Automatic Painter

lucdesaulniers · Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 6:04 am Post subject: Automatic Painter

In the last Graphic.com Challenge, we have learned how to create brushes in order to modify images in a painterly fashion. After watching these two demonstration videos of an automatic painter application, I felt the exercise we were doing was equal of the stone age. To all who participated in GC Challenge No. 4, you have to se this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJU9RuD-98U

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DavidMac · Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 7:11 am Post subject:

Their site has some other goodies as well. Haven't had a chance to download and play yet ..........

DavidMac · Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 5:59 am Post subject:

This site has a whole gamut of graphics utilities. There's a texture builder which looks quite interesting, and complete photo re-touch and drawing programs too, all of them quite reasonably priced, plus a slew of free windows applets which were used in the development of the main programs.

I had a quick play with two of their offerings. They are all PC only but they ran beautifully in my virtual machine on the Mac.

They are stand-alones not plug-ins.

The first I tried was PureImage. It is a simple noise and moiré remover. I haven't tried it on moiré but for digital noise removal (I took a couple of deliberately underexposed pictures in poor light) it is absolutely the best I have ever tried! It can remove medium noise levels with almost no perceptible softening and high noise levels with surprisingly little softening. It has pre-sets for certain types of image and noise, and fully adaptable manual adjustments as well. It's incredibly simple to use, very fast, and does exactly what is says on the box. Really excellent! Full five Stars from me!

The other, which started this thread, is AutoPainter. It simulates the style of various artists from photographs. These kind of programmes and plug ins have been around for ever and are usually incredibly crude and disappointing. This one is impressive. It emulates the styles of named artists and certain basic styles - and it does it surprisingly well. The more impressionistic the style the better it does it. It does good Aquarelle, Cézanne or Monet, but really bad pencil or crayon, and Klimpt is truly risible.

Now I am no fan of these kinds of effects. They tend to look exactly as they are. However, if ever I had cause to use a "painterly" conversion of an image, this would be my choice. It's streets ahead of anything else I have seen.

There is a free one month trial download available. If you fancy a bit of fun, download it just to have a play. It actually paints the image on the screen in front of you. It's great fun just to watch as it builds the "painting". It couldn't be simpler to use, so no need to worry about time taken to learn - you'll need all of five minutes to understand the whole thing. So even if you can't imagine ever needing to use it, (I can't), try it anyway just for sheer entertainment.

lucdesaulniers · Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:11 am Post subject:

I just want to add something to David's excellent review: you can also make your own "style". While exploring linked forums dedicated to this app, posters were showing and exchanging the style they have created (à la brush in Photoshop). There is a whole community out there dedicated to it. I will certainly explore further, even if it is just to duplicate my own "real" canvas painting style.
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10thWay · Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:03 pm Post subject:

Thanks for sharing guys, I'll check them out shortly.
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