What is Picture to People ?

"Picture to People" (P2P) is a huge Computer Graphics project. It was started to create new softwares able to make 2D drawing, 3D rendering, vexel drawing, text effects, photo effects, image filtering and other complex Computer Graphics operations. It has been made from scratch, including its low level Computer Graphics libraries like Maccala. Nowadays, most final features produced for this project are released as free online tools available from its official website. This blog talks about Computer Graphics, mainly concerning Picture to People development.

"Only who makes has true knowledge. Knowledge is control. True power depends on total control. Only who makes from scratch has the real power."

Sunday, December 28, 2008

News about this blog

I intend to create a blog inside Picture to People site. I wanna get things together concerning Picture to People project.

I will make a cleaner, simplier blog in a style very similar to the site. When it get ready, of course I will move my entrecard to the new blog.

Anyway, probably I will keep this blog here for historical reasons. Maybe I decide to copy some posts from here to the new blog too.

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Saturday, December 20, 2008

Carving effect for photos


Since Picture to People site was released kind of 2 weeks ago, I have been focused in increasing the roll of photo effects.

Despite I have put there a lot of useful tool that are not effects (like reduce, enlargement, mirror, crop, square, etc), there are several new artistic effects too. Several ones you usually can't get with few clicks in (paid or not) graphic softwares.

Beside all development involving Computer Graphics, now I need to spend a lot of time maintaining and developing the site. Anyway, always I can, I will show here some new effect from Picture to People site.

Above you can see an example of an effect generated in Photo Effects / Carved section of Picture to People site.

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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A contest for Entrecard users

Since EC admin now lets a EC user transfer up to 25,000 EC credits per week, Picture to People project has just started a contest involving reviews.

To get 1,000 EC credits:
- write a good review of Picture to People SITE (not this blog) as a post in your blog;
- at least 50 words;
-post date can't be in the past;
-you can not delete the post in future;

To get 2,000 EC credits:
- write a good review of Picture to People SITE (not this blog) as a post in your blog;
- at least 100 words;
- post date can't be in the past;
- you can not delete the post in future;
- your text must show your readers you really know Picture to People site; you should to talk about some positive experience using the free graphics effects there;

I suggest you send your review by email for checking. Send it to: leocda@gmail.com. The answer (approval or not) will be send by email too. If your review is approved, you will get your 1,000 or 2,000 EC credits until 24h after the review is online.

In my opinion, this task is very easy, because Picture to People site is free and offers a lot of professional Computer Graphics effects. It's not hard tell something good about it.

Good luck.

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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

www.picturetopeople.org evolution

When I decided to create the Picture to People online branch, my intention concerning photo manipulation was release my effects that are hard to get in most of (even paid) graphic softwares. They can be very useful even for professional designers, mainly the effect groups: Cartoonization, Drawing, Mosaic, Painting, Pencil and Sketch.

Now the site is online and I get users feedback everyday. A lot of them have been asking for simple traditional photo editing tools, like Reduction, Grayscale, Contrast, Crop, Flip, etc. I'm working to meet their wishes and needs, so the number of this kind of utility is increasing fast in the site.

Beside this, Picture to People site has getting a good amount of photo effects very useful for the digital photo user with average skills, like Color Improvement, Dithering, Liquify, Makeup, Pastel and so.

Anyway, the roll of photo, text or pattern effects will keep increasing fast.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008

How do P2P pattern effects work?







A lot of people is still in doubt about the pattern effects of Picture to People site. In fact, it's very simple to use, as everything there.

It's a generalization of the engine that makes the text effects. For Picture to People a "pattern" is a black shape in a white background, no matter how it looks like. You upload your image (pattern) and it will be a guide (a "directional field" in a math sense) when rendering the effect you have chosen.

Picture to people site will no refuse a non black and white image when doing a pattern effect; in this case, the input image will be made black and white internally. Beside this, usually your pattern doesn't need have a good resolution or be free of jagging. A lot of effects are immune to these problems and can accept very low quality patterns.

If you use the "closure" option, the renderizer will be cloistered by your pattern shape. In this case, you can choose freely the background color you want.

Above you see a pattern in very poor quality. After you see the result of applying an effect without closure and finally you see the same effect using closure with a soft purple as background.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

www.picturetopeople.org updated

The effects roll is increasing fast. For now I'm improving the list of photo effects.

Anyway, I will not talk about that in this post. I wanna tell you Picture to People site has just got very nice structural updates:

- now you can upload photos until 1200x1200 pixels and until 200 KB;

- now the result texts can have until 1200x600 pixels;

It's a really good increase comparing to the old sizes allowed.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Color enhancement for photos



Picture to people now has a new category of photo effects.

Now you can improve the color distribution of your photos.

In some cases, the quality enhancement is amazing.

Beware if you improve the color distribution of some kinds of bad quality and/or noised photos, the result can be even worse, since you will "increase the bad". Anyway, it works very well for a large group of images.

Above you see a photo and the color enhanced result.


Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Apply effects on your own images

I'm glad to announce Picture to People site has a new class of effects I have not made disclosure in this blog yet.

P2P has the "pattern effects". For Picture to People, a "pattern" is a black shape in a white background. This new approach gives a whole world of new possibilities, since you can use ANY black and white image you want.

Soon I will start a Tutorial section in www.picturetopeople.org, so, among other things, I will show tips, tricks and pitfalls of pre-processing your patterns to get the best results concerning the effects.

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Saturday, December 6, 2008

www.picturetopeople.org is online

I'm glad and proud to announce Picture to People official website is online.

There you will be able to get by yourself most effects you see in this blog and much, much more. It has already started with more than 100 professional Computer Graphics effects, and it's just the beginning. I have tons of new effects to study and create yet.

It was published now and is in beta release. Start to use it right now and help to know if there is any bug.

From now on, you can use this blog to suggest new effects that could be useful for you.

I hope you enjoy: http://www.picturetopeople.org/


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Wednesday, December 3, 2008

No pain, no gain

If you are my reader, you have seen I'm not posting so often as usual. I'm really not having any time to something different of picturetopeople.org.

I'm making everything (just as I like), so these days I was very busy with:

- Host;

- DNS;

- Apache;

I'm working really hard for this. Just talking about fonts, for example, I have collected and catalogued more than 1000 nice fonts to be used with P2P effects.

I'm sleeping very few, but I can already say: at most in a week I intend to get picturetopeople.org online in beta release. I hope P2P site can start already with more than 50 effects.

If you like graphics, keep reading this blog ... I'm almost there.

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Concrete text rendering

I have made a new effect to render text made of concrete.

The development of picturetopeople.org is going well. In fact, it's funny and much easier than Computer Graphics itself.

I'm trying to make Picture to People site very easy to use. You will need to know nothing about Computer Graphics to make it work for you.

Above you can see a word made of concrete.

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

Vectorization 3




I have dealt with my vectorization library these days to make it suitable to my needs in http://www.picturetopeople.org. I want everything very direct and easy there.

I have made some key modifications, so now instead of need to adjust some no intuitive parameters, you can get kind of different results by applying the vectorization several times in a row. Of course, the output of one iteration is the input of the next one.

The first image is the original image vectorized. It's a very hard image to vectorize, since its global entropy doesn't tell much about it and it's local entropy is unstable. The next images show the successive use of the vectorization library, always having the previous image as input.

In a case like this, if some details are false positives, usually you can remove it by reapplying the vectorization.

You will need to click the images the see them in full size.

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Crystal text rendering


I have made a new effect to render text made of purple crystal. I was inspired by a reportage I have read about jewels made of amethyst.

As always, a lot of people are anxious to see/use the real site of Picture to People project. I can say to you all I'm doing my best to release it as fast as possible.

I believe so much in this project that I'm hiring a dedicated host to put my web services on. I'm spending not just a big effort, but my money too.

Above you can see a crystal word.

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Monday, November 10, 2008

Wax text rendering

Now I created an effect to render text made of wax.

As always, everybody have been asking about the Picture to People site. About this, there are a lot of things to deal apart of Computer Graphics development:

- my own library to deal with HTTP requests and responses;
- images to use in the site;
- dynamic content;
- HTML;
- CSS;
- Javascript;
- integration between Network and Computer Graphics pieces of software.

Everything coming from scratch as always. Since I'm working very hard on it, I believe it's 40-50% done.

Above you can see a wax word.

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Thursday, November 6, 2008

Rust text rendering


I have created a new effect to render text made of rust. I don't wanna stop posting here even working hard on another front.

A lot of people have been asking me about www.picturetopeople.org. It's not online yet. I'm working hard to make a simple and clean site very adherent to my Computer Graphics libraries. I'm also dealing with paperwork concerning hosting the site.

As always, I'm making everything without tricks, wizards or libraries. Everything comes from scratch. If everything goes right, the site will be online this year yet.

When it's ready and online, you will be the first to know.

Above you can see a word made of rust.

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Sunday, November 2, 2008

Metal text again

I have made a new effect to render text made of molten gold. I will make a lot of new effects when I have time, but by now I just make enough effects to have results to post here.

I'm very tired nowadays, because "the surprise" is spending all my rest time. The name of the surprise is www.picturetopeople.org, and I'm working very hard to put it online the way I want. Keep reading this blog and be one of the firsts to know when I release it.

Above you can see a molten gold word.

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Cloud text again


I have created a new effect to render text made of clouds.

As I told before, I intend to have 100 different text renderings to offer as soon as possible.

A lot of people have been asking me how long I will take to put the "surprise" online. Take it easy, guys. I do everything lonely and I have just my rest time to make it. Maybe some more weeks will be enough to have online a first release.

Above you can see a cloud word.

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Saturday, October 25, 2008

The big surprise

I'm working very very hard in Picture to People. Since I'm using all my rest time to work in "the big surprise", I decided already tell you what it is.

Among the several P2P sub-projects going on, now I decided to create an "online sub-project".

I'm developing a new site (not a blog) for P2P project. The goal is to offer online several effects you can see here. This site will be clean, simple and easy to use.

If everything goes right, as the time goes, my new effects will always be added to this "free Computer Graphics services" site. I hope I will be able to offer you a lot of nice effects there.

I thank some guys (all involved with graphics) who convinced me that an "Online Picture to People" should be the best way to take easy Computer Graphics for all people.

I'm making my best ... let's see what happens next weeks.

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Inside body style text rendering


Sometimes it's good to create something different or unusual.

I have created an effect to render text made of tissue, veins and blood. It's like if each letter was a kind of stylized human organ.

Above you can see an "inside body" word.


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Monday, October 20, 2008

Water text again


I have created a new effect to render water text.

I'm looking for a more foamy version of water.

Above you can see a water word.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Photos to pencil drawings (revisited)


I have tested some new accessory math models to improve my effects to transform photos in pencil drawings.

Some improvements are subtle, but interesting to achieve a more realistic result globally.

Above you can see a pencil drawing made using the new improvements. Its related photo can be viewed in one or more old posts below.

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Monday, October 13, 2008

Leaf text rendering


I have made a new effect to render leaf text.

I wanna achieve 100 text effects as soon as possible.

About the surprise: its development will last some more time.

Above you can see a word made of plant leafs.

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Metal text rendering


I have made an effect to render brute metal text.

It's really very hard to create a procedural model to mimic metal without 3d rendering tricks. In 2d world, people usually draw metal using that well known "pseudo-chrome" style, but I was looking for something different.

Above you can see a metal word.

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Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Alien text rendering

While the big surprise doesn't rise up, I need to keep making smaller developments to post here.

I have made an effect to render an alien style text. Since this kind of "weird" result can have very proper use, I will try to create some more "alien skins" in future.

Above you can see an "alien word".

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Monday, October 6, 2008

Artistic mosaic text rendering


I have made a new text rendering effect. It's a kind of artistic mosaic.

I'm not having time to post a lot cause I'm very busy with Picture to People development. I'm preparing a big surprise.

Keep following this blog and be one of the firsts to know about what is coming.

Above you can see a mosaic word.

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Thursday, October 2, 2008

How fluid could be the water in an effect?






Most of my effects are procedural. It means they are calculated and they have some "degrees of freedom" depending on the way they were modelled.

I have made my water text rendering in a good conjugation between typographic shape keeping and liquid (no defined volume) looking.

Above I show several water text effect results. The model was configured to be more fluid step by step in a top-down way.

As you can see, using a "too much fluid" water, we destroy the text typography.

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