v-render » Design

Convert photos into sketches

Veerendra — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:37:07 +0000

Sketching is key skill for any designer or an artist. Some designers believe totally in softwares like Photoshop or Painter & some believe that softwares are just media. Traditional artists also believe that Softwares cannot give a joy of traditional media. So they keep working with pencils, watercolors, oils and others. Personally I belong to this later category of artists, but in case of low budget project, you need to use softwares to fake traditional media and achieve your desired painting, sketch effect in cheap price and less time.
I did this experiment while I was working on some old photos for a website. During R&D of this project I had some ideas to convert photos in sketches. I would like to share it with you.[ I know there are lot of tricks on internet already posted. What I am going to share here is just my experience. ]

For this tutorial I am using a photo of my uncle and friend Dr. Rajendra Kulkarni.

Final Image

Application : Photoshop Cs4
Tools used : brush, eraser
Device : Wacom Intuos 3 tablet.

Step 01

Open any photograph that has good tonal, color values in it. Its suggested for good results only.

Duplicate background layer by pressing Ctrl+j twice. Now you should have following layers in layers palette.

Step 02

Select top layer and go to image >> adjustments > gradient map.

You will get something like above when you apply standard black to white gradient.
Then go to filters >> stylize > & apply neon signs effect.

This is very Important step. Use above or your best settings to get outline effect. Then Invert it ( shortcut : Ctrl + i ), So you will get black lines on white background.

This will create a outline of image which we are going to use as reference or basic drawing. Then I tweaked it out as drawing by removing some black strokes and clean up.

Its just a drawing half done stage. Apply a multiply mode and you will be able to see photograph below it.

Step 03

now Select background copy layer and apply gradient map to it as we did for first layer. By now you should have following layers in your layers palette.

Step 04

Select both layers other than background and apply a mask to it one by one. I renamed those layers as shown in below graphic. Add new paper layer with paper texture below drawing layer. Fill both masks with black color so no pixel will be visible from any layer except paper layer. You should have following layers in layers palette. now apply both layers as multiply mode and paper layer with normal mode.

Step 05

Then start drawing randomly with large brush & white color in mask area of outlines layer. So that it will give you some random outline on paper. like below.

Step 06

Then select mask of drawing layer and start rendering lines in same way you do with pencil. Render light dark tones with variation in lines and pressure of pen. Also change brushes, sizes, hardness and opacity to get desired effect. After rendering all you will get following result. You can see start of this process in above image too. Some strokes on chicks, forehead.

See layers below, outline layer is turned off after drawing is complete. You can see white unmask area that shows drawing in layer. Which is drawn with help of wacom pen.

So here is final result.

Moving it further

Using combination of shift+ctrl + click on masks, select both masks with addition mode. Now select background layer. Then duplicate layer by pressing ctrl+j. It will copy masked or selected area from background image and will add it to new layer as a color sketch. Also you can add more strokes on separate layer with help or your skills to add more realistic sketching effect .

So here is color version. I hope you like this trick and use it somewhere.
Thanks for reading and visiting website.

Please let me know your thoughts on this article.

New icons for Samvidnyan.

Veerendra — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:59:32 +0000

Recently we designed Icon set for our client company Samvidnyan Computers.

Samvidnyan emailed us their requirement of icon set which was going to be used in a software. The software which was planned for teachers and school staff to help them managing School time table. As it was related to school & educational field, We were excited to do work in this project.

In creative brief client clearly mentioned that

” We need to design an icon set that will be used in our windows based software. We are targeting a user class which is not expert in windows operations & does’nt need to be. So what we need is to have simple interface with bold and clear icons which are also windows native icons. “

They also added work flow of user & software while processing, So that we can suggest them where they may require extra icons to improve interface.

We started with few sketches and concepts of roles like principal, teachers, school, classrooms. Here are some of sketches.

Then we started working in Illustrator. We gave few revisions on icons to client and finalized all them.

We provided them total 12 icons for the software. Plus an icon for installation. Here are few Examples from Final Icons.

All icons are copyrighted for Samvidnyan Computer Systems, India.

Choco tea..

v-render — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:31:06 +0000

Created this work created for fun. Feel free to use this as wallpaper. Download it from here !
Total work flow was really fun process. Comments and critiques are welcome !

Color studies

v-render — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:36:53 +0000

As an assignment I am copying some reference images found on internet to study their compose, lighting and color schemes . I am having great fun with my wacom tablet. just want to share this with you. please let me know how do you feel.

5 Web-based image editors

v-render — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:33:55 +0000

Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.net, Corel Painter, Paintshop pro .., there are so many other desktop based image editing soft wares, which offer many facilities on click, then is there need of any web based editor?

The answer would be yes or no .. I say why not ? If someone can’t afford photoshop, or doesn’t want to learn these softwares or doesn’t know how to install them ? then these web based software would be helping hand to them. There are some benifits of these softwares such as

No Installation.
Editing with quick simple facilities
Save your work in common formats like jpg or gif or png. so they can be opened everywhere.
They are flash based which is [95% ] os independant. so it opens on any computer whether its mac or pc or else. :)
they are introducing new concepts those may cause for our much better future .

To start with -

SUMO PAINT :

one of my friend told me about sumo paint. great features, lite weight, fully flash copy of photoshop. so easier to use and fast.

Sumo paint gives 80% 95% feel of photoshop and its utilities are just the same as in photoshop.
Dry brushes, soft air brushes, smudge tool, blur sharp tools, stamp tool .. are included in toolbox.
Plus they have added some shape tools and drawing tools like arc and bulky star tool. My favorite tool is symetry tool in which you can draw multiple threads in one stroke with symmetry. [must try it]
multiple image editing windows, blending modes, layers support with layer styles, free hand selection and other selection tool set with support of feather, navigator, swatches, color, gradient palletes are same as in photoshop. but still its not photoshop ..

After this I started searching more in this catagory. I found Pixer.us, Aviary, Splashup, piknik and many more.

Pixer.us :

Non flash Software. At first look I found its interface very very boring. But simplicity of this software is its main feature.

Really no nead to know about software and functions and all. Just choose your options, move some sliders, watch preview and click apply. save your file .. it is that simple. I was faculty in some institutes for 2 years . .. I know really how it is dificult to teach concepts like hue saturation or level control or filters and effects to root user who is computer illiterate or not frequent user. This facility is really good for them

This is just plain photo manupulating tool no drawing !

Splashup :

One thing on start you will say … sleek interface ! Its adobe air based software very lite and fast. [i guess // please correct if wrong ]. This facility has few similar features as compaired to sumo paint but one unique feature too. In this software, you can edit your online photos from picasa, flickr, photobucket or your own domain. You have to just sign in from open dialogbox and you choose your photo or image or just browse from pc.

open file wizard has many tabbed options to open images. you need to register for free account on splashup to open any online image from image hosting service like picasa or flickr or photobucket.
It also supports to take picture from web cam and then use it for editing.
Gradient tool editor is nice feature of this software
Layers with layer styles are just working great !
brush set are enough good but do not satisfy advance users.
basic tool box and filters

Pixlr

Similer to sumo paint. Advance tool box with no shape tools. looks like almost similar to photoshop 7 and works really smooth.

toolset is fast and good, except crop and smudge tool. crop tool directly crops image no preview of crop image and smudge tool makes it bit heavy and slows down performance,
It has many language support
and similar software features to above softwares.

Aviary- Phoenix

most futuristic interface ever. it has many differences as compaired to above tools. very unique and stable.

rulars with guieds
tool settings appear when you click on tool, nested tools are easy to access.
takes lil bit time to load but results are superb.
total worth to try software. may say future of image editing tools is gona look like this..
bad is you need to sign up for saving your image .. but print screen + copypaste in paint does the job ! ;)

I just had start with sumo paint, editor which had large set of features compaired to others so i just tried to mention most uncommon feature of them. There are many others too like photoshop express from adobe, pikipimp, picnik .. try them out ..

tell me which one did you liked most !

Smashing Start of v-render

Veerendra — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:39:15 +0000

Free wallpaper collection from smashing magazine

I am really glad to announce that smashing magazine has released my wallpapers free on their blog post called Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: March 2009 , Further more I am going to post here some free stuffs, tutorials and news around my design world.