Sketch My Pic Up by lipebianc

Preset #4

Preset #1

Preset #9, "graphite style"

This is where ff3 will be nice hopefully the library will show variations with different presets to showcase the strength of such great filters

This is a filter, I'm gonna use a lot, that's for sure!! Love the look of the paintings!! Thank You

THANKS to everyone for such nice comments and positive feedback!

Suggestions to improve it are very welcome!
(e.g.: I had a hard time trying to figure controls names, and feel that I'm still far from more intuitive ones...)

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Indigo Ray wrote: A lot of detail is preserved.

Small details can be increased even more playing with our beloved "Size, pixels" slider while tweaking Edge related sliders. Final results will depend on input image size (Reduced preview can trick you sometimes).

I've submitted an updated version with some new features!
New "Shades Grain" controls add texture do shades/midtones and can reander more uniform grainy look, check example below (preset #3 few tweaks):

Another new feature (I would call it "experimental workaround") is the option "Fix Solid Dark Areas", that attempts to remove some dark ugly areas that appear in images with large chunks of pure black pixels -- example below.

If someone could suggest a more elegant solution to this problem, it would help a lot!

Third update, new feature (September, 2011)

"Blend Input Image" slider allow the overlay combination of the Sketch effect with original image, featuring 19 different blending modes!

example below settings:

- default preset #1
- Blend Input Image: 50
- Blending Mode (19): 4

- Blend Input Image: 100
- Blending Mode (19): 18
- Contour color: Black (0,0,0)
- many tweaks

- default preset #1
- Blend Input Image: 70
- Blending Mode (19): 7
- Contour Color: Black (0,0,0)

You been reading my mind ... The image mix with all combine modes is a perfect addition to this filter. Saves me lots of time and I don't have to do a bunch of messing with Photoshop layers. I have been fooling with preset 6 ( at least that was my count) and tweaking it every which way. So many possibilites, so little time. Another great improvement to this fine filter ....

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Sign Guy wrote: I just downloaded it and what I'm looking at does not have the blending features.

Sign Guy, have you tried "Tools" > "Filter Updates..." ?

Not exactly a new feature, but an example of the difference between the Special Mode and the normal one.

AWESOME, Gene!

lipebianc, this is now MUCH better and gives an awesome effect, WOW !!! Love the effect of the possible color version and the special mode. Great update and is getting even better each time. congratulations !!!

Here I put some beautiful effects made with your excellent filter that is straight out with no post processing

and beautiful black and white sketch

And more soft and less saturation colors and a great beautiful shadowed background in blue/green is found on preset 18 as shown here

Well I could not resist to change some setting and see what I could get that is not shown above and the final result is also another great filter effect !!

Great also the fix dark areas control

"All Pixels" is slower, but renders smooth midtones in some cases, specially if some high "Shades Texture" values are set.

Another example below concerning the use of AA's "All Pixels" option, with respective settings:

Hi lipebianc. I think you made a very smart choice in using grain as your method of fill. Also the way you implemented colors for paper and sketch, plus allowing blending of the original image. This allows your filter to work in a variety of photos, and create a variety of moods.

One suggestion. You have one pre-processing setting, and I like what you did, upping the brightness like that fixes a specific kind of problem. But I've been running tests in Photoshop on ways to improve my own filter, and I've found it helpful to have full control of brightness and contrast on the photo before it is converted to a sketch. I've only tested it on a few photos, but so far it seems helpful. Of course, tests in Photoshop don't always match implementation in Filter Forge, and I haven't tested it in FF yet.

Anyway, looking at all the great results posted here, it looks like you have a real winner.

A quick example:

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lipebianc wrote: the new EDGE DETECTOR component

Gad, I didn't realize there was a new edge detector. I need to pay more attention.

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and your PRE brightness/contrast suggestion!

After more testing, I ended up using PRE brightness and PRE gamma. Thing is, though, my color method tends to be faint, so I need gamma more than your method does.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye out for your next filter.