jasd Posted June 3, 2021 Share Posted June 3, 2021 In the old days when I was using Photoshop, there were a set of tools for making artistic effects such as watercolour or oil paint, or textures, not just to brushes but to whole images (any format, if I remember correctly). I have been asked to convert an existing image into a "watercolour" - but I can't find any filters or tools to do this in Affinity Photo. Are there any and, if so, where do I find them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted June 3, 2021 Share Posted June 3, 2021 No, most people will manually make images watercoloury < made up word, but there are also plugins that produce watercolour effects such as Jixipix, FilterForge etc jmwellborn 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasd Posted June 3, 2021 Author Share Posted June 3, 2021 Thanks firstdefence, it's a shame, they were very useful tools. But I'll have a look at those plugins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasd Posted June 3, 2021 Author Share Posted June 3, 2021 I got Jixipix - looking good so far. jmwellborn and firstdefence 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevTim Posted June 19, 2021 Share Posted June 19, 2021 I'm managing to get some painterly effects using the Procedural Textures filter. I don't understand the maths enough to write my own equations, but I've managed to successfully tinker with existing ones to create different textures. I then use these as a displacement texture map to distort the image. Then I'll follow this with median blur, gaussian blur or dust and scratches - each time use the Layer>Fade(effect) to about 50%. Do this multiple times and you can gradually build up a wet-in-wet or watercolour bleed look (then save as a macro). I'll try to post the steps for this soon. Meanwhile click on my avatar and you'll find an eample of the kind of thing there. Also try this: Go to Filters>Distort>Equations and set the following parameters: Cartesian Radians x-(100*a)*noise(x,y) y-(100*b)*noise(y,x) Extend=mirror Set a & b sliders to full right for maximum noise. Now apply the following Noise>Dust and Scratches, 3px Unsharp Mask, 3px, 0.5% I have saved this as a macro. THen you can right-click the macro, select edit and you should get the a & b controllers up to control the amount of noise. This should give a kind of Stipple effect which you might be able to play around with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 19, 2021 Share Posted June 19, 2021 … not to forget FotoSketcher (standalone, free) … as mentioned here (and below): emmrecs01 1 Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted June 19, 2021 Share Posted June 19, 2021 2 hours ago, thomaso said: … not to forget FotoSketcher (standalone, free It appears that FotoSketcher for Macs will not run on Catalina or later versions of the Mac OS. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.2 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 19, 2021 Share Posted June 19, 2021 3 minutes ago, R C-R said: It appears that FotoSketcher for Macs will not run on Catalina or later versions of the Mac OS. Did you try it within the a recent version of the Wine.app? I remember when I tried it last year for a quick test in macOS 10.14.6 it felt tricky to make it run within the required Wine "emulator" (can't remember what in particular made it tricky). So maybe the link from the initial forum's post isn't sufficient and FotoSketcher requires a newer version of Wine in your Catalina? At least it seems still to get updates https://www.winehq.org/ Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AffinityJules Posted June 19, 2021 Share Posted June 19, 2021 Try the GMIC plug-in. It's free and has a lot of artistic effects. firstdefence 1 Quote Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe. These are not my own words but I sure like this quote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted June 19, 2021 Share Posted June 19, 2021 38 minutes ago, thomaso said: Did you try it within the a recent version of the Wine.app? Nope. I don't use Wine at all. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.2 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevTim Posted June 21, 2021 Share Posted June 21, 2021 I've just posted a quick tutorial on how to get a chalk pastel effect in Affinity Photo here: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iconoclast Posted June 21, 2021 Share Posted June 21, 2021 The Photoshop filter for the watercolour effect often didn't look verry realistic for me. But it depended strongly on the photo I applied it to. I prefered to simulate the watercolour effect with a combination of filters like Gaußian Blur and Diffuse, and an additional Contour filter on a duplicate of the layer. I also used Blend Modes. You could also look for a plugin for artistic effects. The free G'MIC plugin (more than 500 additional filters) for example has a filter called "Dreamy Watercolour" (you find it if you enter it into the Search field) and many other artistic effects in its "Artistic" section. I attached a quick sample I made with "Dreamy Watercolour" at the bottom. An interesting freeware for artistic effects is Photosketcher. It is a small App that is specialized on artistic effects (watercolour, oils, pastels, pencil...) and does a pretty nice job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasd Posted June 21, 2021 Author Share Posted June 21, 2021 On 6/19/2021 at 4:40 PM, thomaso said: … not to forget FotoSketcher (standalone, free) … as mentioned here (and below): I looked at this too, but was out off by its being for PCs only. If they ever release a proper MAC version, I'll have a look. But, meanwhile, I'm finding Watercolor Studio (sic) very useful even if I did have to pay for it - still a lot cheaper than continuing with Adobe products! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iconoclast Posted June 21, 2021 Share Posted June 21, 2021 Ah yes, I didn't think of that Photosketcher might not exist for Mac. Sorry! It has at least two or three different Watercolour filters that work pretty nice. But it is long ago since I used it the last time. Even to look how it creates the paintings is verry interesting. It does this stroke by stroke. And you can apply different canvas textures, brushes and frames to your image. Watercolour Studio looks interesting too. Hope it is not too expensive. In my opinion also G'MIC's Watercolour filter does a fine job. Better than the filter in Photoshop, I think. It has a lot of adjustments to modify the result. G'MIC generally is really cool. I used it many years in GIMP, and since a short time also in Photo, since an .8bf-version of the plugin exists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasd Posted June 21, 2021 Author Share Posted June 21, 2021 Thanks Iconoclast and everyone else who has contributed to this thread. As I say, I have a solution now, but I've also learned a lot about tweaking photo-filter presets, which is proving very useful as well. So thanks all, again. I reckon we can wind this thread up now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 21, 2021 Share Posted June 21, 2021 28 minutes ago, iconoclast said: Ah yes, I didn't think of that Photosketcher might not exist for Mac. Actually FotoSketcher does exist for mac, too, (see this post). But currently it still requires / runs in Wine.app (kind of emulation software) and is available only for Mojave (10.14) and below. The Fotosketcher roadmap (Feb. 2021) has announced a fully compatible version for Catalina and BigSur in quarter II / 2021. Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasd Posted June 21, 2021 Author Share Posted June 21, 2021 25 minutes ago, thomaso said: Actually FotoSketcher does exist for mac, too, (see this post). But currently it still requires / runs in Wine.app (kind of emulation software) and is available only for Mojave (10.14) and below. The Fotosketcher roadmap (Feb. 2021) has announced a fully compatible version for Catalina and BigSur in quarter II / 2021. I'd love to know when the MAC version for Big Sur is available. it seems not to be yet, despite its nearly the end of Quarter II 2021 Forget what I said about winding up this thread (see above) and please keep me posted 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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