Digital Art - 1/14/15: Trying an online photo editor

Natures Footstep memes 

The Digital Art meme now includes what was formerly the Abstract Photo meme.

Click on the links above to view the posts by other artists/photographers or to participate yourself.

I've never had much luck using the "Colored Pencil" filter in Photoshop. I've played around with it, and usually don't like what I get.

In searching for online enhancement sites, I found one that has several good filters for creating colored-pencil-like effects and lots of other effects.

The only problem is that you can only use an image that is the maximum size of 2 MB, which is fairly small. On an image that was originally 12 X 9 inches, I had to reduce it to 960 X 720 pixels to get it to 1.98 MB.

Below, I'll show you some of the results and give you a link to the photo editor and instructions for using it.

NOTE: After I applied the effects on the photo of trees below, I did not make additional changes in Photoshop, so you can see what the actual results were.
(I made additional changes on the very last photo "Mail Pouch" but not on the trees.)

I suggest clicking on any image for larger views of the effects.

Original Photo

If you want to try the photo editor yourself: (Don't be intimidated by the numerous steps---it's rather simple to use if you can figure out how to reduce the size of your image, first.)

Understand that a filter might look great on one photo and look terrible on another, so try several to see which you like best. There are 123 effects to choose from. (I can't imagine ever wanting to use about 75% of them, but some look great on some photos and I might find a use for more than I can imagine now.)

"Dark Pencil Drawing" efffect

"Clean Pencil Drawing" effect

"Stroked Pencil Drawing" effect

"Detailed Pencil Drawing" effect

"Typographic Photo Effect 3"

"Clean Impressionistic Painting" effect

FOLLOW THESE STEPS:
1. First enhance your photo in any way needed. Save it as you usually would. (If you don't have software to do that, you might want to chose the "Colors and Details Enhanced" filter once you get to Steps 5 & 6.)

2. Then make your image dimensions very small. In Photoshop you can go to Image> Image size. Change the dimensions from inches or centimeters to pixels, then lower the pixels until it says 2 M or less at the top of that window.
        Examples:
        at 300 ppi (pixels per inch) at 960 X 720 pixels, the dimensions are 3.2 X 2.4 inches = 1.98 MB
        at 150 ppi (pixels per inch) at 960 X 720 pixels, the dimensions are 6.4 X 4.8 inches = 1.98 MB

3. Save it again in jpg format, adding something at the end of the title to tell you this version is very small or for this photo editor, such as Title960X720px.jpg or TitleSmall.jpg or TitlePictureToPeople.jpg

4. Go to the Picture to People website: http://www.picturetopeople.org/easy-online-photo-editor.html           
        I suggest that you bookmark the page so it is easy to go back to ---you have to do that between effects and images.

5. Scroll down through all of the options to find an effect you want to try.
        For a colored pencil effect, I like the "Stroked Pencil Drawing" or the "Detailed Pencil Drawing" filter under "Colorful Drawing Effects" but there are others, too.

6. Click on the icon of the effect you want.

7. Go to the bottom of the page and click on choose file. On your computer, choose the file then wait until you see the title of your image on the photo editor page.

8. Click on "View Effect Result" or "Download Result." In my experience, it is rather slow to view the effect. I often skip that step. (If I don't like the downloaded result, I can delete it later.)

9. Click on "Download Result." If you clicked on "View Result", you have to click the left arrow at the top of your window to go back to the original page to click "Download Result."

10. After it downloads ---and it may be slow ---it says to choose F5 to go back to the original page. However, that doesn't work for me (maybe because I have a Mac.) I just use the arrow to return to the previous page. I also have the page bookmarked so I can easily return to it.

11. Your first item will appear in your download folder with the name online_photo_editor-result.jpg or it might end in png if you used a black and white effect. You need to change the file names later.

12. If you want to try a different filter with the same photo, you have to start over, choose a filter, choose the file again, etc. It will go into your download folder with a slightly different title. It might have a dash and a 2 at the end, or jpg instead of png or vice-versa.

13. Open up your edited photos in your regular enhancement software to make additional changes, if you wish.

I haven't tried it yet, but I think some of these
might look good over others, either making the top layer transparent or changing it to overlay mode.


You might want to try clicking on other tabs at the top of the Picture to People page.  I attempted one watercolor effect that gave the option to choose some parameters, but it wanted an image of 1 MB or less. I had to reduce it to 4.3 X 3.225 inches at 150ppi. The only choice was calculate effect. But since there was no option to download, I had to right click and choose to copy it, then paste it into a new Photoshop file. I thought it looked terrible ---not like watercolor at all.

"Mail Pouch"
This was the first image I tried with this photo editor.
I used the "Dark Pencil Drawing" effect.
I then opened the image in Photoshop
to increase the color saturation and
add a signature.

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See my photostream on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cj_proartz
Below my name, click on albums to find a particular type of photo (Black and White, Fences, Abstracts, Landscapes, Still Life, Autumn Scenes, Bridges, Animals, Art Created from My Photos, etc.) Or view my entire photo stream which includes everything I've posted, with the most recent first.