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Creating Color Palettes with Using Images and other Techniques

Synthetik — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:44:58 +0000

Three Training videos on Color Management through the source area as well as how to automatically make and save Color Palettes using your favorite images or using your favorite artist’s color schemes to colorize your own images. For instance, do you like Monet’s colors? Just drag in any Monet painting into the source image and automatically make a color palette. Then autopaint, assist paint or manually paint your image into the canvas using the Monet color scheme. Color and Color Palette Management This video shows how to use the color modes and color palettes to easily personalize presets with color effects Automatically create color palettes in Studio Artist based on your favorite paintings or images. Create color palettes using source images and several other methods to create beautiful automatic – assisted or manual paintings or use for automatic rotoscoping. This video shows how to save a color palette inside a preset so that it will always reference a particular palette. Also explains how edit the Color Mode in Source Color in the editor for powerful color effects.

Preset Management Tutorial Video Posted

Synthetik — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 04:59:11 +0000

Three Training Videos on Preset Management for 4.0 were posted today. Check ‘em out on the Training page or through these links Organizing Presets 1 – Creating and Storing Presets Organizing Presets 2 – Favorites Organizing Presets 3 – Deleting, Renaming, Chang

Training Video for Layers and compositing in Studio Artist 4

Synthetik — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:21 +0000

New training video for using Layers in Studio Artist 4.0. http://synthetik.com/training/

Cool New Paint Action Sequence Presets Added Go and Get ‘Em

Synthetik — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:28:31 +0000

There are some cool new presets posted in the forum’s preset sharing group that you can download and use. Once you download them you can put the file in your PAseq Folder in your Studio Artist Folder. Here’s the path: Studio Artist Folder > Preset > PAseq > Movies > Add the DancePresets Folder here Or you can import them individually File > Import > Import Paint Action Sequence These presets use the context morph for the backgrounds. We will come out with a tutorial soon about how to do that. There is some information in the post about how to add the background images. Check out the other presets in the Cool Preset Sharing Group Here’s the link

Video: Adding Selective Detail to Your Paintings

Synthetik — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:07:12 +0000

So you really like your painting but you want to bring out the eyes and mouth a bit more or a bit of detail here and there from the source image. It’s easy to do. Just watch this video on bringing in detail to your paintings.

Download Studio Artist Training Videos to your Computer

Synthetik — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:24:04 +0000

Its easy to download the training videos to your computer. 1) If the training video is on vimeo then click on the Vimeo logo to go to Vimeo. 2) Once you are on the Vimeo site Ctrl click (mac) or right click (windows) the “Download this video” link in “About this Movie” See pic below. NOTE: It you just click the “Download this Video” link it will playback in a larger screen which makes it great for watching! If the video is on our server let it fully load and then click on the down arrow on the bottom right of the screen and save as a quicktime movie.

ProRes 422, Studio Artist Movies and Final Cut Pro

Synthetik — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 22:40:08 +0000

When outputting a movie from Studio Artist you can take advantage of the the ProRes 422 codecs if you have Final Cut Pro installed on the same machine as Studio Artist. Apple only allows this compression on Mac computers with FCP installed. If you do not have FCP then please see the below advice for Windows users wanting to use compression. If you plan on using Studio Artist in FCP it makes sense to use the ProRes 422 codec when outputting movies from Studio Artist since that is optimal format for editing in FCP. Even if you are not going to import your SA creations into Final Cut you still may want to take advantage of using ProRes 422 to minimize your output file size with very little change to the original. Windows users and those Mac users who do not have Final Cut Pro can use the pre-cursor to ProRes 422, Apple Intermediate Codec. For much smaller file sizes you can try the MPEG-4 Video or the JPEG – Photo compression types. You just need to experiment to see what works for you. You can change codecs in SA by choosing File > Movie Codec Settings That will bring up a dialogue window where you can change the settings.

Using Custom Favorites Presets to Build Gallery Show Effects

Synthetik — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:42:28 +0000

Yesterday we discussed how to build custom preset Favorites categories. One cool feature of Favorites categories is that you can combine together different operation mode presets into a single accessible category. This is useful for organizing different kinds of presets (like paint and image operation presets) that work together to build specific visual effects. Favorites categories can also be used to control Gallery Show processing in several different ways. Today’s post takes a look at using a custom preset Favorites category as a Start Cycle Option for a Gallery Show effect. Gallery Show is a really versatile feature in Studio Artist 4. You can use Gallery Show in many different ways. The original idea behind Gallery Show was to provide a way to generate personalized self-running dynamic art shows in Studio Artist. So you could organize sets of custom presets that work together in interesting ways, and then use them with Gallery Show to build a custom dynamic ever changing art show. But you can also use Gallery Show to do things like automatically generate new mutated or randomized presets, generate collections of processed imagery, help you visualize what effects different operation modes or control panels are capable of generating, etc. When Gallery Show is started (with the Action : Gallery Show menu command) it runs a series of processing cycles over and over until it is stopped (by pressing the spacebar key). Each Gallery Show cycle can choose a random preset, run it, wait for a period of time after finishing the effect, and then start a new cycle. There are a large number of different Gallery Show Techniques that determine the specific kind of processing that takes place in a Gallery Show cycle. The Techniques include random factory presets (like Paint, PASeq, MSG, etc). Techniques are also available to randomize operation mode settings (like Image Operation, Vectorizer, etc). Or to randomize the current Editor panel settings. A Gallery Show processing cycle can also include a Start Cycle Option, which is additional processing that happens at the start of each gallery show cycle before the main Technique processing effect for the cycle takes place. The Start Cycle Option could be as simple as erasing the canvas before running the next gallery show cycle. A more interesting Start Cycle Option is to choose a random preset from the current Favorites category, run it on the canvas, and then run the main gallery show Technique processing. We previously discussed using a custom preset Favorites category with a random vectorizer Gallery Show here. This previous post described using a custom water wash Favorites category for a gallery show Start Cycle Option, in combination with a Random Vectorizer Technique. So the gallery show processing would first run a water wash effect on the existing canvas, and then apply the output of a random vectorizer effect to the canvas in a single gallery show cycle. The combination of the start cycle processing and the technique processing over time can lead to build up of really interesting visual effects. The challenge is to design the custom Favorites category and the Technique processing so that they work together to build up an interesting visual effect style. For today’s post, i used a Factory Paint setting for the Technique, in combination with a Random setting for the Technique Scan Option. This Technique will randomly pick a different factory paint preset for each cycle of gallery show processing. The Gallery Show settings are specified in the Gallery tab of the main Preferences Dialog (as shown above). Many factory paint presets are build with the Max Strokes parameter in the Path Start control panel set to a really high value, like 40000. This means that they will draw 40000 individual paint strokes if left to run on their own. They are built this way with the assumption that when a user runs them via the action button, the user will manually stop them at the appropriate time. This could be a problem when using random paint presets in gallery show processing cycles, since we don’t want a single gallery show paint cycle to run forever. Gallery Show has a special setting called Paint Max Stroke. This setting specifies the maximum number of paint strokes that a gallery show cycle will paint. Note that it’s set to 300 in the gallery show preference settings above. This gallery show preference setting overrides the normal Max Strokes parameter stored in a paint preset when it’s run in gallery show. So after 300 paint strokes are drawn, the gallery show cycle will end, and another will start after waiting for the Wait in Sec time preference setting. For today’s example i used a custom preset Favorites category called Transitions2. This favorites category is a set of custom Paint, MSG, and Image Operation presets i put together that process the canvas with transitional visual effects. The idea is that a previous painted canvas is modified with the transitional visual effect and then additional painting will take place on top of the modified previous painting. So the combination of overpainting on an effected previous canvas builds up a visual effect that is different than just straight overpainting. See the full gallery on Posterous You can access the preset Favorites categories by using the drop down popup from the heart icon button on the left side of the preset Favorites toolbar (1st gallery image above). Or you can also access the preset favorites by using the Favorites tab in the main Preset Browser palette (2nd gallery image above). For today’s effect, we used a custom preset Favorites category for the gallery show Start Cycle Option processing that occurs before the main technique is run. However, there are also specific Technique settings that use the current Favorites category as a source of presets for the main gallery show Technique (Cur Favorites, Mutate Cur Favorites). Custom preset Favorites categories are really the key to customizing gallery show processing. That’s true if you are using gallery show to create a custom dynamic art show, or generating custom effect processing to build collections of processing imagery or automatically generated new effect presets. For more information on gallery show, check out this tip. Here are some articles on gallery show. Also, this previous blog post discusses gallery show features in depth.

Organizing Your Workspace with Custom Favorites Presets

Synthetik — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:33:16 +0000

The Preset Favorites Toolbar provides a way to custom organize different Studio Artist presets. You can build custom Favorites categories to provide quick access to presets you frequently use in your work. The Favorites toolbar is also useful when manually painting, since it takes up much less screen real estate than the full Preset Browser palette. Favorites categories also provide a way to mix and match different preset types in a single category. So you could do something like make a category for watercolor effects that included watercolor paint presets as well as image processing presets that simulate wet canvas effects. The Preset Favorites toolbar is docked at the top of the main workspace in Studio Artist’s default workspace. But like all Studio Artist palettes and toolbars, you are free to move and reposition them at any docking location in the workspace (top – bottom – left – right). Toolbars will automatically adjust to be horizontal or vertical depending on where you dock them in the interface. The Favorites toolbar consists of a heart shaped icon pulldown menu that lets you choose your custom Favorites categories (1st gallery image below). After you choose a specific Favorites category, the individual preset icons associated with that category are displayed in the Favorites toolbar. See the full gallery on Posterous A preset favorites category can include different Studio Artist operation mode preset types within a single category. This is different that the factory preset collection, which organizes presets by specific operation mode type. So a factory paint preset collection-category can only include paint presets in it. But a preset favorites category could include paint, image processing, msg, texture synthesizer, vectorizer, dualmode paint, or PASeq preset in a specific category. If you hold the mouse cursor above a preset icon in the Favorites toolbar, a tool tip appears that tells you the kind of preset the icon represents as well as it’s name (2nd gallery image above). To make a new custom favorites category, you can use the Edit : Preset : Make New Favorites Category menu command (3rd gallery image above). You can also manually make a new folder in the Preset /Favorites folder inside of your main Studio Artist folder to make a new Favorites category. The Favorites toolbar can be turned on or off in the main workspace by using the Windows : Favorites Preset Toolbar menu command (4th gallery image above). To add the current preset browser preset to the current favorites category, you can run the Edit : Preset : Copy Current Preset to CurrentFavorites Category menu command. You can also drag and drop the Preset Browser’s current preset icon directly onto the Favorites toolbar to add the current preset to the favorites category (5th, 6th, 7th gallery images above). For more information on working with custom preset Favorites categories, check out this tip. For more information on how presets are organized in Studio Artist, check out this tip.

Path Start Regionize Using Region Draw Pen Mode Hatching Patterns

Synthetik — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:34:00 +0000

Yesterday we discussed how you can use Region Draw Pen Mode to automatically generate different hatching patterns to fill in interactively drawn regions. Today we’ll show how you can use the Region Draw Pen Mode hatching patterns to fill paint regions generated by path start regionization. The finished effect above was created with the following paint action sequence (PASeq). See the full gallery on Posterous There are 2 different paint steps used to create the finished effect. The first AutoPaint action step is using a path start regionization paint preset. We’ve discussed path start regionization here before, it’s a way to use the paint synthesizer to intelligently analyze the source image, break it up into a series of smart regions, and then paint in each region. The 2nd gallery image above shows the Path Start control panel for the first AutoPaint action step. Note that the Generator parameter is set to the Adaptive Block Regionize option. This Generator is a path start regionization generator. It intelligently analyzes the source image and breaks it up into a series of adaptive block regions. Increasing the Max Stroke setting increases the number of adaptive regions. The Path Type parameter in the Path Shape control panel is set to Path Start Regionize Use RegionDraw Pen Gen (3rd gallery image above). This Path Type option uses the current Region Draw Pen Mode hatching pattern to fill in the individual path start regions. The hatching pattern is specified by the Region Fill Type parameter in the Pen Mode control panel (4th gallery image above). The output of the first AutoPaint action step is shown in the 5th gallery image above. Note that each individual rectangular region is filled with a random hatching pattern. This is because the Region Fill Type parameter in the Pen Mode control panel specifies an Ellipse Edge Scribble Fill hatching pattern. The 6th gallery image shows the path start regions filled in with an outline region type so you can better visualize the shape and positioning of the individual path start regions. The remaining PASeq action steps build a set of bezier paths that represent the edges of the source image, and then paint them in with a thicker vector paint preset. First we erase the bezier path frame for the current layer (to insure there aren’t any existing bezier paths stored in there). Then we generate bezier paths from the source edges. Then we paint in the bezier paths. All 3 of these action steps were generated by using the appropriate Path menu commands (Path Layer Commands: Erase, Generate Paths: from Source Edges, and Paint Paths: Full Layer). The PASeq preset used for this effect is available for download here. For more information on working with path start regionization check out this article.