meantime, here's a glimpse of the brand new Ballpoint Pen effect coming in v4.60.
Hi all,
The 4.60 Release Candidate has been updated with a feature I have been wanting to add for a long time: FotoSketcher can now load custom brushes directly from Photoshop .abr files.
Until now, using custom brushes meant finding .abr files online, extracting the individual brushes as PNG images with a separate tool, and then loading those PNGs into FotoSketcher. It worked, but it was fiddly and put a lot of people off.
That extra step is now gone. Open an .abr file (or select several at once) and FotoSketcher reads the brushes straight from it. A selection window lets you preview every brush, tick or untick the ones you want, and confirm. Only the brushes you keep are loaded, so you are not stuck with an entire pack if you only like a handful.
If you want to build your own mixed sets from different .abr collections, there is a "Save PNGs" button that exports the selected brushes as individual PNG files. You can then combine them into a custom folder and load that folder any time, giving you a personal brush library tailored to your style.
There are thousands of free .abr brush packs available online (watercolour splashes, dry media, ink splatters, foliage, grunge textures and more), and they are now just a click away in FotoSketcher.
The updated Release Candidate is available at the same download link: https://fotosketcher.com/beta/FotoSketcher_4.60_RC.zip
As always, any feedback is welcome!
Happy painting,
David
Hi all,
This post is a bit of a departure from the usual FotoSketcher news, but I hope you will indulge me.
I have just released The Baronet, a free desktop chess application for Windows and macOS. It is a pet project with a long history: I started it almost twenty years ago after stumbling upon a book called How Computers Play Chess by David Levy and Monty Newborn. That book got me hooked on the idea of writing my own chess engine in Delphi, and I spent many evenings tinkering with it before life and FotoSketcher took over. Recently I dusted it off, rewrote large parts of it and brought it up to a modern standard.
Like FotoSketcher, The Baronet is completely free for everyone, on both Windows and macOS, with no ads and no catches.
What it offers today
The Baronet has a polished, customisable interface and can play at a wide range of strengths, from a gentle beginner level all the way up to over 2500 ELO (roughly Grandmaster strength), so it should provide a decent challenge no matter your level.
What is coming
I have plans to add learning and study features in future updates: opening explorers, game analysis, puzzles and that sort of thing. It is still early days, but the foundation is solid and I am looking forward to building on it.
For FotoSketcher users
If you ever fancy a quick break from photo editing and artistic filters, The Baronet provides a nice chess escapade 😊
You can download it for free here: the-baronet.com
I will be back very soon with more FotoSketcher news. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what you think of The Baronet!
Best regards,
David
Hi all,
The Release Candidate for FotoSketcher Studio 4.60 is now ready for download. This build is feature-complete: everything planned for 4.60 is in place, and the focus from here is on weeding out any remaining bugs before the final release. If the RC holds up well across different systems, it will become version 4.60 with little or no change.
For anyone who did not follow the alpha and beta builds, here is the full rundown of what is new in 4.60 compared to 4.50.
New Vectorize effect 🎨
The headline addition in this release. Vectorize turns your photo into flat-coloured shapes with smooth, curved outlines, producing a true vector illustration rather than a posterised bitmap. You can control the number of colours, smoothing, minimum detail size, contour simplification and curvature, so there is a good range between a bold, simplified poster look and a more detailed illustration.
The result can be saved as an SVG file (choose the SVG filter in the Save dialog), with every shape kept as an editable curve that you can open and refine in Inkscape, Illustrator or any other vector editor. Above 100% zoom the shapes are drawn from their geometry, so the result stays razor sharp instead of showing enlarged pixels. Resizing redraws the shapes at the new size rather than resampling, and the SVG export survives undo, redo and resize. The fine rotation tool turns the shapes themselves, so a rotated result can still be exported as SVG. The manual brush can paint Vectorize onto part of a picture, and while a full render runs you can watch the image building up on screen: the smoothing settling, the colours resolving, then the shapes filling in largest first.
Fine rotation, reworked
The fine rotation tool has been significantly reworked. A dial is now drawn directly on the picture, centred on the rotation pivot, with a handle you drag around the circle to set the angle. The angle box accepts hundredths of a degree for precise corrections, and the live preview is instantaneous on any picture size: the canvas turns a light copy of the image in real time, then the full-quality rotation follows in the background once you stop moving. The interface never freezes while it renders, and split view shows both halves turning during the preview.
Stippling: dot size and colour
The Stippling effect has gained two new parameters. A dot size slider renders the stipple with round dots up to eight pixels wide instead of single pixels, giving a bolder, more textured look. A colour slider lets you go from the classic black-and-white stipple to a full-colour version where dots take on the hues of your photo, with an option to push the saturation further for a vivid result.
Parameter undo / redo
The effect parameters now remember their previous settings. Two new toolbar icons let you step back and forth through your slider history, making it easy to compare adjustments and return to an earlier look.
Two new example scripts
Two new ready-made scripts are included in the application for you to try out or adapt.
Truchet Tiles effect
A Truchet Tiles effect has been added to the Stylize category. Truchet tiles are square tiles decorated with a simple pattern that, when placed on a grid in random orientations, produce surprisingly intricate and organic-looking designs. FotoSketcher uses the colours from your source photo to fill the tiles. You can also save and load your own custom tilesets.
Denoise effect
A Denoise effect has been added to the Photo Lab category, powerful enough to clean up noisy skies and high-ISO grain whilst preserving fine details elsewhere.
Improved Batch mode
The Batch mode window now lets you add entire folders to the processing queue, not just individual files.
Speed improvements
Several effects have received significant speed improvements in this release. Smooth Painting is now several times faster thanks to a reworked compositing pipeline that runs on all cores. Gouache Painting's stroke rendering also runs in parallel now. Vectorize's internal merge passes have been optimised to avoid rescanning the image.
Other improvements
Bug fixes
You can download the Release Candidate (for Windows) here: https://fotosketcher.com/beta/FotoSketcher_4.60_RC.zip
A macOS build will follow shortly.
As always, any feedback is very welcome, especially on the new Vectorize effect and SVG export. Please leave a comment below or send me an email at contact@fotosketcher.com.
Happy testing!
David
Hi all,
The first beta of FotoSketcher Studio 4.60 is now available for download. Since the alpha released a few weeks ago, the focus has been on polish and stability, but there is also one big addition worth highlighting.
- New Vectorize effect
A new Vectorize effect has been added to the Stylize category, and I am quite excited about this one. It analyses your photo and turns it into clean, flat-colour regions with smooth contours, and can export the result as an SVG file - giving you a true vector output that scales to any size without losing quality. You can control the number of colours, the level of smoothing, the minimum detail size, contour simplification and curvature, so there is a good range between a highly simplified poster look and a more detailed illustration. It works particularly well on portraits, animals and subjects with strong colour contrast.
- Alpha improvements
Various fixes and refinements have been made to the features introduced in the alpha, based on early feedback.
A quick recap of what was new in the alpha
For anyone who did not follow the alpha, here is what version 4.60 introduced over 4.50:
You can download Beta 1 (for Windows) here:
https://fotosketcher.com/beta/FotoSketcher_4.60_beta1.zip
A macOS build will follow.
As always, any feedback is very welcome - bugs, oddities, or anything that does not feel right on your particular setup. The Vectorize effect is brand new, so I am especially keen to hear how it works on different types of photos. Please leave a comment below or send me an email at contact@fotosketcher.com.
Happy testing!
David
