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Loved the watercolor tile. And a plea to HN folks: I am working on a project, and it will be great if someone can point me to a way to dynamically apply such a

Loved the watercolor tile. And a plea to HN folks: I am working on a project, and it will be great if someone can point me to a way to dynamically apply such a filter to vector derived solid color images. I am thinking of running a GIMP server, but I find the plugins available limiting. I have very limited image processing experience, and this was not a major part of the product, so had put it on the backburner. I will have access to the edges/ vector images, so there is no need for accurate edge detection- but such organic edges would add a lot if there is a way to do it.

scq 15y ago
I think this is how they are doing it: 1. Smooth the vector shapes (I'm not sure exactly how they're doing this. A blur and cutoff perhaps?) 2. Use the smoothed shapes as a mask over repeating colored watercolor textures. 3. Composite the various layers They also seem to be applying a shadow underneath land masses.
- kubrickslair 15y ago
  Thanks! I did not think of smoothing the vector shapes, that partially explains how it blends so well. The other thing is the edges of the shape- they are darker and blend in the lighter body of the fill. I guess that works by inverting the shapes, blurring, and using that as a mask for a different more intense blend. And in both cases, I see there is some cool randomness going on. I see how I may be able to handle it for the latter- through a texture etc., but not sure how to handle the randomness in shape creation. Also, it would be great if someone can suggest a good library to implement this. I am currently using Processing to render the image, but it may not be the best way for these set of procedures. The other image processing libraries I found were not high level enough. PS: I have a hunch that their textures are not monochromatic. They seem multicolored and they are probably varying the hues of a colored texture to manage different shades.
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
The most important thing in watercolors is the texture of the paper. They use a texture for sea, another for land, and so on. If you look at the see you will see how the sea and land repeats itself. You will need to make a seamless texture that you can repeat ad infinitum. Those are made with filters on photoshop or GIMP, or you could crreate them using fractals(very difficult for it to feel like a realistic watercolor, that is the reason they did not used them). I don't like GIMP for that, plugins had a very confusing syntax, I prefer ImageMagick or better I use my own programs. Using Photoshop you can do it "with your hand"(selecting a vector shape, grow it with border transition, apply texture, and repeat), record and then use the macro for all your vectors. I would use an OpenCL or CUDA program, faster and way more control.
- kubrickslair 15y ago
  Thanks, looking at the right textures, instead of texture generating algorithms helped here. I think I will purchase a bunch, and that should suffice.
spot 15y ago
http://otherthings.com/uw/watercolor/ http://otherthings.com/uw/watercolor/ stamen's work is based on this with some approximations, eg skipping navier-stokes.
- kubrickslair 15y ago
  Thanks a lot! It is often the right things to search for, and this really helped. Also, your installation was a big relief from gradschool stress. And I enjoyed guessing the algorithms that went into different visuals, though I am sure I was mostly wrong, as I was here.
  - spot 15y ago
    thanks :) it's all one algorithm actually, just with different parameters: http://draves.org/npar06/ http://draves.org/npar06/

scq 15y ago

I think this is how they are doing it: 1. Smooth the vector shapes (I'm not sure exactly how they're doing this. A blur and cutoff perhaps?) 2. Use the smoothed shapes as a mask over repeating colored watercolor textures. 3. Composite the various layers They also seem to be applying a shadow underneath land masses.

kubrickslair 15y ago
Thanks! I did not think of smoothing the vector shapes, that partially explains how it blends so well. The other thing is the edges of the shape- they are darker and blend in the lighter body of the fill. I guess that works by inverting the shapes, blurring, and using that as a mask for a different more intense blend. And in both cases, I see there is some cool randomness going on. I see how I may be able to handle it for the latter- through a texture etc., but not sure how to handle the randomness in shape creation. Also, it would be great if someone can suggest a good library to implement this. I am currently using Processing to render the image, but it may not be the best way for these set of procedures. The other image processing libraries I found were not high level enough. PS: I have a hunch that their textures are not monochromatic. They seem multicolored and they are probably varying the hues of a colored texture to manage different shades.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

The most important thing in watercolors is the texture of the paper. They use a texture for sea, another for land, and so on. If you look at the see you will see how the sea and land repeats itself. You will need to make a seamless texture that you can repeat ad infinitum. Those are made with filters on photoshop or GIMP, or you could crreate them using fractals(very difficult for it to feel like a realistic watercolor, that is the reason they did not used them). I don't like GIMP for that, plugins had a very confusing syntax, I prefer ImageMagick or better I use my own programs. Using Photoshop you can do it "with your hand"(selecting a vector shape, grow it with border transition, apply texture, and repeat), record and then use the macro for all your vectors. I would use an OpenCL or CUDA program, faster and way more control.

kubrickslair 15y ago
Thanks, looking at the right textures, instead of texture generating algorithms helped here. I think I will purchase a bunch, and that should suffice.

spot 15y ago

http://otherthings.com/uw/watercolor/ http://otherthings.com/uw/watercolor/ stamen's work is based on this with some approximations, eg skipping navier-stokes.

kubrickslair 15y ago
Thanks a lot! It is often the right things to search for, and this really helped. Also, your installation was a big relief from gradschool stress. And I enjoyed guessing the algorithms that went into different visuals, though I am sure I was mostly wrong, as I was here.
- spot 15y ago
  thanks :) it's all one algorithm actually, just with different parameters: http://draves.org/npar06/ http://draves.org/npar06/