Oil painting on canvas with textile bumps and patterns

On Wed, 23 Aug 2017 18:38:23 -0400, in news Mayayana wrote:

I just came across something recently: Picture
Window Pro. It's recently been made freeware.

Thanks Mayayana for the suggestion.
Testing freeware is sort of like sifting through resumes.
You start with a long list and then very quickly throw out until you end up
with just one.

I threw out Picture Window Pro because it seemed to be trialware, but I
ended up with FotoSketcher, which seems to work well, albeit you must
experiment for the desired effect since there are so very many variations
to choose from.

Here's what worked best to give an oil painting on fabric look to an image.

Fotosketcher: File Open a picture pic.jpg
Fotosketcher: Edit Drawing Parameters
Drawing Parameters: Drawing Style Oil Pastel (or Oil Painting)
Drawing Parameters: Texture (can set to Texture 1 through 10)
Drawing Parameters: Normal texture (can set to light, normal, or strong)
Drawing Parameters: Draw
Fotosketcher: File Save the drawing as pic-##.jpg

"Blake Snyder" wrote

| Testing freeware is sort of like sifting through resumes.
| You start with a long list and then very quickly throw
| out until you end up with just one.

Indeed. It's often surprisingly hard to find the
best of breed, requiring days of testing and dead-end
links. Then when I find what I want I'm amazed that
it was so obscure. Gossip, advertising and accident
seem to have far more effect on popularity than quality
does.

| I threw out Picture Window Pro because it seemed to be trialware

No longer trialware, but it doesn't seem to have an
oil paint effect. I came across it in a discussion on
Slashdot. Someone had asked what people would
like to see open-sourced. The discussion turned to
the usual argument over the GIMP and a wish for
a free equivalent of Photoshop. But then someone
mentioned that all he used was PWP. I was surprised,
as I'd never heard of it before.

| , but I
| ended up with FotoSketcher, which seems to work well, albeit you must
| experiment for the desired effect since there are so very many variations
| to choose from.
|
| Here's what worked best to give an oil painting on fabric look to an
image.
|
| Fotosketcher: File Open a picture pic.jpg
| Fotosketcher: Edit Drawing Parameters
| Drawing Parameters: Drawing Style Oil Pastel (or Oil Painting)
| Drawing Parameters: Texture (can set to Texture 1 through 10)
| Drawing Parameters: Normal texture (can set to light, normal, or strong)
| Drawing Parameters: Draw
| Fotosketcher: File Save the drawing as pic-##.jpg

Good that you got what you needed. I have a number
of programs with various filter plugins. Paint Shop Pro,
for instance, has a number of brush stroke filters and
things like charcoal or pencil drawing. I've never really
used them, aside from an occasional use of buttonizers
or spotlight effects. But I've noticed that some people in
the photo group are fond of them.

I imagine each filter will have a slightly different
effect from any other. But it looks like Fotoskecher
specializes in the painting/drawing effects, with
all of the operations built in. They may be custom-written
filters. There don't seem to be any filter files, like
the Adobe .8BF filters, included with the program.

That might be the best option for you. Though if
you haven't tried standard editors like Paint Shop Pro,
GIMP, Photoshop, or even IrfanView, you might find
those interesting. I think they all have a selection of
filters based on the Adobe standard. It's like fonts.
Some people learn to create then and then often
give them away. Many are junk. A few are very good.
IrfanView even has its own version of "oil paint".
Though it doesn't look as good to me as the samples
at the Fotoskecher site.

On Sun, 27 Aug 2017 10:58:09 -0400, in news Mayayana wrote:

Indeed. It's often surprisingly hard to find the
best of breed, requiring days of testing and dead-end
links.

Sometimes the best of breed is well known, like Irfanview is for your basic
fast viewer/cropper/resizer, while at other times, the best of breed is
harder to find, like Fotosketcher was for oil-paint on canvas texture
effects.

| I threw out Picture Window Pro because it seemed to be trialware

No longer trialware, but it doesn't seem to have an
oil paint effect.

I knew that you had said it was "no longer trialware" but when I went to
the web page, it sure looked like trialware. After years of using free
software, it's like sifting through resumes, you get to know almost
instantly from the web page what is going to be less than fruitful.

There were more clues that made me drop Picture Window Pro, but I don't
remember them all, but that's why I said it's like sifting through resumes.
You have to go on your experience by how the software presents itself.

As just one example, did you ever sift through resumes which contain
Indian's from India? They tend to bull**** like you can't believe. They
throw every acronym they can think of on the page. If you are the HR person
in charge of vetting them, all you have to do is ask them what they did
with each acronym to find out in many cases they don't even know what it
means. And it was on their resume!

Likewise, if you go to a web site and there is a gorgeous package of a box
of software, which like most packages of software in the flesh is huge and
gorgeous but filled with a cd and air and cardboard, then you know pretty
quickly that it's bull****. Also if they super difficultly hide the free
download link, trying to get you to buy. Worse of course are the ones that
install addonware, which I delete in a second when I make the mistake of
downloading them.

I always get the software from the home site, and never from the softonics
out there or cnet or those sites, although they may have good stuff, if the
stuff is good, it will have its own home page.

The discussion turned to
the usual argument over the GIMP and a wish for
a free equivalent of Photoshop. But then someone
mentioned that all he used was PWP. I was surprised,
as I'd never heard of it before.

Those are classics, I agree.

Good that you got what you needed.

The FotoSketcher oil paint on a fabric texture was pretty good.
Lots of options. Almost confusing in all the options.
It was trial and error for a while until I hit upon a good combination.

I have a number
of programs with various filter plugins. Paint Shop Pro,
for instance, has a number of brush stroke filters and
things like charcoal or pencil drawing.

Freeware does everything.

I usually use the best freeware for the one thing I need to do such as
convert from format X to format Y, or to straighten edges, or to add
lighting effects, or to remove wrinkles and pimples or to draw open boxes
and add text and arrows or to batch operate on files, etc.

The work is always in *finding* the best freeware for the stated task.
Using freeware to do the stated task is the easy part of freeware.

That might be the best option for you. Though if
you haven't tried standard editors like Paint Shop Pro,
GIMP, Photoshop, or even IrfanView, you might find
those interesting.

GIMP, for me, is too complicated to do the simplest of things, but
sometimes I end up using The GIMP too.

1. When I need to just view and crop and resize and change the file format
and straighten edges, I use Irfanview freeware, often in batch mode
(sometimes ImageMagick freeware is needed, but rarely).
2. When I need to change a curve, say a frown to a smile, I use Cartoonist
freeware.
3. When I need to remove wrinkles, I use an older version 1.1 of
Photo!Editor freeware.
4. When I need to draw open boxes and curvy arrows and add text, I use
Paint.NET freeware (I wish Pinta would make it to prime time, but it fails
miserably).
5. When I need to convert from one video format to another, I use an older
version "build 38" of Super freeware (sometimes Handbrake freeware is
needed, but rarely).
6. When I need to filter audio, I use Audacity freeware.
etcetera

I'm always open to suggestions as to the best freeware for any stated task.

On Sun, 27 Aug 2017 12:14:37 -0400, in news Mayayana wrote:

It sounds like you don't need advice from anyone, but
for what it's worth, here's a list of things I use. Best-of
lists are always handy:

I agree best-of-class lists are often good to follow.

VLC for video playing

VLC is great because it plays anything.
So does Media Player Classic with the K-Lite codec pack freeware.

DVD Flick for converting video to DVD

I have been using DVD-Flick for so many years I forget how long, but
DVD-Flick is too slow. After you use DeVeDe, you'll probably never use DVD
Flick again for the simple DVD stuff that is pushbutton (like a simple set
of videos and menus).

FreeOCR is something I just found that looks promising.
Never got OCR working satisfactorily.

PDF XChange viewer, free version, for editing PDFs.
Always can use a good PDF editor.

FileZilla FTP
Agree on FileZilla being the best client GUI out there for Windows.

Smart Sniffer to check online communication
Is it better than netstumbler and wireshark?
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/smsniff.html

I also recently installed Notepad++. It's very stable
and easily handles files of any size.

vim for the win for me.

"Blake Snyder" wrote

| FreeOCR is something I just found that looks promising.
| Never got OCR working satisfactorily.
|

You mean with FreeOCR or in general? I've
used Textbridge in the past and it's been good
enough for my needs. I've only tested FreeOCR
so far, but it seems to work very well.

| PDF XChange viewer, free version, for editing PDFs.
| Always can use a good PDF editor.
|
The one I've got is v. 2.5. I think it may
have gone restricted in later versions.

| Smart Sniffer to check online communication
| Is it better than netstumbler and wireshark?
| http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/smsniff.html
|

That I can't say. Isn't Wireshark only for logging
connections? I've had good luck with SS seeing the
data being passed back and forth, but I haven't
done a lot of research. I just stuck with the first
thing that worked.
There are limits, though. Since most sites are
now https, most data is encrypted.

"Blake Snyder" wrote in message
news
I used to have freeware on Windows (or maybe it was on Linux?) that did
oil
painting out of a jpeg picture but that also had the choice of fabrics so
that the oil painting looked like it was on canvas instead of an oil
painting that looks like it's on glass or some other smooth surface.

Anyone remember what Windows freeware that was?

It's possible that it may have been a plug in.
Or it may have been part of a photo editing programme
Lists posted in alt.comp.freeware.

--
Regards
wasbit