As suggested, I am looking into using the MicroEdits for greater understanding. I do the following:
bring up SA5Mac64
open a source image
erase the canvas to white
switch to PSC mode
Set “_Assisted Painting”
pick the first preset “Acrylic Blend Dry Brush”
drag the mouse over the canvas to see the paint stroke
Click “Index” on the built-in help browser
Click “Paint Synth Macro Edits”
Click Reinitialize arrow
drag the mouse over the canvas (now it looks like a very boring/simple stroke)
Click “Turn off all Randomization” arrow
drag the mouse over the canvas (no change at all)
Click “Turn off all Path Start Inhibitors” arrow
drag the mouse over the canvas (no change at all)
Click “Turn off all Path End Options” arrow
drag the mouse over the canvas (no change at all)
Click “Turn off Color Modulation” arrow
drag the mouse over the canvas (no change at all)
Click “Default Path Shape” arrow
drag the mouse over the canvas (no change at all)
Of course it is very difficult to figure out if I am doing it correctly when there is almost no change after running the Micro-Edit. I also tried to run the action command between each step. This also yielded little or no change between the steps.
My questions are:
1) Is this a good preset to test/understand the first 5 microedits?
2) Can a SA5 user see what the microedit does?
3) Can a SA5 user make their own microedit “script”?
I am sure that the answers to this entail voluminous detail so if you could just point me in the right direction, that would be great. And if it is related to the website you guys are working on, no problem. I have lots of other stuff to figure out.
Thanks in advance.
Replies
If you go into the Editor, you can see exactly what they do. Editable controls in there will be turned on or off, or they settings modified in some way.
Let's look at something like 'turn off all path start inhibitors'. Now, you could do that manually. By going to the Path Start control panel in the editor, and manually editing any path start inhibitors that might happen to be turned on. So the macro edit provides an option to quickly do that without having to jump into the editor.
That one is pretty straight forward. 'turn off all randomization' is more complex, because you'd have to go into a number of different control panels and turn off different individual editable controls to fully turn off all of the randomization options available in the paint synthesizer.
Why don't you try reinitialize, then try some of the macro edits like 'make paint wet' or make raised lighting paint, and see what happens to the way the paint looks and interacts with the canvas. you can then look inside of the editor to see which controls changed, which might help you understand what some of the paint synthesizer controls do.
Some of the macro edits are really convenience kinds of edits (turn off path start inhibitors, turn off randomization'. Others, like the ones i described above, allow you to do simple changes to the look and appearance of the paint without having to dip into the Editor to do it.
Others (like generate random vector paint), will create a randomized vector paint preset. so you can click it all day, see if you like the results, export a new preset file if you do, then click it again and get a new random preset.
Others, like 'path start ip op sketch', automatically setup a very complex series of manual edits that allow an image operation effect (that generates vectors) to be embedded inside of the paint synthesizer. The manual edit is so tedious, it's way easier to have a single step way of doing it, both for beginners as well as expert editors.
Ultimately, you need to dive into the Editor to fully edit the paint synthesizer. the macro edit commands are just some easy single step commands available for people who can't be bothered to learn all of the eins and out of the paint synth editor, or for convenience edits like i discussed above, or for things like generating randomized presets.
OK Mr. Dalton. My head exploded (which in my case is a good thing).
Thanks for writing this technical detail. I will need to read this a few more times while experimenting.
Tonight in just a few minutes, I understand inhibitors much better than before. Actually the behavior is a little hard to describe (in words).
But I found out one use is that it can be used like a mask. Just by doing the following:
start out with a white canvas
use one preset to draw a blob of paint (any non-white colors)
pick a second preset
go into the “Path Start” pane in the editor
change the Inhibitor to “White Only”
Then if you start painting, it will not paint over the areas painted with the previous preset! This is exactly how a mask would work.
Very cool!
I need to experiment with the other inhibitors!
Sounds like you're on your way to understanding how to use the Editor to adjust the paint synthesizer.
The texture Range controls in Path Start control panel are another easy thing to experiment with. Texture value being 0 in a totally flat area, and increasing in value as you get nearer to an edge. So by using that inhibitor, you can get paint strokes to only start drawing in flat areas of the source area, or conversely only where edges are.