Upgrade to a new powerful server

As several times before, Picture to People site's traffic increased more and more, so our dedicated server became overloaded. In the hours of day when P2P is most used, many requests had been receiving a slow response and, in some worse cases, our web server stopped responding.

I had no choice but pay for a more powerful server, otherwise in several parts of day users wouldn't have a smooth experience using P2P. It became a non optional decision.

The good news are that now Picture to People runs on a monster dedicated machine with a powerful processor and lots of memory. I'm optimistic that our new server can support some more traffic increase and I also can release more graphic software at the site with confidence.

The bad news are that I don't have money to pay for this very expensive server. Currently the site is very poorly monetized (in fact, most pages has just a small lateral ad), but probably I will need to set up a good number of ads to get money to pay for our new server.

At least I hope I will be able to achieve the most important goal: keep Picture to People project alive and providing a high quality service.

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Turning photos into vintage drawings

Our online image editor developed to transform photos into retro look drawings has been used for a lot of P2P users since it was published (I analyze the site traffic almost daily). Have you tried it yet?

This online photo effect generators is intuitive to use and works well for a big range of photos and other kinds of images. Even if your input image as a bad quality, there still are hope. This photo effect editor has parameters that help you to improve the input image, so it's easier to achieve a result as you wish.

To inspire you, I post below a new example of this software in action. Use the Drawing Vintage Photo Effect Creator to turn your photos into beautiful drawings with a vintage mood.

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Developing new creative graffiti text logo creators

Picture to People project has a very successful Online Graffiti Text Logo Creator. It's used by thousands and more thousands of users every month. Anyway, I was never completely satisfied with it. I want much more!

Since almost one year ago, I have been researching a lot about what users expect and like most when they look for a graffiti generator.

Based on the informations I have collected, I have been planning, designing and testing possibilities to create a new killer graffiti text logo maker.

After months of hard work developing new features and improving P2P graphic libraries, I started getting the first visible results of what can become a new amazingly powerful and productive online graffiti generator.

Below I show you a result produced recently by using some fresh P2P pieces of code. Click the image to see it in real size.

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New shiny realistic text effects to be used online

I'm very excited because the new P2P software to create a different class of dramatically realistic texts is entering the beta stage.

I'm already able to generate some world class effects. Some of them are so similar to real objects that I believe this new graphic tool will take Picture to People project to the highest level of graphic effects, producing results that could be used in Hollywood.

If everything goes right (and I hope it goes), you will be able to create easily, online and for free many text effects that before just could be made by using the most expensive desktop graphic programs with great design skills.

Below I show you a teasing result I have just created by using one of these new upcoming P2P text effects (click the image to see in real size):

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New realistic photo painting effect

In last two years, I have researched a lot about artistic photo effects that imitate sketch, drawing and painting like made by human hands.

Since I started that efforts, I have made several amazing discoveries that turned possible top class paint effects like these ones:

• Classic Paint Photo Effect;
• Oil Paint Photo Effect;
• Watercolor Paint Photo Effect;
• Impressionist Paint Photo Effect;
• Modernist Paint Photo Effect.

Now, after a long experience creating and implementing such algorithms, I'm using the knowledge I acquired to create a new impressive photo into painting converter. I hope it can achieve a new degree of fidelity to the original picture.

Despite it's still under development, below I show you an example of how this new paint renderer can produce amazingly detailed pieces of art, keeping the original shapes and colors.

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Creating chalkboard drawings from logos

Recently P2P received a new free online tool that is able to create amazing chalkboard drawings from photos.

However, many users don't know this software is versatile and also can generate great chalk art from some kinds of vector based drawings. You can, for example, turn a logo into a nice chalk drawing made in a board. You can even turn a nice image of a text into an useful chalk piece of art.

It's reasonably normal generating some geometric artifacts when rendering based on vector images. If you mind about this, you can minimize this behavior by disabling the "Color improvement" option, or at least don't using the value "Smart".

Below you see a black and white logo turned into a chalk drawing twice. Now we have that logo drawn on a chalkboard (the margin is optional).

Now I show you an artistic text transformed into a text written on a chalkboard in two different styles (you can generate it with no margin).

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The feasiability of animated effects

Recently I have made some basic tests evaluating the possibility of creating some animated text effects. In fact, I was analyzing the feasibility of such effects by using current technologies.

Unfortunately, the first tests were no promising. Of course, I will not use flash, so the natural choice to create animated text effects that could be used online is GIF format, what offers animation capabilities.

Despite it's still useful, GIF is an old format with several limitations that don't make sense nowadays. Despite I have made simple tests, it seems that it would not be easy to create any kind of professional animation with this technology. When I tell "professional", I don't mean complex animations. They could be trivial, since the graphic quality was high.

The only other self-contained option that could be used in internet is APNG format. It's a little better that GIF for my purposes, but currently most browsers doesn't support it natively. I have found several problems and no good solution.

I'm still developing a lot of "still graphic effects", so I don't have much time yet to go deeper into these questions. Anyway, probably I still have a long way until I can release animated effects in Picture to People.

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Realistic embossed text effects online

A big amount of visitors is already using P2P embossed text effects. It has been used not just by a big number of frequent visitors, but this new software has attracted a lot of new users. To give you a small idea about what I mean, I can tell our new text effect creators were released online two weeks ago, but even so the Realistic Embossed Text Effects page already is in 14th position in Google search for expression "embossed text effect".

These fresh online embossed text generators have several advanced but easy to use configuration parameters and produce realistic texts. Moreover, you have hundreds of of text effects grouped in various themes like grunge, glass, sand, ice, cracked, concrete, wood, metallic and much more.

Below I show you some examples of realistic embossed text effects created by using these new P2P softwares. The embossed sand text effect is particularly interesting. The used font face is not holed; the effect you see was created by using an interesting feature called "Embossed Borders".

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Realistic carved text effect generators

I have made the second biggest release in P2P history. These new softwares come to fit the requests of many users since the project is online and endorses Picture to People as the world's best and biggest portal of free graphic effects.

Now P2P has more than 940 awesome carved text effects online. They were divided in two groups:

- Realistic Embossed Text Effects (sculpted out);
- Realistic Engraved Text Effects (sculpted inside or "digged").

These fresh text effects have many useful and advanced features, like the ones I cite below, always keeping the high quality and anti-aliased drawing:

- configurable carving style (you can emboss/engrave the letters or just their outlines);
- optional sculpting plate with rounded corners;
- configurable emboss/engrave deepness;
- configurable light direction;
- optional text border damage;
- optional transparent background (specially useful when using rounded corners).

Below I show you two samples. The first is a cracked embossed stone text and the second one is an engraved wood text effect.

Choose among all carved text effect themes at the Online Carved Text Effects catalog page.

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Font Effects vs Text Effects

I see many people, including many graphic designers,  using "font effect" (also known as "typography effect" or "typographic effect") and "text effect" as synonymous expressions. Well, for me they mean different things.

A text effect is the creation of a "special text" by using a font face as a guide. The result usually looks complex and very different of what a font can be, despite such result, in most cases, keeps that shape information inherited from the guide font.

A graphic text generated through an effect can look like anything and can have any color distribution. In most cases, it doesn't make sense changing that configuration to any arbitrary set of colors. Usually a text effect is a final product and should be used "like is". You can make small adjusts on it like you would make on a photo (modifying contrast for example).

A font effect is the creation of a kind of "new font" based on a existing one. The result of this process is something that could be a font itself and could even be used as input to generate text effects.

A font defines the shape of letters and must be simple enough to be successfully rendered by using one color (in fact, there will be pixels of other colors in edges if anti-aliasing is present, but that colors never will be different from an intermediate color between the rendering color and the background color). When we apply an effect to a font, we are modifying the shape of letters and maybe their spacing.

If what you need is a simple text created by using a regular font with "interesting modifications", in fact you want to use a font effect. If you think "I would like to create a text with this font, but would be nice if it was a little different", so you want a font effect.

Picture to People offers a very nice set of font effects, and you can choose from more that 450 font faces. If you like typography, you could like to use P2P Online Font Effects. Despite they are font effects, many of them go beyond what you can get by using a regular True Type font (ttf), as you can see in the second and third examples below.

These samples were created by starting from the good old Arial font. First you have a "Dashed Outline Arial font", after you have a "Frozen Arial font" and finally it's a "Smoke Arial font".

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An easy way to draw lighting bolts

Recently I was programming some stuff by using Maccala and some other P2P libraries. They are here to make Computer Graphics as easy as possible.

There was a moment when I needed to draw a vector lighting bolt symbol. What a boring task !!! It's harder than we imagine at a first sight. Twenty minutes after beginning this job, it was clear to me: I really wanted an easy way to make that kind of drawings we use to represent bolts.

I spent some time, but I created a method to generate any kind of lighting bolt. I made it so configurable as I could imagine, what turned the mission into something more complicated.

Maybe it doesn't look very interesting for you, but, from now on, I can save my fingers every time I need to render something like the drawings you see below. I prefer to work hard once, so I can be lazy many other times. :)

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More advanced arrow drawing styles and configuration

Since I released my vector based drawing library for the first time and started using it, there was many ways to draw arrows, because it already had very customizable methods to make it. You can even see a screenshot about it at the web page about Maccala's features.

Anyway, the library had some limitations, as for example: just straight arrows could be drawn and only using a chosen but fixed thickness for arrow body.

I have recently created more methods in my class responsible for drawing 2D vector based objects in a canvas, including methods to draw more configurable and generic arrows. Summing up the old and the new features, now arrow drawing tasks can take advantage of these main features:

- ability to draw straight or curved arrows;
- use of arbitrarily progressive arrow body thickness;
- use of highly configurable arrow head shape;
- ability to draw arrow head in both sides if desired;
- use of any RGB color;
- use of configurable high level anti-aliasing.

Below you see some examples of arrows created by using the new features I have developed.

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Drawing curves with progressive thickness

Here I show you one more recent improvement for my vector based rendering library called Maccala.

Now it's possible to create any kind of curve with an arbitrary progressive thickness. I guess it's kind of strange I have never developed this before, but I have never needed something like this until now.

Surprisingly, it was harder to develop than I imagined initially. It was needed to redevelop my algorithm responsible for creating a thick shape based on a Math curve (conceptually a curve has no thickness at all).

In fact, in a generic algorithm, even drawing operations (in this context, "draw" means "render the contours") are tackled as filling jobs. First an assembling algorithm constructs a shape with an arbitrary thickness, so a filling algorithm can render it.

Below you can see a curve drawn with variable thickness. Now it's possible to make something like this so easily as calling a method. Unnecessary to say, the professional anti-aliased rendering is still there.

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Sub-pixel precision drawing for vector based render engines

I'm really impressed with the fine quality increase I got by improving the sub-pixel precision of my 2D render engine, which I use in Maccala library. I don't need to make any more some post-processing operations when rendering some complex text effects.

I have received some emails from colleagues asking about this change after I talked about this improvement here. They are CG developers too and were kind of confused about what I meant in my previous post about this subject called "Subpixel vector drawing with professional antialiasing".

First of all, don't be confused between "sub-pixel positioning" and "sub-pixel precision". In the first one, we know how to properly draw the bodies despite they can be in fractionary positions, but it doesn't mean we can draw bodies smaller in size than one pixel.

As an example, I borrowed an image from the webpage about Maccala's features. You can see many line segments with a progressive thickness. All of them are positioned in sub-pixels positions, but just the first one is thinner than one pixel (its thickness is 0.5).

In fact, the real elegance of my algorithm is that it had always been ready to draw shapes and curves with any precision. To make it really work for unbelievably tiny precision limits, I just needed to improve the Math about some boundary conditions.

Of course, nothing comes really for free. To keep the professional anti-aliased results when using "microscopic" measures, the algorithm must be used with extreme parameters, decreasing its big rendering speed.

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Online graffiti photo effect

Have you ever used the P2P graffiti photo generator published online some time ago?

I spent a lot of effort to offer many graffiti styles in this software, so it can be useful to all users, no matter the kind of art they like.

This tool can create very advanced artworks in many different backgrounds, always trying to keep maximum fidelity to the original photos. You even have very handy image improvement options to help you to get the most beautiful results according to the input image.

To inspire you to create amazing arts from your photos, I show below 3 different graffiti styles created by using the software (by using respectively a gradient, a painting and a sketch graffiti style). I have selected the same medium (a wall) in all cases to make easy a comparison of the graffiti styles. The images are beautiful, so it's worthy to click them to see in real size.

Try it by yourself at the Photo Graffiti Effect Generator page.

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Draw text on photos online

Picture to People users always contact me to ask for a tool to draw text over their photos and other images. The good news are that picture to people already offers such tool.

I have already published a software called Online Watermark Text Generator. It was created to be powerful and versatile enough to create watermark texts on photos, so by using it you can draw many types of texts on any image you want.

This "text on photo generator online" has many style and layout options, can draw semitransparent texts and always render professional anti-aliased texts. You can use it for any purpose. It's easy to use and free!

Bellow you see an image from a trip. The photo was identified with a nice text drawn by this P2P online graphic software (click the image to see it in real size).

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Creating graffiti art from photos online

Some time ago I have shown here an example of graffiti you can create from photos and pictures by using the Photo Graffiti Effect Generator released online.

That old example looks like an image created by drawing with sprays in a wall. The chosen renderer is nice, but that free graffiti creator has many painting styles, so you can make a lot of different artistic pieces.

Below you can see another drawing type offered by this online graffiti software. This style creates a modernist painting made by using acrylic ink and brushes. By clicking the image, you can see it in full size.

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More fonts to create special text effects online

I have published some more fonts to be used with most of Picture to People online text effect generators. Since I also use P2P software to make my design works, I always miss a new different font to have more options and make my life easier. :)

As usual, you can choose these new font faces when using most of our free online text effect creators, like for example:

• Professional Text Effects;
• Online Text Effects;
• Light Text Effects;
• 3D Text Effect;
• Advanced 3D Text Effect;
• Liquid Text Effect;
• Smoke Text Effect;
• Stone Text Effect;
• Cloud Text Effect;
• Water Text Effect.

Below you can see how some of these new fonts looks like. These now regular fonts can be a big help to create unusual or special text effects.

As a P2P user, you can ask for new fonts to be included in the generators list. The requests should be made by posting a new thread at the Picture to People discussion group. Before requesting new fonts, regard any new font must comply with these requisites to be eligible as a P2P font:
1) be reasonably different from the already offered fonts;
2) implement at least all letters, numbers and punctuation marks;
3) be free for personal and commercial use.

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