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Graphic Novel Effect


smadell

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Based on a recent thread started by user Steps, I have finalized and am attaching a macro called "Graphic Novel Effect." It is similar to the "Paint by Numbers" macro I created a while back, but offers better control of the black outlines that are needed in a cartoon or a graphic novel illustration.

The attached file is a macros category (not a single macro) and can be imported through the Affinity Photo Library panel. Once inside Affinity Photo, the category contains a single macro which can be moved into a different category (by dragging it) if desired. Since it is provided as a category, it can also be imported into the iPad version of AP.

When you use the macro, it creates a number of layers inside a group (which can be turned on and off to show or hide the effect entirely). The user is presented with 5 options in a dialog:

1) Posterize - How Many Colors?

The macro is preset to 5 color levels, but anywhere between 4 and 6 generally gives a decent result.

2) Outlines - Adjust Black [line thickness]

This option is preset to 50%, but changing the value will make the black outlines more or less prominent.

3) Outlines - Adjust White [fill smoothness]

This option is preset to 90%. Changing the value will affect the fill (inside the outlines). Keep the value above the value set in option #2 (line thickness).

4) Finish - Adjust the Brightness

5) Finish - Adjust the Contrast

These are preset to Brightness = -15% and Contrast = +30%. Changes made here will have the obvious results, and should be considered a finishing touch.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

As always, I am one person with one computer and have not tested this in every possible scenario. Try it and, if you like it, keep it and enjoy it. This forum has provided me with so many good ideas and answers to questions; this macro is another attempt to “pay it forward.”

Graphic Novel Effect.afmacros

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@smadell Wow, thank you.

I'm impressed how complex this macro is.

In my opinion this is the best cartoon effect macro so far seen in this forum. At least a one where

Compared to the other suggestions how to achieve this effect this one has the cleanest result and is the best starting point for manual work.

According to @Callum this may be the most you get out of Affinity as long as artistic filters are in the making.

Here is my result:

graphic_novel_effect_macro.thumb.jpg.1fed18e3e5b43f0aeb02ff180751575c.jpg

 

And this is what I want to achieve some day with Affinity Photo as a basic result (filter #1):

screen_cartoonizer_effect_1.thumb.jpg.01c18d371c85aac8a343f2e6685b7b85.jpg

 

And after having reviewed many many photo filter tools this one is simply the best (filter #4):

screen_cartoonizer_effect_4.thumb.jpg.ed667c675b69c0b9754da1e65e7ed29c.jpg

 

After studying your macro I can only imagine how much work must go into developing this filter.

In fact that company even started a new tool just for this one filter.

But as stated in another thread this FXCartoonizer desktop tool is very slow, instable and has no options.
It just has one really good algorithm for one effect.

I hope Serif finds a way to provide a filter going in that direction with more manual control. This would be soo awesome for everyone here looking after cartoon effects.

Many tools have even bader "cartoon filter" than what's possible with Affinity Photo.

I laughed as I saw that one of the paid tools has a filter called "Neon" which is just edge detection. :D

My conclusion so far is that many tools advertise the amount of filters, but 90% of those filters just change white balance or colors and are therefore useless.

Really good filters that make a difference to a photo are rarely seen.

On a site note I'm not very sure about the "cartoon effect" because some other tools call it "oil painting" - looks similar, but not that good.

---

This is the original photo:

steps_test_image.jpg

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@Hilltop :D

Yes, totally confusing. I already mailed them for clarification but still no answer.

"FX Cartoonizer" seems to be the latest product. I use that for my photos.

Don't ask me why they sell it in Bundle with the precursor product. That makes no sense.

It's really crappy software overall. It's just this filter effect #4 they got right.

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Affinity Photo 1.7.2.471, Affinity Designer 1.7.2.471, Affinity Publisher 1.7.2.471

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Had a spare hour to kill so thought I'd have a doodle.

534143325_ScreenShot2019-12-10at09_37_33.thumb.png.d3f37552fa0a3a232d4337fa78540dd9.png

baby to cartoon.afphoto Saved with history so you can jog back and forth in the history panel. History is a bit messy because I was trying all sorts of combinations, maybe you can work it out and get something closer but I've run out of time. :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm trying to achieve something like that aswell. Just turned a photo that way with Photoshop, but since I'm nearly at the end of my Adobe subscription and not extending it anymore, I wanted to see if I could achieve the same with Affinity Photo.
I did this picture throught this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_654r3-RDw. Obviously there is no Oil Paint filter in Affinity Photo, so I know that part isn't going to work. So I looked for a tutorial that did this without the Oil Paint filter and came accross this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phl48dTE1KI

But I get stuck at the diffuse filter, because apparantly it works differently in AP than in PS. I also noticed that some filters in AP are way too sensitive (with the use of the slider). PS has some options to the diffuse filter that AP doesn't have.
I'm also trying to mix and match the 2 tutorials and filters, like where PS has the filter Poster Edges (1st link), I tried to Posterize first and then detect the edges. Posterize gives me several problems to start with, beginning with the amount of "level" of banding (slider here is way to sensitive over here if you just want a few levels). But it also creates unwanted colors, probably because of being too precise? It also diffuses the edges from one band to the other. Which in my case is unwanted.

I've also seen a solution on the forum having to do with brushing a "paint effect", but that is not what I'm looking for. Too time consuming and actually not the effect I'm looking for.

This is the picture I'm referring at and what I'm trying to achieve with Affinity Photo. So I don't need other software presented. I want to see if this is possible to achieve with Affinity Photo.

eyeEmotion_lauraAngelini_eeLink960.thumb.jpg.a21e4f96accd4c1d001ba1747452107f.jpgeyeEmotion_lauraAngeliniCartoony_eeLink.thumb.jpg.00739ce3ecbfbc1e5a87f4e72823781b.jpg

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3 hours ago, eyeEmotion said:

I want to see if this is possible to achieve with Affinity Photo.

You can try out what is shown in this video here by painting over ...

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47 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

You can try out what is shown in this video here by painting over ...

I've seen that one. That is what I was referring to for what I was not looking for. "I've also seen a solution on the forum having to do with brushing a "paint effect", but that is not what I'm looking for. Too time consuming and actually not the effect I'm looking for."

I currently got this (image on the left) with AP through filters and adjustment layers. I've also got sketchlines prepared (image on the right) on a seperate layer, but I'm not able get the white color blend through all the other layers through the blending options, so only the black lines are still visible.
I seem to get there in bits, but it still ends up too much like photograph and smaller highlights disappearing. I haven't used AP that much yet, so it's still learning how to approach things to achieve the effect I want.
eyeEmotion_lauraAngelini_testCartoonAffinity.thumb.jpg.e3611feff9843a6f38430655e41c6adf.jpgeyeEmotion_lauraAngelini_testCartoonAffinity_sketchlines.thumb.jpg.dac05cd6425f5d6bef88cbff2133497a.jpg

Edited by eyeEmotion
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1 hour ago, eyeEmotion said:

I currently got this (image on the left) with AP through filters and adjustment layers. I've also got sketchlines prepared (image on the right) on a seperate layer, but I'm not able get the white color blend through all the other layers through the blending options, so only the black lines are still visible.

Well, if you start by eliminating the white background in your sketchlines image (Filters > Colors > Erase White Paper), then copy that layer and paste it over the one on the left, you'll get this:

image.png.55500c3fcace0652e3c7bbcc0879d320.png

Is that closer to what you want?

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Or, to be completely non-destructive, put the “outlines” layer above the posterized photo layer, then set the Blend Mode of the outlines layer to Multiply. This will get rid of the white entirely without erasing anything.

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17

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4 minutes ago, smadell said:

Or, to be completely non-destructive, put the “outlines” layer above the posterized photo layer, then set the Blend Mode of the outlines layer to Multiply. This will get rid of the white entirely without erasing anything.

Ok, can't believe I overlooked that. Was probably scimming to the blend modes too fast.
Getting there, but still a long way off. Need to get it to a point that it resembles the quality I got in Photoshop.

Keypoints I have 'till now are: Posterize (currently at 6), Diffuse Glow (set to Soft Light, still figuring out the setting, currently have the Opacity of that slider set to 0, making other sliders redundant it seems, but still has an effect) and above that a Bilateral Blur (currently at Radius 11,8px and Tolerance 20%.
And ofcourse the "standards" like levels, curves, brightness adjustments.

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33 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Although a quite nice result (although the face now kinda looks "ghostly" :D ), the point is to be able to do it in Affinity Photo. I bought the Affinity software to replace Adobe, so I need to see/try what it is all capable of.

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24 minutes ago, eyeEmotion said:

Although a quite nice result (although the face now kinda looks "ghostly" :D )

Via befunky and it's default "DigitalArt -> Underpainting" settings. xD

26 minutes ago, eyeEmotion said:

...the point is to be able to do it in Affinity Photo. I bought the Affinity software to replace Adobe...

Request that some addon oil and sketch filters etc. are build for it (maybe some of the devs & decision-makers hears you crys, though I won't bet on it).

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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  • 3 months later...

For those of you who're on a Mac, and willing to invest another $50, Apple Motion has a nice Comic filter (amongst hundreds of others). Although it makes use of similar parameters as Affinity Photo (posterise levels, edges etc.) it comes with a different output style. For me, it's more Comic like than what i've seen coming out of Affinity (or equivalents). Here's an example (i isolated the subject prior to processing in Motion):

cropped-reinaldo-kevin-682623-unsplash.png

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  • 2 months later...

 

On 3/23/2020 at 2:38 PM, scottscamera said:

 

 

 

On 8/17/2018 at 8:42 AM, anon2 said:

.

 

Smadell,

Thank you kindly for sharing your macro Graphic Novel. It is really cool. Again you've outdone yourself, and I appreciate your efforts. What I also found impressive was your use and order of sliders. It was almost like using an "app" in AP from an SDK tool. If only Serif would provide one...hear us, Developers?

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Thanks, Wei. Good to hear from you again!

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17

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  • 8 months later...

There are some inexpensive iPad apps that can do this. It isn't the ideal workflow but it is an option.

Code Organa has some good apps. I created the attached using the Animatix app ($1.99). The only thing I noticed is that the app did not preserve transparency. They offer other apps such as ToonCamera. Their website: http://codeorgana.com/index.html

Cheers!

 

 

pexels-pressmaster-3851631a.png

IMG_4192.JPG

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On 9/26/2019 at 5:58 AM, smadell said:

As always, I am one person with one computer and have not tested this in every possible scenario

Thanks. Works great on iPad (apart from option to select number of colour levels before converting). It is possible to go into adjustment layer later and set it though.🙂

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  • 1 month later...

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