Fotosketcher – Quick and Easy Photo Effects

Thanks go to Mike at Mike Hardisty Photography for the suggestion of a program that quickly and easily applies interesting effects to photographs. The program is called FotoSketcher. I downloaded it, fed it the Hibiscus photo from my previous post (Fairly Simple ‘Photo to Sketch’ Instructions), and let it work some magic.

The magic is produced by something called algorithms. You might remember these tricky little math wizards from when you were in school. In the computer world, an algorithm is a set of instructions that takes your data and switches it around. In the case of a photo, the algorithm will transform your photo in some manner. I tried out three of the many effects available in the program’s menu.

For this photo, I used the effect called Cartoon1.

In this photo I used the effect called Emergence.

In the last photo, I used the effect called Pixelation.

The program has many more effects. It is an easy program to use, though you do need a bit of patience as you wait for it to create the drawing. Good art takes time, though, doesn’t it!

While I am on algorithms, I thought you might be interested in this TED Talk. The speaker, Kevin Slavin, explains some of the ways algorithms are used in the world we live in – espionage, stock prices, movie scripts and architecture are just a few topics he discusses. He also explains the dangers he sees in the development of this artificial intelligence.
Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world

How else are algorithms used? Here is a slightly different take on our future.
Your Life is an Algorithm, Your Brain is an Operating System

Fairly Simple ‘Photo to Sketch’ Instructions

When I say ‘Fairly Simple’ I mean it will be fairly simple as long as you know your way around the program that lets you do this kind of stuff with your photos. I use Photoshop Elements, but any program that lets you work with layers will do. (The following instructions may not be all that helpful if you don’t already know how to work with layers.)

The photo I’m going to use is a hibiscus flower which is blooming on the most raggedy looking house plant I have ever seen. It spends most of its time growing leaves, which it turns around and kills a few short weeks later. Every day I pick up a hand full of dead leaves off the floor. When the plant looks close to death, I cut it back to almost nothing and pretty soon it starts sending out new shoots again. Then, about the time I think I will dispatch it once and for all, it blooms for a few weeks. (My two eldest children will remember this plant from their University days, over 20 years ago. It was the one they inherited from the previous tenant of the apartment they rented. They were ready to pitch the plant when it became bug infested. I blasted the plant with a bug killer, and cut the plant back to almost nothing. It survived. The bugs did not. )

Original Photo

Open the photo with Photoshop Elements (or some such program, which may or may not use the same tools I describe below.)

Step 1 – The photo will be called the Background Layer. Duplicate this layer (name it Layer 2) then hide the original Background layer.
Step 2 – You will remove the color from Layer 2. From the Enhance Menu choose Adjust Color, Remove Color.
Step 3 – Duplicate Layer 2 to create Layer 3.
Step 4 – You will invert Layer 3. From the Filter Menu choose Adjustments, Invert.
Step 5 – You will change the Blend Mode of Layer 3. The blend mode option is in the top left of the Layers panel. Change the blend mode from Normal to Color Dodge. Don’t get too excited here if your photo is completely white.
Step 6 – You will apply a filter to Layer 3. From the Filter Menu, choose Other, Minimum. This will open the Minimum filter dialog box. You will change the Radius value at the bottom of the box. Start with 1 pixel, and increase it until you get a sketch that you like. (Watch your photo, not the dialogue box, to see the results.) Then click OK to close the box.
Step 7 – Select Layer 3 in the Layers menu, then right click it and scroll down and choose Merge Visible. Now you have just two layers again.
Step 8 – You will change the Blend Mode of Layer 2 from Normal to Multiply to darken the lines in the sketch. If the sketch gets too dark, you can lower the Opacity Value (which is a slider to the right of the Blend Mode option.)

Photo as a sketch

This is what the hibiscus looked like at this point.

Step 9 – If you want to add some color to the sketch, then duplicate the original background layer. Move this new colored layer to the top of the stack and unhide it if it is hidden.  Change the Blend Mode of this colored layer from Normal to Color and lower the Opacity until you get the color you want. You could also try other Blend Modes, such as Soft Light or Color burn. (I don’t know if successive blend modes are accumulative or not, so I always cancel (Edit Undo) each action before testing a new one.)

Blend Mode Color

Blend Mode Soft Light

Blend mode Color Burn

Which one do you like best?

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Other Photo Manipulation Stories:  Weekly Photo Challenge : Self Portrait

A Bit About Bees

Hoverfly – An Animated GIF

Poppies Pose for the Photographer

Altered Car Photos

Weekly Photo Challenge : Distorted

Weekly Photo Challenge: Winter

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused

I was going to use this photo for a post about how I wish I could clone myself.  I even have it figured out how the process would happen. I will simply stand outside the house in front of a dual pane window (the cleaner the better so that there isn’t dirt blobs or bird poop on my clone.) I will hold up a box like apparatus (think Calvin and Hobbes and ‘The Transmogrifier’ box, only much smaller), focus until two distinct people appear in the viewfinder, and click the shutter.  Then I will take one large step back, leaving my clone standing right in front of me.

I tried it several times with my Canon camera, but the process didn’t work. I think I have to practice  making the two images less unfocused, and perhaps the camera is much too sophisticated for the job. I think an empty kleenex box with a cardboard toilet paper tube stuck in it would be a better starting point.

If I perfect this technology, one of us will let you know by blogging about it. The other will be off taking photos. Gee, I’m sure looking forward to having a twin!

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A Similar Story about skewed perspective:  Weekly Photo challenge: Distorted

Origami – The Math of Fortune Telling

“Pick a colour!”
“Red.”
Schoop, schoop, schoop. (This is the best I can do at describing the sound made when a Paper Fortune Teller is manipulated.)
“Pick a number!”
“Six.”
Schoop, schoop, schoop, schoop, schoop, schoop.
“Pick another Number, and I’ll reveal your fortune!”
“Two.”
The flap with the number two is unfolded and the fortune is read: “You may be small but your ideas will be BIG!”

If I had received this fortune when I was a kid, would I have thought it was hokey? Or would I have thought ‘When I grow up I’m going to share all my BIG thoughts on a blog, which will be read by very few people, but I won’t care because…’  Of course, when I was a kid there was no internet and therefore no blogs, and I certainly didn’t think I was going to remain small, so I would have thought it was a dumb fortune.

But this was the fortune I got when I downloaded, and made the Paper Fortune Teller posted by the Children’s Author, Deborah L. Diesen. (She calls it a Cootie-Catcher, but that wasn’t a term used in my day.) Deborah warns that her fortune teller doesn’t really tell fortunes or predict the future, but I beg to differ with her!

Fortune Teller and Butterfly

When I was a kid, the Paper Fortune Teller would appear on the playground a few times each year (it was banned from the classroom, which was unfortunate.)  Once one person made one, everyone made one, and the craze would last for a week or two, then disappear. At the time, we didn’t know it was a very simple example of Origami and we certainly didn’t think about the geometric shapes we were creating when we folded a flat piece of paper into a three dimensional object.

Paper folding has likely been happening since paper was first invented! However, Origami as a Japanese art form began when paper first arrived in that country in the 6th Century. Paper was quite expensive at that time, so objects made from folded paper were reserved for special occasions. A butterfly, similar perhaps to the one I made, might have adorned the Sake bottles at a formal wedding ceremony.

Origami today is an entirely different duck as a result of the work of a number of  individuals who have described the mathematics of origami, extended the range of what can be folded, and applied origami to real world science situations. One of these ‘Folders’ is Robert Lang. You can see his remarkable Compositions on his website – Robert J. Lang Origami or you can listen to his story in the TED talk, Robert Lang Folds Way-New Origami.

Even the simplest Origami is not that easy as you will see when you try to open up the Paper Fortune Teller for the first time. As for the Butterfly I made – well, I won’t give you the link to the instructions because they were abysmal.

But here is a link to another very Cheeky Paper Fortune Teller by Scott Bedford, a very talented and crafty individual.

Happy Folding! May your mountains and valleys be crisp and precise!

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My Similar Mathematics Posts: Fern – My Fiddle Headed Frond  and Dill and the World of Fractals