How to Create a Watercolor Cloner ?

[Nora Laiken]

    I would like to create a watercolor clone brush. I am willing to use any of the many watercolor presets but don't know the magic parameters for making them into clones. Does anybody know how to do this ?

[Synthetik]

Do you just want to clone color as opposed to drag color in a paint stroke?

Or do you want to mix the source image into the paint?

...

There are some high level paint synthesizer macro edit commands in the associated help page in the integral help browser in Studio Artist. There are 2 high level macro edit commands there to edit a paint preset to drag or clone color. And there's also a command to make the preset paint with the source image (modified by whatever the rest of the paint presets processing is doing).

There are also some macro edit commands to make a paint preset wet (or not).

[Synthetik]

Here's a tip on the paint synthesizer macro edit commands. The help page display might be a little more colorful in your studio artist, but the commands and explanation is the same.

[Synthetik]

If you are curious about what is actually being edited in the paint synthesizer when you switch a paint preset from dragging color to cloning color, you could check out the Blending Color video tutorial. It covers the Recursive Source Blend controls in the Paint Color SOurce control panel of the paint synthesizer. These parameters are what are actually adjusted when you use the drag color or clone color macro edits.

[Synthetik]

You can also use hot keys to switch between drag or cloning color for a paint preset.

Here's a previous discussion about this on the forum.

[Nora Laiken]

Thanks for the reply. What I am trying to do is to selectively add detail or fill in selected region of a watercolor done with auto-paint but using a watercolor brush rather than the soft cloner. Problems:

1.I can find no explanation of what the macroedit commands "clone source color" or "drag clone source" in either the User Manual or the blending video. What do they mean ?

2. I am finding the macroedit commands difficult to navigate. How do you tell when they are on or off? How can you turn one off that you previously turned on? Can more than one at a time be turned on?

Sorry for all the questions, but I am a bit stymied here !

  

[Synthetik]

Drag color means that the paint stroke takes the starting color when you are working off of the source image and drags it along the entire length of the paint stroke. Clone color means that the color of the paint stroke is always updating to reflect the associated color of the source image.

Usually when people say they want a paint preset to clone, they mean they want the color of the paint stroke to always be current to the associated spatial position in the source image ( as opposed to just dragging the start color of the paint stroke along for the entire stroke).

The Recursive Source Color parameters in the Paint Color Source control panel let you build either of these color behaviors (and lots more) for a paint stroke.

...

The macro edit commands are single step editing commands. They run internal scripts that edit one or mode parameters inside of the Editor for the paint synthesizer. If you open the Editor to the Paint Color Source control panel for a paint preset and then run the drag color or clone color macro edit commands, you can see the parameter edits that occur when you run them.

So macro edits aren't states, or parameters. They just run scripts that edit 1 or more parameters in the paint synthesizer Editor. If you are fluid with editing the paint synthesizer controls, you could adjust the parameters yourself in the Editor. But if you aren't, they provide some simple ways to high level edit without understanding the internal workings of the paint synthesizer.

...

If you are interested in building more detail in what paint preset generates, then that's a little different than just editing how the color of a paint stroke is generated.

Here's a tip on abstraction vs realism in paintings.

Here's a tip on tightening up a paint effect.

Here's a tip on tighening up a paint effect via brush modulation.

Here's a tip on controlling where automatic paint strokes are drawn.

There are all kinds of additional project oriented tutorials on the effects blog.

...

If you don't have the older 3.5 video tutorials and want to learn more about the detailed workings of the paint synthesizer, let me know and i can send you a download link for them. The third disc of video tutorials covers all of the paint synthesizer control panels.

[Nora Laiken]

Terrific reply !

I will look to see if I have the videos.

    Thank you.

[Synthetik]

The way to think about color drag vs color clone in the context of that blend color tutorial video is as follows. The recursive source blend is determining the mixture of color from the source (RSB Start) and destination (RSB Blend) inputs. Now if the recursive blend is 100%, then the color will always be coming from the source input. So if you set RSB Blend to Source and the Recursive Source Blend to 100%, then the start color will drag along the entire paint path.

Now if the Recursive Source Blend is set to less that 100%, then the paint path color will change over time to mix the original start color with the input to RSB Blend. If that input is also Source, then the paint path color will clone the source image.

Recursive Source Blend controls can also be used to simulate things like a limited amount of paint on a brush running out, or a dab of paint getting dirty as it is dragged across a wet canvas, or other special effects.

I originally mentioned the Paint Color Modulate as opposed to the Paint Color Source control panel. The recursive source blend color controls are located in the Paint Color Source control panel, sorry for any confusion. I edited my original posts to reflect the correct information.