We're currently thinking through how we could put together additional getting started documentation, and possible additional features, to make getting started with building photo mosaic effects easier for studio artist customers. Especially new users.

 

I wanted to throw this discussion up for inclusion of comments from the general user population. Please feel free to suggest additional features you would like to see us provide, or requests for specific topics to be additionally documented.

 

There actually is a ton of existing documentation posts already available on this topic. This tutorial group post provides an entry point into a large amount of online documentation on this subject.

 

But we'd like to make it easier for people by putting together some specific 'getting started with photo mosaic effects' documentation.

 

Since everyone here knows hot to do this stuff, i think we tend to gloss over certain concepts that beginners might have a harder time initially picking up. So feedback on things you find difficult to comprehend if you are a beginning user, or found difficult to pick up when you were getting started if you are a more advanced users, is useful feedback to us.

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  • Photo mosaic or photo collage effects are built in Studio Artist using movie brushes. A movie brush is a quicktime movie that is loaded as a source brush. So at a basic level, there are 3 concepts to understand associated with building this kind of effect.

     

    1. How to convert a folder of images into a movie file, so that you can use your own set of images as a movie brush.

    2. How to import a custom movie file as a movie brush into the paint synthesizer.

    3. How to program the paint synthesizer to build specific styles of mosaic effects using a movie brush.

     

    Concepts 1 and 2 are pretty simple i think. Feel free to correct me if you feel that is not the case for you personally. Concept 3 is more involved. The best approach is to start by taking existing photo mosaic effects, and breaking apart how they are programmed in the paint synthesizer. This is an area where i feel we can provide more technical tutorial information, and provide more pre-built paint preset examples to make it easy for people to get started.

     

    Concept 1 - generating a movie from a folder of images

    You use a paint action sequence (PASeq) in Studio Artist to process a folder of images or a movie file. A PASeq can be thought of as a processing script. Anything you can do in studio artist as an interactive or automatic action can be recorded as a 'action step' in a PASeq. So a PASeq is just a list of actions. Processing with a PASeq can be output to a movie file, or to a folder of processed images (your choice).

     

    The actual PASeq used to convert a folder of images into a movie file is very simple. It consists of 1 action step, which erases the canvas to the source image.

    2472639486?profile=original

    Processing a folder of images with this PASeq into a movie file involves running the following menu command.

    2472639868?profile=originalRunning this menu command with the simple 1 step set canvas to source image PASeq shown above will take all of the images in the selected source folder and add then as single frames in the generated output movie file.

    When you run this menu command, you are first asked to select your source folder (the folder that contains the images you want to convert into a movie file. The you are asked to set the frame size of the movie file that will be generated as output. then you are asked to name the output movie file that will be generated from running the menu command.

     

    Concept 2 - importing a movie file into the paint synthesizer as a movie brush

    To load a movie file as a movie brush, you run the File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush menu command.

    2472639962?profile=originalIf you first load a pre-existing factory (or custom) paint preset that uses a movie brush, and then run the above menu command, you will load your own custom movie file into that paint preset to be used as it's movie brush.

    So, this is a very easy way to take an existing factory photo mosaic paint preset, and customize it to use your own set of custom images (encoded as frames in a movie file).

     

    If you run this menu command to load a movie brush into any old arbitrary paint preset, the movie file will be used as a movie brush within that paint preset, but depending on how the paint preset is programmed you may or may not like the results. Unless the paint preset is specifically built to generated painted mosaic effects, it's probably not going to do what you would want it to do as far as building a photo mosaic effect goes. So starting with a paint preset that has already been designed to generate a specific kind of photo mosaic effects is important if you are just going to naively import a movie as a new movie brush and expect anything useful to come of it.

     

    Concept 3 - programing the paint synthesizer to build specific photo mosaic or photo collage stylistic effects

    This third concept is a little more involved, since it requires some knowledge of the technical features associated with the paint synthesizer. There are a large number of different approaches that can be taken to program the paint synthesizer to generate different kinds of photo mosaic effects.

     

    Mosaics can be built using single brush nibs laid down in various tiling patterns. This approach uses a paint path length of 1, so that a single paint nib is drawn at each path start location.

    Another approach involves working with path start regionization in combination with region fill as brush pen mode. Path Start Regionization is a paint synthesizer feature that intelligently analyzes the source image, breaking it up into a collection of individual regions. These individual regions could be painted with different paint path fill styles. or in the case of mosaic effects, each region is treated as a single dynamic paint nib that is filled in with solid color or a movie frame image when using a movie brush to build a photo mosaic effect.

    The region shapes generated by the path start regionization process can be rectangles, or irregular shapes. So this opens up a whole approach to photo collage style effects where movie brush images are laid down in irregular shapes rather than rigid geometric grids.

     

    We provide a number of different pre-built factory paint preset that showcase different photo mosaic effects. One thing we are discussing is putting together more of these example factory presets that work with movie brushes. Specifically, some new factory preset categories that run through all of the different photo mosaic stylistic effects. So that you can select a particular mosaic or collage style you like that uses a factory movie brush, and then load your own custom movie file into it, to get started easily with a particular effect style.

     

    We're also looking into putting together some new 'getting started with photo mosaic effects' tutorial movies to help people navigate through all 3 of the above concepts.

     

    And we're looking at adding some additional 'paint synthesizer macro edit' help commands that could be used to auto-configure the paint synthesizer controls for specific mosaic effects.

     

    So these are the approaches we are currently discussing here to try and beef up the documentation on working with photo mosaic effects, and make getting started with them easier for new users. But we're very open to your suggestions about things we may be missing from our analysis presented above. Or specific questions you might want answered.

     

  • As i've already pointed out in this discussion, there is a huge amount of existing online documentation available for people interested in working with photo mosaic effects. In my previous post i discussed how we hope to improve this existing documentation, and welcome your input on that. But i also wanted to point out what some of the extensive existing resource are for people interested in wading through them.

     

    With all of this existing documentation, we're very interested in any comments on techniques described that people still have a hard time understanding, or want additional information on so that they can be understood better.

     

    More Information on Building Different Photo Mosaic Effects Using Studio Artist

    If you are interested in more information on different kinds of photo mosaic effects you can create with Studio Artist, there's a lot of different information resources available online. I will list some of them below to serve as a reference for access to all of this varied on-line information.

     

    The Studio Artist News blog has posted many articles on photo mosaic imagery over the years. The word 'mosaic' is used very loosely, since you can generate all kinds of different effects that go beyond a traditional rectangular photo mosaic approach. the block sizes can be adaptive, or irregular, or object masked as in the discussion above, or based on using the vectorizer.

     

    Creating Photo Mosaic effects in Studio Artist involve working with a movie brush. A movie file is generated where each individual movie frame is a different image in the collection of sub images you want to use to arrange to represent a larger image. That movie file is then loaded as a movie source brush into the paint synthesizer. Alternatively, you could use a movie background texture as an alternative approach in the paint synthesizer.

    Here's a tip post on Making a Movie Brush to Create a Photo Mosaic.

    Here's another post focused on Building Your Own Custom Movie Brush for Photo Mosaic Effects.

     

    One key to creating successful photo mosaic imagery is putting together a suitable collection of sub images, where the varying colorings of the set of sub images has enough diversity to successfully represent the larger image you want to use them to reproduce. You can also be very clever with choosing imagery related to different themes, or artistic categories of aesthetic looks, which work to build interesting effects when combined together in the larger mosaic image.

     

    An alternative approach to building a suitable set of internal colorings for your movie brush is to colorize the movie brush frames while you are painting the mosaic. Here's a post that focuses on some techniques you can use for movie brush re-colorization.

     

    There have been a large number of daily effect blog posts that talk about different ways to work with movie brushes.

     

    Many people are interested in duplicating the look of the wildly popular Studio Artist photo mosaic workgenerated by artist Charis Tsevis. To duplicate his style of sub-nested adaptive mosaic blocks, they are interested in working with grid tiling and nested sub blocks within the mosaic grid to generate detail at edge and feature areas of the larger image the adaptive mosaic is trying to reproduce. There are approaches you can use to build sub-nested tiled grids automatically to build detail in a tiled photo mosaic. Charis is a member of the Studio Artist User Forum if you wish to communicate with him directly, or follow the links on his userpage to more of his amazing Studio Artist generated artwork.

     

    Here's a post on irregularly deformed photo mosaic tilings, where the mosaic looks more like it was hand tiled.

     

    Studio Artist 3.5 shipped with a separate MSG editing application called MSG Evolver. It featured something called the ArtMapper that allowed for creation of all kinds of interesting photo mosaic effects. MSG editing and evolution features have been directly built into Studio Artist 4, so we discontinued the development of the older MSG Evolver application. You can use MSG in conjunction with the paint synthesizer to emulate most if not all of the old Art Mapper effects. This tip talks about how to Simulate the MSG Evolver Art Mapper in version 4.

     

    MSG Evolver also allowed for making movie mosaics, where you could build a dynamic moving photo mosaic from a collection of movie files. So the final mosaic was an actual movie, where all of the individual sub elements played back as movie files as the larger movie played. You can build effects like this in version 4 by using 2D frame indexing in your movie brush. You make a single larger movie brush that is composed of a series of different individual movie files edited back to back in a series in the larger main movie brush file. Each of the individual sub movies needs to be the same number of frame sin length. You can then use 2D frame indexing to map the individual movies appropriately to build a photo mosaic representation using one axis of the frame modulation while using the other axis of the frame modulation to time index through the sub movie. Here's an old forum discussion thread that talks about how to do this.

     

    Movie brushes can be used for many more visual effect and paint styles styles han just photo mosaic imagery. Here's a post that talks about using movie brushes as background textures to add visual complexity to a source brush paint preset.

     

    One exciting use of movie background textures is the Movie Pixel Index Background Texture, which can use a movie brush to build a set of hatching patterns for building tone in an image. This tip includes a section on Movie Pixel Background Textures. Here's a post that gets into the details of building a movie background texture hatching preset for building custom hatching patterns for building tone for paint presets.

     

     

    • Thank you John!

       

  • As a brand new user I think it's a great idea as it is a technique I particularly want to explore. In the first diagram under concept 1 which shows "Set Canvas - source image" Though I understand this is normally found under the Canvas menu it is also found nested under the eraser icon on the tool bar. Is there any way of bringing this out onto the tool bar as a convenient short cut?

    After making a movie brush following your guide I tried applying it to one of the PhotoMosaic presets e.g. PhotoMosaic9 but it is ignored and the default used. Could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

    • Whatever the last 'erase to' option was that you used, that will be what just pressing the eraser icon uses the next time you use it. So if you are repeatably erasing to white, or erasing to the source image, after you select it the first time you can just press the eraser icon to execute the command again. Or run the command b menu shortcut.

       

      You can also drag and drop the current source image preview directly to the canvas to erase the canvas to the source image.

      ............................

       

      Regarding the PhotoMosaic9 preset. It is a paint action sequence (PASeq) preset, not a paint preset. It's a 3 step PASeq as shown below.

      2472638822?profile=originalThe second action step ( called AutoPaint-Graffiti Grid Scan2 (E) ) is the auto paint step that uses a movie brush. So if you want that second action step to use a different movie brush, you need to first set the paint synthesizer to that action step's settings, then import a new movie brush, then record the paint synthesizer editing change back in the 2nd action step, and then save a copy of the PASeq preset if you want to save the change.

       

      The easiest way to set the paint synthesizer controls to that action step's settings is to play the action step. Which you can do by clicking on the red keyframe cell at frame time 1 for the second action step.

      2472640032?profile=originalThis will run the autopaint action step. At this point the paint synthesizer control panel parameters are all setup to correspond to the specific paint settings used for the autopainting this 2nd action step implements.

       

      The paint synthesizer can actually use a movie file in 2 different ways. In fact, you could build a paint preset that uses 2 different movie files simultaneously to build a very sophisticated paint effect. You can use a custom movie file as a movie source brush, or as a movie background texture. This particular paint patch used in the 2nd action step as the same movie file loaded as both a movie source brush and a movie background texture. But the painting going on in the effect is based on the movie background texture.

       

      So this is probably not the best preset to use when getting started. Both because you need to also learn how to edit individual action steps in a paint action sequence. And because the paint patch itself is using a movie background texture rather than a movie source brush to do the actual photo collage style painting.

       

      The way you can decode what is going on in the paint patch is to first look at the Paint Fill Setup control panel.

      Note that the Fill To parameter is set to Brush Load.

      2472640210?profile=originalThis is a common programming strategy for photo mosaic and photo collage effects. You can use an image processing brush load effect to colorize the individual movie brush frames on the fly to better match the specific area of the source image they are supposed to represent.

      2472640348?profile=originalIf we look at the Paint Brush Load control panel, we can see that the Type is set to Image Processing. And the Algorithm is set to paint Color Mean Shift, which is one algorithm that will colorize a movie brush frame. But the Source is set to Background Texture, so the output of the background Texture module is what is being colorized and used as a paint nib as opposed to the Source Brush.

       

      The Background Texture control panel is setup to use a movie background texture, as shown below.

      2472641362?profile=originalThe movie background texture is based on the grafMovieBrush2 movie file, which is one we provide for demonstration purposes inside of the Brush folder in your main Studio Artist folder. To import a different movie file to use as a movie background texture, you would run the File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Background Texture menu command.

      2472641550?profile=originalThis will allow you to choose a custom movie file to use instead of the grafMovieBrush2 movie file the original paint patch uses.

       

      If you then wanted to record your editing change to the 2nd actions tep in the PhotoMosaic9 PASeq preset,you could do so by holding down the option key and clicking on the red keyframe cell at frame time 1 associated with the 2nd action step.

      2472640032?profile=originalThis edited the PASeq in memory, but not the PAseq preset file on your hard disk. You would have to export a new PASeq preset, or overwrite the old one to save the editing change on disk (if you want to use the edited PAseq later).

    • The paint preset GraffitiGridScan3 might be a better one to use when getting started. It uses a movie source brush based on a graffiti movie file we provide for demonstration purposes in the Brush folder inside of your main Studio Artist folder.

      And it just implements a simple grid style photo mosaic effect. So a single paint nib of a movie frame is laid down in a rectangular tiling pattern across the canvas.

      2472639758?profile=originalYou can use the File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush menu command to load a new movie brush into this paint preset. i would suggest first loading one of the demonstration movie files we provide in the Brush folder (inside of your main Studio Artist folder) first to see the effect of changing the movie source brush.

       

      Below i used the File : Paint Synthesizer : New Movie Brush menu to select the NatureBrush1 movie file contained in the zMoviebrushExamples folder inside of the Brush folder.

      2472640206?profile=originalAfter importing the NatureBrush1 movie file as a new movie brush, if i run the action button the paint preset will build a photo mosaic effect using the new movie brush.

      2472640285?profile=originalThe original GraffitiGridScan3 paint preset uses a 48x32 pixel movie frame size, which is also the brush size for the mosaic.

      2472640745?profile=originalThe NatureBrush1 movie file has a 48x48 frame size.

      2472640645?profile=originalSo it works well as an alternative movie brush for the tiling settings associated with this preset.

       

      Suppose you load a much larger frame size movie file into this preset. I tried another graffiti movie file with a 160x160 pixel frame size.

      2472641358?profile=originalIf i just import this larger movie file as a movie brush and then press the action button i will get the following.

      2472641489?profile=originalBecause the brush size is larger, the tiling cells are larger as well. I can reduce the brush size in the Brush Modulation control panel by reducing the Max Size Range control from 100% to 20%.

      2472641585?profile=originalIf i now press teh action button after reducing the mac brush ize to 20%, then i get the following.

      2472641762?profile=originalAgain, any changes you make to a paint patch are not actually saved to disk to a specific paint preset file until you export the changes.

      Graffiti Grid Scan3.zip

  • Here's a link to an article called Brick Wall Photo Mosaic that showcases some paint presets and a PASeq that use a brick wall movie brush. The article includes a link to a download for the presets as well as the movie file used for the movie brush.

     

    This set of presets and the article associated with it is another good starting point for diving into the details on building photo mosaic effects. You can also modify these preset to use your own custom movie files for the movie brush.

     

    These example presets show off the 'path start regionization' approach to building a photo mosaic or photo collage effect. As opposed to the single paint nib regular tiling approach discussed above in the GraffitiGridScan3 paint preset example. So these presets are going to be a better jumping off point for creating irregular photo collage effects.

  • Hi, is there any Effect/PASeq for making painting like this with Rectangular/None Rectangular objects of course with detecting source image colors and shadow effects:

    collage-money.jpg

    • Yes, you can do irregular shapes. The easiest way to do it is to build your movie file for the movie brush so that there is an embedded alpha channel associated with the movie. So each frame in the movie has an associated mask, which is stored in the alpha channel of the movie file.

      Here's a tutorial post on creative uses of masked movie brushes.

       

      Here's a post on building a hexagonal photo mosaic using a hexagon embedded alpha mask.

       

      Here's a post on Making a Masked Movie Brush from a Folder of Alpha Matted Images.

      Here's an associated post on Masked Movie Brush Photo Mosaic Effect.

  • I have searched many sites for finding your software, now

    some new questions:

    1-Can your software do optimized nesting objects?

    2-Can your software get vector shape and save vector file eps,ai or pdf?

    3-please reply wich of these images can be created with Studio Artist?

    Series #1:

    nest_inside_shape.gif

     

    about-true-shape-nesting-library.jpg

     

    7371434-trust-word-collage-on-white-background-vector-illustration.jpg

     

    88326260.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=49768722B86DC0FDDC315504C288F91023793CBB99C5AABF4F00E29C7CE8461FE30A760B0D811297

     

     

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