Graphics - Processing (39)

I just tried this program, It HORRIBLE! The brush size is very large, unlike the picture in their screen shot, and there is no "Process" to finish it off. You have to preview and then save. I tried four times, and each time it was horrible. I have Photoshop, but wanted this for some people I know who dont have photoshop and thought this might be the answer. I wont even tell them about this.

Loner Gimp has this feature as well as being able to load some photoshop plugins it can use the wonderful free GML Growcut and Growcut mask. The original site doesn't offer it anymore but can be found with a quick search.

Works best (as you might imagine) if there's a dramatic color difference from the background and the foreground item. I spent a lot of time trying to get an image lit with mostly browns separate from the area behind it. There's no undo funtion if one of your lines gets too close -- you must reload the image. Even when it works well, its still a quick and dirty solution: images I tested always had rough edges I'd want to hand off to GIMP to clean up. Note that this can really look interesting if you cover the image with both various red and green dots: it gives it a cut-out / broken glass look that I actually found to be a really interesting effect.

You can see more screenshots and examples of its functionality by searching for "AnmanieSMP" at http://images.google.com/

Its one of those annoying programs which opens its windows on the desktop.

By open on the desktop I mean "open on the desktop" - most PC programs open a 'master' window, and all child windows open inside it - so if you minimize the main window they all minimize.
Here they stay on the desktop, and it can be be annoying to untangle them when you have 20 other windows open (like me).
The program is a bit primitive, i think it is missing some needed features (like keyboard shortcuts, and being able to drop a picture on it etc) - but it seems to work as advertised :)

Who makes this? This is a standard plugin for any self respecting image editing program. Who needs it?

that's exactly what i was thinking

it's just a stand-alone plug-in

FotoSketcher would be a better choice. It's free, standalone, portable, have batch processing as well, and the results are actually really good. You can also choose color pencils, oil, etc.

http://www.fotosketcher.com/

And an example:
http://fotosketcher.jalbum.net/FotoSketcher%20gallery/slides/FotoSketcher%20-%20window.html

There are issues and one of them is that it only saves preset and they are all separate so it's a pain if there is a setting you always want to open up instantly to. Also, it always add a fake picture frame to the image so remember to disable that each time when you don't need it.

A good alternative software that, while not as simple, doesn't require the MSVBVM60.DLL file: http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=208

This is very handy when dedicated to a process you do often-emailing pictures for instance.I have FastStone too (which is great) but with Fast Image Resizer you can just drag a picture onto its desktop shortcut.If you want,it'll clean off the exif data too.