Extrapolating Form with Ip Op Interpolators

[Synthetik]

There are several Ip OP's that act as interpolators, extrapolating an image to fill in a solid color canvas area using the information in the image that is not the solid color to do the extrapolation. These interpolator Ip Ops include Geodesic Interpolation, Geodesic Variator, and the Spare Interpolator. You can use these Ip Op's to do things like fill in scratches or holes in an image (as long as the scratch or hole is a solid color). But you can also use them to extrapolate shape forms from edges renditions. I've recently been experimenting with using form extrapolation to create a modified softer image rendition from the types of forms you can create using the Studio Artist Vectorizer. I've got some examples below to show some approaches to doing this. Here's an example of an adjacent edge image created using the Color Edge Ip Op as well as a screen shot of the controls used in the Color Edge Ip Op. Decreasing the Smoothing setting will add more detail to the edge rendition. Here's what the image looks like using the shown control settings in the Geodesic Interpolation Ip Op to process the adjacent edge image shown before into an extrapolated form image. A slightly more complicated approach is to first process your source image in some way to modify the internal shapes and then use that modified image as the source to create an adjacent edge image for subsequent interpolation. In this example i used the Vectorizer with some region effects to create modified source images. But you could also use warping, or an image operation like Geodesic Displacement to modify the internal shapes in your source image. Here's an example of a vectorized source image, it's adjacent edge image, and the extrapolated image created using Geodesic Interpolation. I cut doen the smoothing control in the Color Edge Ip Op to get a better edge rendition of the vector regions. Note that you could also use the bezier paths for the vector regions and a thin 1 pixel paint preset as an alternative way to generate an edge image based on the vectorizer output. This last image was created using several different passes of the above approach in different layers. By using different edge masks and different Geodesic Interpolation settings (like smooth vs smooth no diagonal or different iteration settings) and then layering the results with different transparency and compositing settings you can create a variety of smooth or textured forms that have a more complex appearance than the straight vectorizer output.

[Charles Floading]

The Color Edge > Geodesic Interpolation combo has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I usually follow it up with some sort of sharpening IP OP because the blurriness inherent in the interpolation gives me a headache.

[Synthetik]

I've got another more finished example in my photo gallery that shows off the approach discussed in this tutorial to creating a softer more complex shape form using the vectorizer output.