Now i love to create these kinds of effects, so i'm always ready to dive into creating more options to create this kind of effect. So i'm always open to new ideas about features related to any kind of print or lithography simulation we should be adding to Studio Artist.
However, the other side of the coin is that there are already a million different ways to create print simulation and lithography simulation visual effects in Studio Artist today. And my personal opinion is that people have barely scratched the surface in trying to figure this out. I'm sure some of this is lack of knowing where to look, so we can delve into some of that in this forum thread.
For example, i knocked this off in maybe 2 minutes of editing this morning. The color is being generated by the vectorizer, the black line work was generated in the paint synthesizer. I'll try to cover some of the many different techniques available to you in separate posts in this forum thread.
Replies
You can output this PASeq as vector art, so you can scale it for print to your hearts content.
How did i build the PASeq. There are 2 main components, the color cartoony background that is then overpainted with black vector art. The black overpainting has 2 passes, the initial wood cut simulation, followed by a second pass to work in the source image edges to bring in a little more source detail.
You could reverse the way this whole thing was built. You could use color painting for the scratch or cut patterning on a black background. Or you could paint the lines in white on a black background. Or in black on a white background. You can adjust the path start spacing, path length, and path angle settings to you hearts content to modify the way this looks.
I specifically used a paint synthesizer vector drawing technique for this PASeq so that the effect could be output as vector art. You want to optimally use SVG output for the way i built it, but you can use the SVG print option under Action : Generate SVG to output to a pdf file (on the mac) if you want to bring it into Photoshop or Illustrator or Preview.
I could build a color palette to simulate a limited set of printing inks if i wished. i could then either force the vectorizer to use that color palette for coloring, or i could palette map the paint synthesizer if i want to generate coloring from it.
If i wasn't using vector painting, i could use the local image range nib masking option in the paint fill apply control panel to add hard halftoning to the individual paint nibs associated with the lines as they are being painted. This gives a tighter look that better captures all of the edge detail in the source image if you want that, but you need to use raster paint to do that.
Again, we're barely scratching the surface in this one simple example of the many different approaches you could take to generating woodcut, scratchboard, or engraving effects in Studio Artist. I'll try to point out some other approaches in some additional posts.
colorWoodcut1.paseq.zip
Line Screen
Line Screen Dual
Line Screen Dual1
Line Screen Block Regionize
Line Screen Regionize
These effects have many different parameter options that can be adjusted to radically change the way they process an image.
There are a number of different Ip Op effects for generating flat or restricted coloring, including:
Color Palette Map
Color Simplify
Color Simplify 1
Color quantize
Watershed Regionizize
If you just want to soften coloring and eliminate noise or non-essential texture there are also a number of different Ip Ops that can be used to do that, including:
Smooth
Simplify
Smart Blur
Watershed
If you want to add edge detail, or generate line work based on edges, there are a number of Ip Ops that can be used to do that, including:
Color Edge
Edge
Smart Contrast
Rank Edge
To accent positive and negative space in an image, check out
Smart Contrast
Smart Contrast 1
Rank Edge
The Threshold IP Op is extremely versatile, and some of the different effects it can generate might surprise you.
There are 3 different Ip Ops that can create a wide range of very sophisticated shading and line work effects:
Sketch Edge
Sketch Mass
Watershed Sketch
The following Ip Ops can generate bezier path output in addition to their normal raster image processing effects, which can then be used to drive the paint synthesizer. The range of potential effect combinations this opens up is HUGE, and again this particular feature has barely been explored by Studio Artist users. These include the following:
Color Edge
Sketch Edge
Sketch Mass
Smart Contrast
Watershed Sketch
Preprocessing your source image can be an essential component of building these kinds of effects. You can incorporate any kind of preprocessing or source image tune up as a part of your PASeq. There are many many different Ip Op effects that can be used for source image preprocessing and cleanup. For removing noise, for simplifying the image, or edge enhancement, for feature extraction, etc.
LineScreenRegionize1.zip
The PASeq is below to download. Here's what it looks like:
Watershed Sketch generates the patterning. I then threshold that with an interactive adjustment to make it black and white. I then use the Geodesic Falloff ip op to turn it into a halftone screen. I then use the image compressor and a lum lightness adjustment to normalize the halftone screen. I then use the Fixed Image ip op to do the halftone thresholding (pay close attention to this one). The 2 smart blur ip ops at the end clean up the rough edges.
Depending on the luminance characteristics of your source image you might want to do some preprocessing of it first for best results. Things like using the image compressor to pull out detail and normalize the tone, and perhaps lightening or darkening with interactive adjustments.
bw woodcut fun1.paseq.zip