Impressionist Help

Overview

Using Impressionist

Styles

Chalk	Ink	Pointillist
Chalk Sketch	Marker	Stamp
Charcoal	Natural	Sumi-e
Conté	Paint	Texture
Crayon	Pencil	Watercolor
Geometric	Pencil Sketch
Saving and Removing Custom Styles

Controls

Basic

Advanced

General	Color
Brush	Paper
Placement	Effects
Size	Demo
Orientation
Previewing and Applying

Tips and Techniques

About Impressionist


Overview

Impressionist: Painting with Style

When artists decide to create an image, they make a series of choices . For example, they select a medium in which to work, such as pencil, oil or pastels. This first choice affects all subsequent choices. By the time the painting or drawing is started, all the other artistic choices will have been made, such as the type of brush to use and the quality of paper. Together with the physical process of painting or drawing, these choices determine the artistic style.

The Impressionist control pages have been designed to closely model the flow of decisions by an artist during the process of painting or drawing. By completing the decision process and setting the controls on these pages, you can create an artistic style that can be applied subsequently to any number of original images, transforming them into works of art.

The following section describes the way Impressionist control pages help you make decisions while designing a painting or drawing style.

•	The Brush controls page allows you to specify the type of brush to use, as well as all the parameters that can modify the way the brush performs.

•	The Placement controls page allows you to choose the method by which the brush strokes are positioned and the density they at which they are applied.

•	The Size controls page allows you to indicate the size of the brush strokes and the method by which the size will be varied throughout the creation of an image.

•	The Orientation controls page allows you to choose the brush stroke orientation and to specify how many angles you want to use.

•	The Color controls page allows you to specify how the colors for the brush strokes and the background should be chosen and modified during the rendering of the image.

•	The Paper controls page controls allows you to choose the surface quality of the background on which the image will be painted or drawn.

•	The Effects controls page contains a number of additional pages, each of which contains controls you can use to specify special brush effects.

The values that are specified on these control pages determine the style of painting or drawing that will be applied to an original image.


Using Impressionist

Impressionist can be used in three ways: with built-in styles, with modifications to the built-in styles, or with custom styles.

Using Built-In Styles

To use a built-in style

1	On the Style menu in the Styles controls, click a style you want to use.

The style appears in the status bar beside the menu.

2	Click Preview to test the selected style on the image.

3	When you are satisfied with your choice of style, click Apply to apply the effect to the entire image or selection.

You can have all the built-in styles demonstrated automatically by clicking Demo.

Modifying the Built-In Styles with the Basic Controls

You might discover that you really like a particular built-in style but you would like the brush strokes to be a different size, or you would like the result to be rendered on a blue instead of white background. Impressionist includes basic controls you can use to modify key attributes of a style, including the background onto which the style is rendered, the percentage of the background to be covered by brush strokes, and the brush stroke pressure applied to the background. These controls allow you to customize a built-in style to meet most needs.

Designing Custom Styles with Advanced Controls

When you click More Controls, you gain access to nine pages of controls that allow you to customize every aspect of Impressionist. Each page consists of several logically-grouped controls. You can use these controls to modify a specific attribute of how Impressionist renders an artistic style, including the following:

•	Which brush is used

•	How brush strokes are placed

•	How brush strokes are oriented

•	How the brush strokes and the background are colored

•	Which kind of paper, or surface, is used to draw on

•	Which effect is applied to the brush to alter its appearance

These controls include General controls as well, which duplicate the functionality of the basic controls, so that you can control everything at once.

You can use the built-in styles as references of how these pages of controls can be set to achieve a certain look or as a starting point for your own custom styles. See the Tips and Techniques section for tips and tricks for modifying a style. Any custom style that you create can be saved and will appear in the Styles list in a category that you can specify. Each page of controls is discussed in detail in the Advanced Controls section.


Chalk Styles

Bright Strokes On Black   This style resembles a rough chalk sketch applied to a black background, some of which is visible between the strokes. The details and colors of the original image are represented well.

Chunky Strokes   This style creates a high-contrast blocky sketch. The strokes are opaque and well-defined and are placed in a patchy rendering of the original image. The colors in the original image are roughly approximated and the lights and darks are exaggerated.

Detailed Opaque Strokes   This is a highly-detailed chalk drawing style that represents both the form and color of the original image well. The background is completely covered.

Faithful   This is a chalk drawing style rendered on a white background. The original colors of the image are reasonably approximated and the contrast accentuated. The medium coverage of the background shows off the rough chalk textures.

Fine Scribbles On Black   This is a monochrome cross-hatch chalk drawing style applied to a black background. Fine chalk strokes cover the image in an even pattern of cross-hatching. The final image has a highly worked appearance with high-contrast texture.

Heavy Embossed   In this chalk drawing style, the rough strokes are embossed, giving them a three-dimensional look. The result is a somewhat abstract image that appears to have been assembled from pieces of chalk that have been arranged to represent the forms of the original image.

Medium Coverage Colored   This style shows a medium coverage of the white background. The colors in the original image are represented, and the shapes of the individual strokes are visible in areas of the final image.

Powerful Strokes On Black   This is a monochrome chalk sketch style in which the image is represented by bold, rough strokes. The effect is that of an abstract style, where shapes in the original image are crudely approximated and texture, caused by the black background showing through the strokes, is visible.

Rough Textured Abstract   This style shows little detail from the original image. Instead, large color forms are retained and drawn with broad, angular strokes onto what appears to be a finely-textured paper.

Soft Stippled Pastels   This drawing style gives an impression of having been drawn with soft pastels. The drawing style shows medium coverage, allowing a degree of the black background to show between strokes. The individual strokes show some three-dimensional texture. The colors of the original image are represented but the forms of the original image are abstracted because of the roughness of the style.


Chalk Sketch Styles

Colorful   This is a vivid chalk drawing style applied to a black background, using narrow strokes and exaggerated colors. Coverage of the background is medium. In addition to the accentuated colors, the final image has more contrast than the original.

Half-Finished   This style is drawn on a white, heavily textured background. The amount of coverage has been set to suggest a drawing that is only half completed. The texture of the background is seen where the chalk has been applied.

Monochrome   This is a high-contrast monochrome chalk sketch, applied to a black background. The impression is that only white and gray chalk have been used, with dark areas showing through of the image being represented by the black background. The coverage of this style is not complete, emphasizing the rough character of the chalk strokes.

On Fine Laid Paper   A chalk style that appears to have been drawn onto a woven white paper. The original colors and forms of the image are represented and appear to have been drawn onto an evenly textured paper surface.

On Heavy Laid Paper   This chalk drawing style shows a rough representation of the forms and colors in the original image, as if drawn as if onto a white, vertically-oriented, laid (woven) paper texture.

Rough   This is a color chalk style, applied to a background, that is a monochrome copy of the original image. The monochrome background shows through between the color strokes. The original image is represented faithfully, both in color and form.

Soft   Although this style does not use a chalk brush, the finished drawing appears to have been drawn with short chalk strokes. The final image is rendered with colors that have more contrast than those in the original image. Bits of the black background show through between the closely spaced strokes used in this style.

Soft Monochrome   This is a detailed monochrome chalk drawing style that uses a stroke with a linear texture. A small amount of the white background shows through the strokes. The forms of the original image are represented.


Charcoal Styles

Colored Scratches On Black   This charcoal drawing style uses narrow inscribed lines to delineate the image on a black background. The effect in the final image is of a rapidly drawn crosshatching that follows the orientation of the forms of the original image. The colors used are taken faithfully from the original image.

Colored Soft Scribble   This style applies a medium coverage of patterned strokes, distributing a fine texture of short, drawn lines throughout the drawing. This texture follows the forms in the original image. The colors used in the final image have a little more contrast than those in the original.

Dark Transparent   This is an angular charcoal rendering style that applies opaque, colored strokes. The original forms are delineated by many small strokes, with a faithful portrayal of details. The colors used have more contrast than those in the original image.

Default   The default drawing style is a medium coverage charcoal style that shows the rough texture of the basic strokes against a white background. The colors are taken faithfully from the original image and the style shows much of the original detail.

Fine Scribble   This is a charcoal style that is drawn onto a monochrome copy of the original image, which shows through between the colored strokes in the final drawing. Most of the detail is represented with this style and the colors of the original image are accurately shown.

Heavy Stamped   This is a fanciful charcoal style that represents mostly large-scale detail in the original image rather than the fine detail. The final image appears to have been rendered by the application of large color patches. The rough edges of these patches are evident where they overlap. A small amount of the white background can be seen between some of the patches.

Long Strokes On Black   This charcoal drawing style renders an image with many colored parallel strokes, all drawn at a constant, sloping angle. The medium coverage of the strokes on a black background tends to show the characteristics of the individual strokes.

Rough Bleached Fresco   This drawing style creates a highly-textured final image that appears to have been drawn with colored charcoal on a rough plaster wall that then has been weathered by the elements. Lighter areas of the image are nearly gone, and darker areas appear to have worked themselves into the absorbent plaster surface.

Soft Contrasty Sketch   This is a charcoal drawing style that shows the soft, smeary characteristics of some charcoal techniques. Only the darker areas of the original image are represented, and a three-dimensional texture is used to give the style life and realism. The final image is drawn in monochrome on a white background.

Drawing styles using other colors of charcoal are easy to create by selecting another color (for example, blue) to use as the monochrome stroke drawing color.

Stamped Tonal   This is a roughly representative charcoal style that uses tonalities of color in the reddish hue range to block in the forms of the original image. The rough qualities of the color patches can be seen where they overlap in the drawing and where gaps between them show the dark red background. Only the larger forms of the original image are shown; most of the finer details are lost.

Stroke Sized By Brightness   This is a charcoal drawing style that uses smaller strokes in the brighter areas of the image and larger strokes where the image is dark. The colors in the final image are muddier than the original image.

To reverse the distribution of stroke sizes used by this effect, the original image first can be turned into a negative of itself by using the Complement Color command in Microsoft Image Composer. You must change the background color used by the style from white to black. Apply the style, and then convert the final image back to the original polarity of color by applying the Complement Color command again.

Textured Sketch On Yellow   This is a three-dimensional charcoal style that appears to be drawn on a uniformly colored yellow ground, adding warmth to the final image. Original colors are used, although the coverage of this style is somewhat open.


Conté Styles

Contrasty Rough   This conté drawing style uses fine, high-contrast color strokes drawn on a white background. The darker areas of the image are drawn very dark, showing the individual strokes, while lighter areas appear to be a blending of strokes.

Faithful   This conté style uses accentuated colors and a softened stroke style that faithfully represents the original image. The forms in the original image are captured with accented edges on a white background.

Smudged Monochrome   This is an angular monochrome conté style, applied to a white background that has the appearance of being slightly damp, so the individual strokes appear to be smudged.

Textured Colored Stick   This conté style is applied with bold, angular, color strokes on a finely-textured stipple paper.

Unsmudged Monochrome   This style uses medium-size strokes on a white background. The fine texture of the individual strokes can be seen where the strokes overlap.


Crayon Styles

Distressed Fresco Rubbing 1   This style has the appearance of having been drawn with the side of a crayon on a rough plaster wall. The three-dimensional quality of the background is accentuated and breaks up the image, as well as providing a highly textured quality.

Distressed Fresco Rubbing 2   This style is impressionistic, with the original image barely showing through the rough texture of the background surface. This style makes the image appear to have been worn and weathered away until only a trace of it remains.

Lino Chatter   This is a highly-detailed crayon style. The image is represented by small chips of high-contrast color, through which a small amount of the black background can be seen.

Short Choppy Strokes   This is a finely-detailed style with colors that roughly approximate those of the original image. Fine scribble texture is visible within the individual strokes. In this style, some of the white background shows through between the strokes.


Geometric Styles

Boiling Shiny Bubbles   In this style, the image appears as if it is a shiny chrome surface that is bubbling with a various sizes of bubbles. The small, round, shiny bubbles distort the image in a turbulent fashion.

Bumps and Craters   This style creates an image that appears to be a heavily cratered surface, such as the moon. Various sizes of bumps and craters are used to capture the levels of detail in the original image. The craters are arranged on a monochrome copy of the original image.

You can make the craters in the surface of the image appear as bumps instead by changing the direction of the light source in the Emboss effect on the Effects control page.

Chaotic Chrome Impressions   This style creates the appearance of an image chaotically reflected in a chrome surface. The shiny appearance of chrome is altered somewhat to reflect a more painterly look. The forms of the original image are distorted among the fanciful shapes created by the maelstrom of swirling, reflective metal.

Colored Bubbles Mosaic   In this style, the final image appears to be composed of many opaque, colored, shaded bubbles. The forms of the original image are seen as swarms of similarly colored bubbles that are arranged on a sepia copy of the original image.

Glass Patches   This style portrays an image as if it is being viewed through  glass made from a checkerboard of roughly-shaped square lenses. These lenses distort the original image into a patchwork of uneven, rippled squares of color and detail.

If this style is applied to each image in an animated sequence, the original image appears to move as if behind the glass checkerboard, which appears not to move.

Halftone - Dots   This style represents the brightness levels of the original image as colored dots of various sizes arranged in a grid pattern and set on a white background. The colors of the dots are taken from the original image. The smallest dots are used in the brightest areas, so that more of the white background shows. The largest dots are used in the darkest areas.

By setting Stroke Color to black on the Color controls page, this effect can more closely emulate halftones used in the printing process to represent the shades of a continuous-tone image.

Halftone - Lines   This style represents the brightness levels of the image as horizontal lines that vary in width depending on the brightness of the original image. The lines are black on a white background. The lines are thinnest in the brightest areas, so that more of the white background shows, and thicker lines are used to represent  the darkest areas.

Halftone - Squares   This style creates a high-technology halftone effect, using a square element that has been rotated one quarter turn. The halftone is drawn in black against a white background. The size of the square halftone elements varies with the brightness of the image, with the smallest elements being used in the brightest areas, so that more of the white background shows, and the largest elements being used in the darkest areas. Various rectangular shapes are created in the intermediately bright areas of the image as the various sizes of square elements interact.

Jaggy Glass   This style renders an image to appear as if viewed through shattered glass. The sharply angular shards of glass make the original image appear disjointed yet highly detailed.

Melting Metallic Buttons   This style creates an image that appears to have been reflected in an array of metallic hemispheres that have been slightly melted together. The larger forms and colors of the original image are represented, but they appear to be melting together.

When applied to each image in a sequence, the relative positions of individual elements remain fixed while the colors and details of the original image appear to move from element to element.

Metallic Buttons   In this style, a regularly spaced grid of round-topped metallic buttons is used to reflect the colors throughout the original image. The shiny buttons are positioned against a white background.

Pillows - Bas Relief   This style renders an image to appear as if assembled from rounded squares using colors from the original image. These three-dimensional forms are arranged into a grid. The original image is seen as a fluctuation of colors throughout the array. This effect represents only the larger forms and details of the original image.

Pillows - Glass   This style portrays an image that is viewed through an array of small, square lenses that distort the original image. Although large-scale variations of the image are visible, the smaller details of the image are warped and distorted.

This style is excellent for creating backgrounds and abstract textures from original images, especially those that have strong forms and colors.

Pillows - Large Chrome   This style reflects the original image into a polished chrome array of many rounded squares. Each element is colored with a color from the original image and appears to be made from shiny metal.

Note   This style can be used to create textured backgrounds or to fancifully represent images that have large, strong forms and colors.

Pillows - Small Chrome   This is a style that creates an image that appears to be reflected into a shiny chrome sheet that has a pattern of small square bumps. The original image is slightly abstracted by the grid of reflecting elements and the pattern of shiny reflections it creates.

Poker Chips   In this style, a multitude of small, flat, disks appear to have been strewn on a flat background, completely covering it. The disks are colored to reflect the colors in the original image. In some areas of the final image, the disks appear to be arranged on a grid; in other areas, the disks appear to be more randomly positioned. This effect is created by the way the disks overlap.

Raised Dots   In this style, a closely-spaced grid of small, round-topped plastic buttons is colored with the distribution of colors from the original image. The buttons are distinctly three-dimensional and are positioned against a white background.

TV Screen   This style suggests the way an image appears on the surface of a video display screen. Closely spaced, colored, vertical bars are used to represent the colors and forms of the original image. The black background shows through between the individual picture elements. When used with each image in a sequence, the bars change color without moving from their fixed positions.


Ink Styles

Colored Line Pen   This is a very linear pen style. Straight lines are drawn parallel to each other at a 45-degree angle on a white background. The colors have more contrast than the original image. There is some blurring of form in the final image because the colored lines used to represent the image extend beyond the original form boundaries.

Colored Screen On Black   This ink style is created by drawing vertical and horizontal colored lines in a rough screen shape to represent each color patch. There is an overall screen texture evident in the final image, although the texture is not contiguous. Colors are faithfully represented, but they are slightly smeared.

Detailed Colored Stipple   The visual effect of this detailed style is created by thin, overlapping, colored pen strokes that intersect and criss-cross at sharp angles everywhere in the image. The forms and colors of the final image are created from these strokes.

Scratchy Pen On Black   This style creates an image that is similar to a scratch board drawing, in which a black background surface is removed with sharp drawing tools to show the colors underneath. The brushes used by this style create scratchy patches of color, through and between which can be seen the black background.

Spiderweb Crosshatch   This style criss-crosses an image with a fine network of narrow monochrome lines, changing the shading of the lines to represent the brightness of the original image. Highly textured, this style represents the larger forms in the original image.


Marker Styles

Burlap Impression   This marker style creates the appearance of a color marker drawing that has had some color removed where it was not protected by burlap cloth. Where the burlap texture has not touched the drawing, color has been removed creating a continuous rough texture.

Large Strokes On White   This marker style renders an image by using short, transparent marker strokes. The colors that are used have more contrast than in the original. The forms of the original image are represented by short, chunky strokes, giving the final image a blocky look.

Opaque Crosshatch   This style uses opaque paint markers to render each patch of color as a small crosshatched area. The patches blend with the appearance of a roughly sewn quilt. The colors are taken from the original image, and the coverage of the strokes on the background is complete.

Opaque On Black   This marker style gives the impression of large paint markers drawing an image on a black background. The final image has  more contrast than the original, and a small amount of the background is visible between the strokes. The strokes, especially the brighter ones, are not completely opaque, and so some strokes can be seen through others.

Opaque Strokes   This is a marker style that shows the forms in the original image with chiseled accuracy. The original colors are represented faithfully and are drawn onto a sepia underpainting of the original image.

Rough Textured Tonal Sketch   This is a textured, high-contrast marker style. The color scheme is dark wine to rust and the detail of the image appears as if stained into a coarse cloth background. The coverage is not complete: bits of the white background show through.

Small Strokes On White   Transparent, small strokes are used in this marker style. All strokes are transparent to some extent, and the forms in the original image are created by a build-up of small, accurately placed spots of color. The overall impression of the final drawing is more common to watercolors.

Textured Sepia Tonal   This is a heavily-textured marker style, where individual strokes are not obvious. The colors of the original image are moved to a darker range of reds and pinks. A heavily textured background is more evident in the darker areas of the image. Flecks of the white background can be seen between the individual color patches that stitch together the forms of the final drawing.


Natural Styles

Cloth Scraps   This style uses a brush that is the image of a scrap of cloth. Highly accentuated colors from the original image are used to apparently dye the individual scraps, which are then arranged on a black background to represent the forms in the original image. The cloth scraps have a three-dimensional character to emphasize how they overlap in the final image.

Crushed Gum Mosaic   This style distributes a pattern of similarly-sized scales throughout an image in to create the quality of reptilian skin. The final image appears highly textured, with colors that have more contrast than the original image.

Crushed Herbs   This style uses a brush made from crushed herbs to create a highly textured image with fanciful coloring. Although large brush sizes are used in this style, which simplifies the small details in the image, the texture in the brush gives variety to the final image.

Gauze Underlay   This style creates an appearance in which colors taken from the original image appear to have been daubed into a large piece of gauze lain over a white background. Both the gauze and the background take on these daubs of colors, while the texture of the gauze is retained. Small details in the original image are lost, but the larger forms are retained.

Gum Grid   This style uses a brush in the image of a flattened piece of gum. In this style, the pieces of gum have been arranged on a grid and colored with accentuated colors from the original image. They have been given a three-dimensional quality to emphasize the shape of the individual pieces and how they overlap.

Particle Board   This style creates an image that appears to have been made from small chips of wood pressed flat against a black background. The colors of the image are in the range of warm browns and beiges. The wood chips are given a three-dimensional quality, which emphasizes how they are all crushed together on a single horizontal plane.

Quilt 1   This style creates a final image that looks like a quilt made from small cloth squares loosely stitched together edge to edge. The colors of the squares are taken from the original image, and the patches have been given a slight three-dimensional quality. The original image is used as the background.

Quilt 2   This style creates a final image that seems as if it were created from small pieces of loosely woven fabric arranged edge to edge. The colors of the patches are taken from the original image, and have been given a three-dimensional quality. The original image, which serves as the background, can be seen through the open weave of the fabric pieces and between adjacent patches.

Snake   This style uses a brush that is in the shape of a snake to create a primitive-looking painting. The colors have been accentuated and set against a heavily covered white background. The style is characterized by the wavy brush strokes and the back and forth texture distributed throughout the image.

Tapestry   This style creates an image that appears to have been stitched from colored threads. The colors are derived from the original image, but have been accentuated. The areas of stitching are applied using the original image as a background. The threads have been given a three-dimensional quality to bring out the texture.

Tied Grass Mosaic   This style creates a complex final image that appears to have been created by repeatedly daubing a shaped brush into a plastic medium, resulting in myriad interlocking, spiky shapes. The colors taken from the original image are muddied by the texture that this style creates.

Tinfoil - Colorful   This is a highly abstract and dramatic style. The forms and colors of the original image are used as departure points for the representations of the forms. The accented colors are positioned against a dark red background, which shows through the final image.

Tinfoil - Opaque   This is a drawing style that shows considerable detail, most of which is derived from the brushes that are used. The colors in the final image are taken faithfully from the original image and are applied to a white background, some of which can be seen between the brush strokes. A degree of roughness and angularity is created in the final image by this style.

Tinfoil - Radial   This style gives the appearance of an oil painting that has been executed with the flexible blade of a palette knife. The color smear radiate from the center of the final image. The overlapping strokes emphasize the vigorous characteristics of this style.

Wild Cave Painting   This style makes use assorted chalked shapes painted onto a rough stone surface to suggest a primitive cave painting. The colored stone background shows through between the glyphs in many places and the forms and colors of the original image are evident in the rough organization of this style.


Paint Styles

Angled Scribbles   This style uses tight, wavy stroke to create an image that appears to be finely worked and full of vibration. All the strokes are applied at the same diagonal angle and take their colors faithfully from the original image. A broad range of brush stroke sizes capture the detail.

Craquelure Surface   This monochromatic style creates an image that seems to have been painted onto a cracked surface. Rough, quick strokes appear against a white background, and a network of fine cracks runs throughout the finished image.

Dry Brush - Angled Grid   This monochrome style creates an image using only horizontal strokes. The final image is painted on a white background. The scratchy characteristics of a dry brush stroke are visible throughout the final image.

Dry Brush - Dense Sticks   This paint style creates an image drawn with luminous color on a jet-black background, that seems to loom in of darkness. The rough, linear textures of a dry brush are evident throughout the image.

Dry Brush - Grid   This is a vigorous, monochrome paint style that uses large brushes to accentuate the motion in the forms of the original image. The finished image displays the linear brush stroke that is used in this style.

Dry Brush - Jumble   This style creates an angular rendering using colors with more contrast than those found in the original image. Linear marks derived from the streaky brush strokes seem to be disorganized, but the forms of the original image are made visible through these strokes.

Dry Brush - Junk Pile   This is a rough style applied to a black background. A dry brush stroke is used, which has a streaky character. Much of the background shows through in this style. The overall impression is unfinished and skeletal.

Dry Brush - Scrappy Sketch   This style uses transparent brush strokes to create a detailed representation of the original image. The colors are accentuated, but otherwise represent those in the original image well.

Dry Brush - Sparse Sticks   This style exhibits many similarly sized strokes applied randomly to a black background. The dry brush strokes show some transparency where they overlap, with much of the black background showing through between the strokes. Coverage is sparse and the forms of the original image are barely represented.

Eggshell Crackle   In this style the final image seems to be composed of a tight matrix of interlocking strokes or chips of color, as if the painted surface had dried and cracked. Each stroke is outlined in soft gray and creates the impression that it is a broken chip of color, surrounded by a commonly colored grout. Bits of the sepia background can be seen between the small chips of color. The colors in the final image appear more saturated and darker overall because of the texture generated by this style.

Fine Brush Hairs   This style uses a brush that has many fine, narrow, linear features. Although appearing highly detailed, the style does not represent small details well from the original image. The colors in the final image are more saturated and exaggerated than in the original.

Fingerpaint   This style creates an image with a highly worked oil-paint appearance. Many irregular areas of color coalesce to form the shapes in the original image. The colors in the final image are approximated from the original and appear more exaggerated when smaller areas of the image are considered.

Fluorescent Palette Knife   This is a style in which hastily-placed colors and rough placement give the impression of a somewhat infernal artistic intent. This style tends towards the dramatic and should be considered for subjects that can stand some interpretation and still retain their identity.

Free Daubs   This style is distinguished by crudely-applied daubs of opaque color. The broader forms of the original image are represented, but all finer details are lost. In general, the colors are somewhat interpretive. There is little subtlety in this style.

High Contrast Collage   This style uses rectangular patches of monochromatic color to represent an image. The result appears to be made from dark, stormy clouds. This is a moody style with an impression of a cubist approach to form and structure.

Hot Swirl   This style is composed of small, overly-colored strokes. There is a degree of transparency to each stroke, as if the pigments used are watercolor dyes. The image appears to have been built up from many overlapping brush strokes. The original and final images share the same range of hues.

Linear Brush   This style creates an image with exaggerated colors applied  with an internal linear texture that creates a finely-textured appearance throughout the image. This style draws from a supplied palette of colors to produce the colors in the final image. Both fine and large-scale details are represented well by this style.

Old Brush Stamp   This style creates an image that appears to have been painted by stamping an old brush on a black background, creating a splayed brush shape. The same shape is  distributed densely throughout the image. Colors from the original image are slightly accentuated.

Radically Colored Mica Chips   This style employs many small chips of exaggerated color to represent an image. The color chips are applied to a white background with medium coverage. Small details in the original image do not show well and lighter areas appear smoother than areas of medium tonalities. Bright colors are made brighter and solid areas of color have new tints that are close to the original hues.

Smudges - Antique   This style creates an image that is soft, warm and indistinct. Fine texture is evident throughout the image. A soft scratching suggests age and a haphazard application of color. Colors in the final image tend toward the warm and darker range.

Smudges - Mosaic   This style forms an image composed of small scraps of deeply colored material arranged openly on a stark white background. The background shows through everywhere in the image and adds motion and shape-forming brought by the orientation of the colored scraps. Colors are highly saturated and generally darker than in the original image.

Smudges - Soft Paper   This style uses a variety of textures, ranging from smooth to a pattern of small bumps. The original colors are well represented. The forms in the original image are somewhat disguised in places by the pointed brush shapes. The white background shows through only sparsely.

Smudges - Square Horizontal   This style uses a flurry of short, horizontal strokes to represent the details of the image. Colors are faithfully taken from the original image and applied with complete coverage over the background. The common horizontal orientation of the strokes creates some horizontal streaking characteristics in the final image.

Vegetable Pigment   This style creates an image that appears to have been drawn with a finger dipped in green paint. Many similarly-sized streaks and daubs of color are used to create the shapes in the final image.


Pencil Styles

Crosshatch - Detailed   This style uses soft colored pencils drawn onto a roughened sepia background in a series of crosshatch patterns. An even texture is created in the final image by overlapping crosshatch patches. The color in the final image is a blend of the original colors with the sepia tones of the background.

Crosshatch - Heavy Rough   This style uses a fairly thick, soft pencil stroke to create large, crosshatched areas of color. While larger forms are well-represented, small details in the original image are lost in the large-scale strokes. Colors in the final image are somewhat more accentuated than in the original.

Crosshatch - Radically Colored   In this style, patches of soft, fine pencil crosshatching are distributed evenly throughout the final image. In general, the brightness of the original image is well-represented, but the color at all places has been radically altered. The overall character of the final image shows a soft, blurry, haphazard sketching style.

Crosshatch - Silverpoint   This style creates an image that appears to have been drawn with a technique called silverpoint. Against a washed-out copy of the original image, the darker areas of the image are emphasized with a fine, overlapping crosshatch of very thin lines that have an etched appearance. This is a very delicate-looking style.

Crosshatch - Smudges   This style is executed on a black background using medium coverage. Soft color patches that show a distinct textural weave pattern are distributed throughout the image and create the blurry, character of this style. Colors in the final image are a bit more pastel than in the original.

Crosshatch - Softened Smudges   This monochrome style uses a variety of sizes of a softened crosshatch patch on a black background to represent an original image. The patches are placed at a constant angle, creating a fabric-like texture throughout the image. This texture becomes large in smooth, similarly-colored areas of the original image, and fine in areas of high detail.

Distressed Japanese Paper   This style creates an image that appears to have been drawn on handmade Japanese paper. The forms of the original image are seen interwoven into the texture of the paper as a lightening and darkening of the web-like structures in the paper. The colors in the final image are muted and warm.

Scribble - Grid   This is a monochrome style with a lot of detail. Small pencil strokes are closely spaced on a grid at a constant, diagonal angle. The size of each stroke is proportional to the brightness of the original image at each point on the grid. Smaller strokes are used in areas where the image is bright, larger strokes where the image is dark.

Scribble - Halftone   This style uses pencil strokes aligned on a grid to create a hand-drawn, monochrome, halftone effect. In darker areas of the image, the strokes are packed closely, filling in the white background. In lighter areas, smaller and lighter strokes are used, creating more open shading.

Scribble - On Original   This style shows many transparent scribbles drawn onto the original image. The color for each stroke is an exaggerated version of what is found in the image at each location that a stroke is placed. The style of the brush stroke is a loose, space-filling crosshatch scribble.

Scribble - Swirl   This style draws a grid of many small, colored scribbles to represent the colors of the original image. Each scribble swirls out from the center of the image. The colors used in the final image have more contrast than those in the original. Some of the white background shows between the stroke positions, adding to the grid pattern.

The amount of radial swirling of the strokes can be adjusted by using the Start Angle control on the Orientation page.

Soft Opaque   This style features large, soft, opaque pencil strokes to render details. Individual strokes are large enough to show brush stroke texture along the edges. Colors are somewhat accentuated and, due to the relatively large strokes, in some places the colors chosen from the original image overlap into regions of other colors.


Pencil Sketch Styles

Blurry   This style creates an image that appears to have been sketched onto a very rough, abrasive background with a soft pencil. All strokes are applied at one diagonal angle and bits of the white background show through. The background texture has a three-dimensional character to emphasize its roughness.

Detailed Colored   This style uses a heavy coverage of thin pencil strokes to create a detailed rendering of the original image. The drawing overlays a copy of the original image, so no contrasting background color shows through. The colors found in the original image are somewhat accentuated.

Because of the high level of detail created by this style, it can take a bit longer to render.

Detailed Monochrome   This style creates a detailed sketch in monochrome on a white background. Small amounts of the background show through between the narrow pencil strokes. The contrast of the final image is greater than in the original.

Because of the high level of detail created by this style, it can take a bit longer to render.

Soft Detailed   This style is very detailed, rendering the original image with many fine pencil strokes on a white background. Small details are represented; large forms are filled in using the characteristic pattern of many fine pencil lines. The colors are somewhat lighter than those in the original image.

Soft Light   This style creates a detailed sketch in monochrome on a rough, white paper. The textured surface of the paper is visible in the soft pencil strokes. The uncovered white paper background shows the highlights and white areas. The final image has more contrast than the original.


Pointillist Styles

Embossed Daubs   This style paints an image with small groups of commonly colored three-dimensional daubs. The colors of the groups of daubs are faith to the original image. The size of the groups sometimes causes the chosen colors to spread into other areas of color. The groups of daubs are positioned on a grid, although random overlapping somewhat modifies the regular positions of the groups.

Small Daubs   This style uses a random sprinkling of small daubs of accentuated color to create a high-contrast final image on a white background. This style presents details in the original image well, and breaks up commonly colored larger areas with random variations of the average color.

Sparse Colored   This style distributes very small dots of color throughout an image, representing both small details and larger areas well. Colors used in the final image are somewhat more accentuated than in the original, although close to the original range. The dots are placed on a white background with almost complete coverage.


Stamp Styles

Cardboard Fresco   This style appears to create an image by pressing a small piece of cardboard against a prepared plaster surface. More of the original paint colors stick to the higher areas of the plaster, the texture of which is very accentuated. The forms of the original image are more suggested than explicitly visible.

Crown Glyph   This style uses a glyph of a small crown, originally drawn with chalk. Colors taken from the original image are pressed onto a warm sepia underpainting with medium coverage. The forms in the original image are loosely represented.

Dry Rag   This style uses a brush that was originally created by applying ink to a bit of hard cloth and pressing it against a piece of paper. The cloth textures are very evident in the final image and give this style its character. There is little detail in this style, with only the large-scale forms of the original image surviving.

Embossed Herbal   This style uses a stamp made from the image of a teaspoon of crushed herbs that is used to daub the colors from the original image onto a background that is a copy of that same image. The daubs show a slight three-dimensional character, as if very thick, opaque paint has been used. The daubs are applied in a very regular, space-filling pattern, which creates the effect of the image having been stamped onto a coarsely-textured fabric. This style draws very rapidly.

Potato On Black   This style uses a small brush originally created with a potato stamp. The colors are taken faithfully from the original image and stamped onto a black background with medium coverage. The linear nature of the stamp is evident in the final image as it is oriented in different directions to pick up the details of the light and dark forms in the original.

Small Torn Scraps   The small, triangular brush shapes used in this style appear to have applied a paint that dries differentially, showing a darker shade around the edges. A swarm of these small stamp pieces are required to represent the details of the original image and the final colors only approximate those found in the original.

Sponge Daubs - Angled   This style creates an image by daubing color from the original image onto a black background with a small sponge, leaving enough of the background visible to emphasize the texture of the sponge. The overall effect brings a softness to the forms of the original image.

Sponge Daubs - Fine   This sponge stamp style accentuates the colors of the original image to bring more variety and life to the image and to show each individual stamp. The image is drawn on a black background, some of which is visible through gaps in the sponge stamp brush.

Sponge Daubs - Rough   This style uses colors that appear to be chosen hurriedly and applied with abandon. The black background shows through everywhere and areas of color are built up by the coincidence of several sponge brushes.

Textured Gouache   This is a style in which the colors of the final image appear to have been applied to a prepared background. The background seems to be a very heavy canvas covered with black gouache. The colors have gone on in a thin paint, leaving the heavy canvas showing. In bright areas, less canvas texture is evident, giving the impression that the colored paint has gone on heavier in these areas, filling in some of the texture.


Sumi-e Styles

Colored Strokes On Gray   This is a dark style, with thinly-pigmented brush strokes painted on a black background. Each brush stroke is visible. It is in the overlapping of the lighter colors that the forms of the original image seem to surface out of the dimmer, darker areas.

Dry Strokes On Pitted Stone   This style appears to have been painted in a dry brush style onto a smoothly sanded stone. The accentuated colors show the individual strokes and create the impression that the image has been rendered quickly, the paint soaking into the stone and drying immediately and thus being unable to be worked and blended.

Fine Ghost Brush   This style uses a brush to create a meandering line of accentuated color. Ghostly forms are created out of the narrow lines and the entire impression of the final image is one of rich decay and decrepitude.

Strokes Mosaic   This style employs shapes and textures of the brushes that are highly visible. Strokes seem to swarm like schools of fish throughout the image. The coverage of the background is complete and the colors of the original image are somewhat exaggerated and darkened by the presence of the brush textures.

Translucent Strokes On White   This style uses many small applications of watery pigment to create the rich texture. Colors are faithfully taken from the original image and then daubed onto a white background. The differing transparency of each stroke creates a variety of textures and detail, while roughly representing the forms of the original image.


Texture Styles

Crosshatch Web - Monochrome   This style creates a tangled thicket of narrow, softened pencil lines, out of which the details of the picture loom. In darker areas, the quantity of strokes is greater; in the lighter areas, the strokes are sparsely placed or completely absent. This style is rendered from a grayscale copy of the original image.

Crosshatch Web - Color   This style creates a tangled thicket of narrow, softened, pencil lines, out of which the details of the picture loom. In darker areas, the quantity of strokes is greater; in the lighter areas, the strokes are sparsely placed or completely absent. This style is rendered from the original color image. The colors in the final image become muted.

Floral Blanket   This style creates the impression of an image having been rendered from many copies of a brass rubbing of a flower blossom. Details in the original image are lost, but the larger forms are retained in the pattern of flowers.

Fossil   This style creates an image that appears to be composed of many small fossils that have been overlaid and compressed into a solid mass. The smaller details of the original image are disguised by the shapes, but the larger forms are preserved.

Maze 1   This style creates visual patterns reminiscent of a garden maze seen from above. As the various brush shapes interact with the other parameters of the style, a large variety of patterns and textures are created. This style uses a simple brush that displays the maze-like texture prominently.

Maze 2   This style creates a dense visual pattern of layers of mesh into which a representation of the original image is woven. The only differences from Maze 1 are brush choice(on the Brush controls page) and an appropriate combination of Brush Size (on the Size controls page) and Grid Size (on the Placement controls page).

Twenty-twenty   This style uses a brush that is an image of an eye to create a style that is chaotic and turbulent and, at the same time, soft and fluid. The colors and larger details of the original image are well-represented. Every so often in the image, the eye shape of the brush is easily seen. Try varying the Smudge slider (on the Brush controls page) to make the eye shape more or less evident.

Vegas   This style creates a highly radical interpretation of the original image that seems to be composed of bright lights seen through a moving camera with a broken lens. The colors are taken from the original image, and then stretched and mixed into the final, blurry result. The final image that results appears full of motion and life, with little of the shapes and continuity of the original image present. This style, because of its complexity, can take a longer time to render than other styles in this category.


Watercolor Styles

Damp Translucent   Large, blurry strokes are used in this watercolor style to create the rough forms in the final image. The colors are chosen from the original image, but are somewhat accentuated and color detail is sometimes lost because of the large brush sizes. The edges of each stroke can be seen to be wet-looking and appear to bleed into the surrounding colors. The coverage of the background in this style is complete.

Damp Translucent Wash   This style gives the appearance of a paint sketch done with watered colors on a warm underpainting. All strokes have transparency, and colors are highly unsaturated. The more finely detailed sepia-colored background image is obscured with broad, damp strokes.

Soft Daubs On Fine Paper   This style uses soft-appearing strokes on a finely textured cream colored paper background. The background has a three-dimensional character to it, showing the fine paper texture. The colors in the final image have more contrast than the original. The soft, damp character of the brush strokes is visible and gives the impression that the paper was wet when the strokes were applied.

Soft Water Sketch   This style creates a roughly-painted image on a damp white background. Soft, transparent, blurry strokes spread across the wet paper. The final image appears to have been either painted quickly or at quite a small size and then enlarged. The coverage of this style is sparse.

Spatter   This style creates an image that appears to be painted with many overlapping water spatters. The web-like texture created by this style is painted onto a black background with medium coverage. Details in the original image are lost in the complex texture of the pattern of brush strokes and, generally, the colors in the final image are darker than those found in the original.

Spatter - Colorful   This style uses a brush that is the image of a spatter of paint. The colors in the final image are highly accentuated and saturated. Coverage of the background is nearly total.

Spatter - Watery   This style uses very large brushes that are images of paint spatters. A spider-web effect is created by painting with these brush strokes onto a sepia-colored background. Fine detail in the original image is lost while large scale forms can be seen.

Spotty Brush On Rough Paper   This style creates a highly textured appearance on a textured cream background. The background shows through in the low spots of the texture where the paint has not reached. The individual brush strokes are somewhat hidden by the heavy texture, which has a three-dimensional character for emphasis. The colors in the final image have more contrast and saturation than those in the original.


Saving and Removing Custom Styles

Impressionist allows you to save any style or customized settings to a file.

To save the current settings

1	Click Save in the Styles group box.

2	In the Save Styles dialog box, type the following:

•	The style's category in the Category Name edit box

•	The name of the style in the Variant Name edit box

•	The name of the file in the style in the File Name edit box.

1	Click OK. If you do not want to save a custom style at this time, click Cancel.

Once saved, your style is listed in the Style box with all of the Impressionist built-in styles, so you can select it at a later time. All custom style files are stored in the Impressionist User Settings folder (see Impressionist File Organization).

To remove a custom style

1	In the Style group box, in the Style drop-down box, click the style that you would like to remove.

2	Click Remove.

3	Click Yes in the confirmation dialog box to remove the style.

Note that Impressionist built-in styles cannot be removed.

Another way to remove a style is to delete the file in which the setting is stored. However, since more than one style can be stored in a single file, you might remove styles you want to keep. Note that custom styles are stored in the Impressionist User Settings folder (see Impressionist File Organization). If the style you wish to delete uses any custom brushes or paper textures, delete these also.

To give your custom style to another Impressionist user

1	Save the custom style giving it a unique file name.

2	Copy the file containing the style from the Impressionist User Settings folder to a floppy disk.

3	Copy the style from the floppy disk to the other user's Impressionist User Settings folder.

The transferred custom style will now show up in the Style list of the other user. If the style you wish to move uses any custom brushes or paper textures, be sure to move a copy of these files also. Note that custom brushes should be stored in the Impressionist Brushes folder and custom paper textures should be stored in the Impressionist Paper folder (see Impressionist File Organization).


Basic Controls

The Basic controls allow you to change the fundamental attributes of an Impressionist style, including the background onto which the brush strokes are rendered, the size of the brush strokes used, the amount of the image that the brush strokes are to cover, and the pressure with which the brush strokes are drawn. These controls allow you to easily customize the Impressionist built-in styles.

Background   Selects the background onto which the brush strokes are drawn:

•	Image   The brush strokes are drawn on the original image.

•	Grayscale Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a grayscale version of the original image.

•	Sepia Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a sepia tinted version of the original image.

•	Tinted Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a tinted version of the original image. The tint color can be set by clicking on the color swatch and selecting a color to tint with using the color picker.

•	Tonal Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a tonal version of the original image. A tonal image is one in which the colors of the original image are blended with a constant, user-specified color. This tonal color is set by clicking on the color swatch and selecting a color using the color picker.

•	Background Color   The brush strokes are drawn on a constant color background which is set to the Image Composer current background color. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	Foreground Color   The brush strokes are drawn on a constant color background which is set to the Image Composer current foreground color. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	Custom Color   The brush strokes are drawn on a constant color background which is selected by clicking on the color swatch and choosing a color using the color picker. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	File   The brush strokes are drawn on an image file that is chosen by using the file selection dialog box. The file can be in TIFF (.tif), bitmap (.bmp), or Targa (.tga) format. Note that the file selected must have identical dimensions to the original input image.

Coverage   Sets the percentage of the background to be covered by brush strokes. Note that this option is not available all Impressionist styles.

Brush Size   Increases or decreases the brush size, specified as a percentage of the current brush size. A Brush Size setting of 100% neither increases or decreases the brush size. A Brush Size setting of less than 100% decreases the brush size accordingly. A Brush Size setting of greater than 100% increases the brush size accordingly.

Pressure   Determines the pressure brush strokes are applied to the background with. Move the slider to the right to increase the pressure of the strokes applied and to the left to decrease the pressure. A pressure setting of 100 is the default. At settings below 100, the brush strokes become increasingly transparent, with the background showing through to a greater degree. At settings beyond 100, the details within the individual brush strokes are diminished and less apparent as the strokes approach solid plugs of color.


Advanced Controls

Advanced Controls allow you to customize every aspect of Impressionist. The controls are logically grouped in related categories on nine pages: General, Brush, Placement, Size, Orientation, Color, Paper, Effects, and Demo. Each page consists of several controls that allow you to modify a specific attribute of how Impressionist will render an artistic style.

To access Advanced Controls, click More Controls at the bottom of the Impressionist dialog box to see the General controls page. To change to another page of controls, use the >> (page forward) and << (page backward) buttons at the bottom of the Impressionist dialog box or use the drop down list at the top of the controls page to directly select the controls page you wish to visit. To return to the Basic controls, click Fewer Controls at the bottom of the Impressionist dialog box.


General Controls

The General controls allow you to change the most fundamental attributes of an Impressionist style including the background onto which the brush strokes are rendered, the size of the brush strokes used, the amount of the image that the brush strokes are to cover, and the pressure with which the brush strokes are drawn. Note that all of the functionality contained on the General controls page is duplicated on other control pages (including the Basic controls mode). Some users will find it easier to have control of basic Impressionist attributes grouped onto a single page.


Brush Controls

Impressionist requires a brush to draw or paint with. This page of controls allows you to select a brush and modify some of its attributes.

Brush Picker   Selects a brush. To select a brush, click on one of the brush icons in the visual brush picker that runs across the top of the page. The currently selected brush is outlined in red and is shown in the brush display below. When there are too many brushes in the picker to be seen at one time, use the scroll bar to move to brushes that are currently out of view. Note that any brush image files that are contained in the Impressionist brushes folder (see Impressionist File Organization) will show up in the brush picker, including brushes that you created yourself.

Brush Display   Shows a reduced to fit image of the currently selected brush with its name below.

Custom   Loads an image file to be used as a brush. You will be presented with a file selection dialog box that allows you to choose an image file to be used as a brush. The file can be in TIFF (.tif), bitmap (.bmp), or Targa (.tga) format. The custom brush will then be shown in Brush Display. Note that any image that you select for use as a brush will be converted to grayscale if it is not already. For best results, the brush shape should be defined by white or bright pixels and the background by black or dark pixels.

Use Brush Family   Allows you to access a family of related brushes. A family of brushes requires more processing time, but results in a more realistic drawing or painting look since a variety of brushes differing slightly from one another is used instead of a single brush which can look repetitive throughout the resulting image.

Note   You can create your own family of brushes by giving all the brushes the same name, except for the last character of the name which should be a for the first brush in the family, b for the second brush in the family, and so on. For example, a family of brushes might be named, Mybrusha.tif, Mybrushb.tif, and Mybrushc.tif. A family of brushes must have at least two members and at most eight. Any brush families that you create should be placed in the Impressionist brushes folder. They will then show up in the Brush Picker and enable the Use Brush Family check box when any of the members of the family are selected from the Brush Picker.

Smudge   Sets the degree to which the edges of each of the brush strokes are smudged or softened. Move the slider to the right to increase the amount of smudging and to the left to decrease the amount. With a setting of zero, the brush will not be smudged.

Pressure   Determines how much pressure the brush strokes are applied to the background with. Move the slider to the right to increase the pressure of the strokes applied and to the left to decrease the pressure. A pressure setting of 100 is the default. As the pressure setting is decreased below 100, the brush strokes become more and more transparent, with the background showing through to a greater degree. As the pressure setting is increased beyond 100, the details within the individual brush strokes are diminished and less apparent as the strokes approach solid plugs of color.

Note   If a paper texture has been selected and activated on the Paper controls page, increasing the pressure of the stroke will cause more and more of the stroke to rub off on the texture, filling in to a greater degree the cracks and pits in the texture. Conversely, lower pressure settings show off more of the details of the paper texture.


Placement Controls

These controls allow you to set how the brush strokes are placed throughout the image.

Place the Strokes   Sets the method by which the brush strokes are placed throughout the image.

•	Randomly   Places the strokes randomly throughout the image according to the Coverage setting.

•	On Grid   Places the strokes on a regularly-spaced square grid pattern throughout the image. The grid spacing can be set with Grid Size. Deviation from the regular grid spacing can be set with Jitter.

Coverage   When Place the Strokes is set to Randomly, sets what percentage of the background is covered by brush strokes. Note that for convenience, this control is duplicated on the General or Basic controls pages.

Grid Size   When Place the Strokes is set to On Grid, sets the spacing of the grid points. The units of measurement for the grid spacing can be selected using the drop down list to the right of the numeric entry field.

Jitter   When Place the Strokes is set to On Grid, sets the degree to which the brush stroke locations randomly deviate, or jitter, from the actual grid points. When Jitter is set to zero, no position jittering takes place and the center of each stroke is positioned on a grid point. When Jitter is set to a non-zero value, the stroke location is modified, perturbed or jittered from the grid point by a random amount. The higher the Jitter value, the greater the degree of perturbation or jittering from the grid point. Since placing strokes on a grid implies that there is a regular pattern to the stroke locations which in some cases appears unnatural, this control is useful for restoring a less rigid and less regular look.

Repeatable Results   Allows repeating random behavior in succession. Many of the Impressionist parameters behave randomly or have random settings including Place the Strokes and Jitter on the Placement controls page, Scale the Strokes on the Size controls page, Orient the Strokes on the Orientation controls page, Jitter on the Color controls page, and so on. If Repeatable Results is selected, the random behavior will be repeatable (the same seed will be used with the random number generator) on successive applications of Impressionist.

Note   This control has effect only when Impressionist is applied to a full image (when Apply is pressed). When previewing (if Preview is pressed), Repeatable Results is always on in order to make it easier to see the difference that various controls settings make by eliminating the random component as a factor in the processing. This control is most useful when processing a sequence of images in an animation context. In this situation, it is sometimes desirable to have Impressionist attributes be random or different on a frame-to-frame basis (Repeatable Results off) and sometimes desirable to have these attributes fixed (Repeatable Results on) over the sequence.

Placement Quality   Sets how accurately the brush strokes are placed, sized, and oriented on the image. The higher the quality setting, the better the strokes will align with details in the input image. However, there is a tradeoff between quality of placement and speed of execution. There higher the quality setting, the slower the processing speed. You can set the quality to a lower setting to speed up the process of experimenting with different styles and control values. When you have finished experimenting and want to render the final image the quality setting can be increased.

Use External Mask   Specifies a file that defines the regions of the input image that should have brush strokes applied. To have the brush strokes applied only to a particular portion of the input image, select Use External Mask and then click External Mask. The mask image should be grayscale. In areas of the mask image that are white (or nearly white), brush strokes will be plotted. In areas of the mask image that are black, no brush strokes will be plotted. A similar effect can be achieved using selection tools in the current Image Composer image to define the region of the input image that you want to be processed by Impressionist, but in that case it is possible that some strokes may be cut off at the region boundaries. Using an external mask image assures that brush strokes will stay intact at the region boundaries, giving a more natural appearance.

External Mask   Displays a file selection dialog box to choose a file that will be used as the mask. The file can be in TIFF (.tif), bitmap (.bmp), or Targa (.tga) format. The file name chosen for the mask will be displayed beside this button. Note that any image that you select for use as a mask will be converted to grayscale if it is not already. Also, the file selected must have identical dimensions to the original input image.


Size Controls

These controls allow you to specify the sizes of the brush strokes used by Impressionist to render the output image. Impressionist enlarges or reduces the size of the currently selected brush (if necessary) so that the brush strokes in the output image conform to the control settings described below. Note also that the brush sizes can be modified in a high level way from General or Basic controls pages.

Number of Sizes   Sets the number of different sizes of the currently selected brush used to render the output image. A maximum of 16 different sizes can be used. Note that the more sizes you use, the more faithful the resulting image will be to the original, but the longer processing will take.

Scale the Strokes   Specifies the method for scaling. The method is selected using the drop down list. Note that each method is also influenced by the Number of Sizes, Scale Strokes Proportionally, Min/Max/Width/Height, and Size Distribution settings.

•	Optimally   Uses a special technique to choose the best stroke size based on the image content at each stroke location. In general this method produces the best results since small strokes are chosen in detailed areas of the input image and large strokes are chosen in areas of less detail. However, note that the size of the strokes will always fall in the range specified by the Min/Max/Width/Height control settings.

•	Fixed Size   Uses a fixed size for all of the strokes in the output image.

•	Randomly   Uses random stroke sizes to render the output image. However, note that the size of the strokes will always fall in the range specified by the Min/Max/Width/Height control settings.

•	By Hue   Sizes the strokes according to the hue component of the color of the input image at each stroke location. For example, in areas of red hue the strokes will be sized one way and in areas of blue hue the strokes will be sized another way (depending on the Number of Sizes and Min/Max/Width/Height settings).

•	By Saturation   Sizes the strokes according to the saturation component of the color of the input image at each stroke location. For example, in areas of the image that are highly saturated the strokes will be sized one way and in areas of the image that are not saturated the strokes will be sized another way (depending on the Number of Sizes and Min/Max/Width/Height settings).

•	By Brightness   Sizes the strokes according to the brightness component of the color of the input image at each stroke location. For example, in bright areas of the image the strokes will be sized one way and in darker areas of the image the strokes will be sized another way (depending on the Number of Sizes and Min/Max/Width/Height settings).

Scale Strokes Proportionally   Preserves  the aspect ratio (width to height) of the stroke sizes when the strokes are scaled. When proportional scaling is selected, you need only change one of either the height or width of the stroke to the desired value and the other will be automatically calculated by Impressionist so that the resulting brush size will have the same proportions as the original brush.

Min/Max/Width/Height   Allow you to precisely set the sizes of the brush strokes used to render the output image. There are four different parameters that you can set: Minimum Width, Minimum Height, Maximum Width, and Maximum Height. These parameters can be specified in a variety of units including pixels, percent of image, inches, centimeters, millimeters and picas by using the drop down list beside the size fields. The Minimum Width parameter sets the minimum or smallest width of the brush to be used, while the Maximum Width parameter sets the maximum or largest width of the brush to be used. The Minimum Height parameter sets the minimum or smallest height of the brush to be used, while the Maximum Height parameter sets the maximum or largest height of the brush to be used.

When Number of Sizes is set to 1, the maximum and minimum sizes will be the same. When Number of Sizes is set to 2, the first brush size will be the minimum size and the second brush size will be the maximum brush size. When Number of Sizes is set to 3 or above, the first brush size will always be the minimum brush size, the last brush will always be the maximum size and the ones in between are equally spaced over the minimum to maximum range.

Size Distribution   When Scale the Strokes is set to Optimally, determines the size distribution of the strokes used to create the output image. This control is useful to set the balance between the different sizes of strokes used to create the final image. Choose the size distribution that best suits your needs  from mostly small to mostly large  from the drop down list.


Orientation Controls

These controls allow you to select how the brush strokes will be oriented throughout the image.

Orient the Strokes   The strokes can be oriented by a number of methods. The method is selected using the drop down list. Each of the choices is explained below. Note that each method is also influenced by the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles settings.

•	Optimally   Uses a special technique to choose the best stroke orientation based on the image content at each stroke location. In general this method produces the best results since the strokes tend to align themselves with image features. However, note that the orientation angle of the strokes will always fall in the range specified by the Start Angle, and Range of Angles control settings.

•	Fixed Angle   Orients all of the strokes at a fixed angle that is specified in the Start Angle field below.

•	Randomly   Orients the strokes randomly throughout the image. However, note that the orientation angle of the strokes will always fall in the range specified by Start Angle and Range of Angles.

•	By Hue   Orients the strokes according to the hue component of the color of the input image at each stroke location. For example, in areas of red hue, the strokes will be oriented one way and in areas of blue hue, the strokes will be oriented another way (depending on the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles settings).

•	By Saturation   Orients the strokes according to the saturation component of the color of the input image at each stroke location. For example, in areas of the image that are highly saturated, the strokes will be oriented one way and in areas of the image that are not saturated the strokes will be oriented another way (depending on the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles settings).

•	By Brightness   Orients the strokes according to the brightness component of the color of the input image at each stroke location. For example, in bright areas of the image, the strokes will be oriented one way and in darker areas of the image the strokes will be oriented another way (depending on the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles settings).

•	Radially   Orients the strokes radially from the center of the image.

•	By File   Displays a file selection dialog box allowing you to specify a file that will be used to set the orientation of the strokes. The file can be in TIFF (.tif), bitmap (.bmp), or Targa (.tga) format. Note that the file selected must have identical dimensions to the original input image. After the file is read in, it is converted to grayscale (if it is not already) and the strokes are oriented according to the brightness of the file image at each stroke location. For example, in bright areas of the file image, the strokes will be oriented one way and in darker areas of the file image the strokes will be oriented another way (depending on the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles settings).

Number of Angles   Sets how many distinct orientations, or angles, of the current brush will be used to render the output image. A maximum of 128 different angles can be used. Note that the more angles you use, the more faithful the resulting image will be to the original, but the longer processing will take.

Start Angle   Sets the starting angle of strokes in degrees.

Range of Angles   Sets the range of angles or arc over which the brush strokes are plotted.

Under normal circumstances, the Range of Angles would be se to 360 degrees (full range) and the Starting Angle would be 0 degrees. Then the Number of Angles specifies the number of distinct brush orientations between 0 and 360 degrees that will be used when plotting brush strokes. Number of Angles can also be thought of as angular resolution, in that the more angles used the more accurately the plotted brush strokes will represent the original image. Note however that the more angles you specify, the longer the processing time.

Here are a couple of hints on specifying the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles:

•	If the brush selected is not at all regular in shape or symmetric in any sense, set Start Angle = 0, Range of Angles = 360, and Number of Angles at 8 or 16 (depending on how accurate a representation of the original image you want).

•	If the brush selected is highly symmetric (such as a circle), set Number of Angles to 1, and Start Angle to any value. Range of Angles is meaningless in this case.

•	If the brush selected is symmetric in one sense (such as a rectangle), set Start Angle = 0, Range of Angles = 180, and Number of Angles at 4 or 8. In other words, Number of Angles can be reduced and you will achieve the same angular resolution since Range of Angles is reduced).

For those who are mathematically inclined, here is how the Number of Angles, Start Angle, and Range of Angles settings mathematically relate. Note that an orientation of zero degrees corresponds to a brush pointing to the right.

Let:

N be the Number of Angles

S be the Start Angle in degrees

R be the Range of Angles in degrees

A[n] be the nth brush stroke orientation in degrees

Then the nth (1 <= n <= N) brush stroke orientation is

A[n] = S + (n - 1)*R /N

For example, if N = 8, S = 0, and R = 360, then the strokes would be oriented at either 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, or 315 degrees.


Color Controls

This page of controls allows you to set the color of the brush strokes and the background to which they are applied.

Stroke Color   Sets the method by which each of the brush strokes in the image is colored. The available methods are:

•	Image   The color of each of the strokes is derived from and set to the color of the input image at each stroke location. This is probably the most common choice for creating a style that closely corresponds to the original input image.

•	Grayscale Image   The color of each of the strokes is derived from and set to the color of a grayscale version of the input image at each stroke location.

•	Sepia Image   The color of each of the strokes is derived from and set to the color of a sepia tinted version of the input image at each stroke location.

•	Tinted Image   The color of each of the strokes is derived from and set to the color of a tinted version of the input image at each stroke location. The tint color can be set by clicking on the color swatch and selecting a color to tint with using the color picker.

•	Tonal Image   The color of each of the strokes is derived from and set to the color of a tonal version of the input image at each stroke location. A tonal image is one in which the colors of the original image have been blended with a constant, user specified color. This tonal color can be set by clicking on the color swatch and selecting a color using the color picker.

•	Background Color   Sets the color of all the strokes to the Image Composer current background color. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	Foreground Color   Sets the color of all the strokes to the Image Composer current foreground color. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	Custom Color   Sets the color of all the strokes to a custom color that is selected by clicking on the color swatch and choosing a color using the color picker. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

Jitter   Allow you to randomly jitter or perturb the color to be used at each brush stroke location by a specified amount in each of the three components of the color (hue, saturation, and brightness). Jittering is useful for subtly shifting the color of each stroke with respect to one another. This helps to better define the limits of each stroke, especially in areas of the image which consist of a constant color. As well, jittering can be used to make the colors more fanciful in the final result.

When all of the Jitter controls are set to zero, no jittering takes place and the color used to render each of the brush strokes is that which is currently specified by the Stroke Color method. When any of the controls are set to a non-zero value, the color specified by the currently selected Stroke Color method is modified or jittered in a random way for each brush stroke. The higher the control value, the more the color is perturbed from its original value.

The "H" (Hue) control modifies the hue component of the color only, while the "S" (Saturation) control modifies the Saturation component only, and the "B" (Brightness) controls affects the Brightness component only. Note you can jitter any or all of the color components simultaneously.

Background   Specifies the background the brush strokes are drawn onto. Note that this control is also available on the General or Basic controls pages. The available options are:

•	Image   The brush strokes are drawn on the original image.

•	Grayscale Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a grayscale version of the original image.

•	Sepia Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a sepia-tinted version of the original image.

•	Tinted Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a tinted version of the original image. The tint color can be set by clicking the color swatch and selecting a color.

•	Tonal Image   The brush strokes are drawn on a tonal version of the original image. A tonal image is one in which the colors of the original image have been blended with a constant, user-specified color. This tonal color can be set by clicking the color swatch and selecting a color.

•	Background Color   The brush strokes are drawn on a constant color background which is set to the current Image Composer background color. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	Foreground Color   The brush strokes are drawn on a constant color background which is set to the current Image Composer foreground color. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	Custom Color   The brush strokes are drawn on a constant color background, which is selected by clicking on the color swatch and choosing a color using the color picker. The color is displayed in the color swatch beside the drop down list.

•	File   The brush strokes are drawn on an image file that is chosen using the file selection dialog box that appears. The file can be in TIFF (.tif), bitmap (.bmp), or Targa (.tga) format. Note that the file selected must have identical dimensions to the original input image.

Brightness   Allows you to adjust the brightness level of the final image. Move the slider to the right to increase the brightness in the final image and to the left to decrease the brightness. Note that a setting value of 50 has no effect.

Contrast   Allows you to adjust the contrast level of the final image. Move the slider to the right to increase contrast in the final image and to the left to decrease contrast. Note that a setting value of 50 has no effect.

Palette   This control allows you to specify a palette or range of colors that are to be used in the final image. You can select from a number of built-in palettes from the drop down list, or create you own palette by selection the Custom option. If None is selected, this control will have no effect.

If a palette is selected, the hue component of each of the stroke colors will be mapped to the color in the palette with the hue that it matches most closely. Palettes can be useful for setting a particular tone to the images that you create. The signature of many master artists is often revealed by the palette of colors employed in their work. Note that any of the colors in a palette can be changed by clicking on the corresponding color swatch and selecting a new color using the picker.

By selecting the Custom option from the drop down list you can create an entirely new palette from scratch by clicking on each of the color swatches and using the color picker to select a color. Each palette contains eight colors. If you wish to use fewer colors in the palette, simply repeat one or more of the colors in you palette.

Note   Black and white should not and need not be added to a palette. If your image contains any black or white strokes they will be preserved during the color palette mapping operation. In fact, any grayscale colors that are included in a palette are ignored.


Paper Controls

This page of controls allows you to select and set the attributes of the paper onto which brush strokes are applied.

Paper Picker   To select a paper texture to render the brush strokes on, click one of the paper icons in the visual paper picker that runs across the top of the page. The currently selected paper texture is outlined in red and is shown in the paper display below. When there are too many paper textures in the picker to be seen at one time, use the scroll bar below the paper picker to move to textures that are currently out of view. Note that any paper texture image files that are contained in the Impressionist paper folder (see Impressionist File Organization) will show up in the paper picker, including paper textures that you created yourself.

Paper Display   Shows a reduced to fit image of the currently selected paper texture with its name below.

Custom   Loads an image file to be used as a paper texture. You will be presented with a file selection dialog box that allows you to choose an image file to be used as a paper texture. The file can be in TIFF (.tif), bitmap (.bmp), or Targa (.tga) format. The custom paper texture will then be shown in Paper Display. Note that any image that you select for use as a paper texture will be converted to grayscale if it is not already.

For best results, paper textures should have high contrast. A custom texture can be created with the use of a scanner, loaded from commercial texture libraries or synthesized with a paint or image editing package. Also note that any texture that you create will be automatically tiled by Impressionist if it is too small to fill out your image.

Invert Texture   Changes or inverts the polarity of the texture. Depressions in the texture will become bumps and vice-versa.

Scaling   Sets the percentage by which the selected paper texture is spatially scaled both horizontally and vertically relative to its original size. Move the slider to the right to scale the texture up (make the pattern bigger) and to the left to scale the texture down (make the pattern smaller). A Scaling setting of 100 leaves the paper texture at its original size. Scaling settings greater than 100 expand the texture and its pattern relative to the original. Scaling settings less than 100 shrinks the texture relative to the original.

Grain   Allows you to select the amount of the brush stroke that rubs off onto the paper texture surface revealing the grain of the texture. Move the slider to the right to increase the amount of paper grain and hence reduce the amount of the brush stroke that rubs off on the texture, eventually leaving the strokes to rub off only on the texture peaks. Move the slider to the left to reduce the amount of paper grain and increase the amount of the stroke that rubs off on the surface, filling in more and more of the depressions in the texture.

Note   When this control is set to zero it has no effect. Also be aware that the interaction of the stroke and paper background is also influenced by the Pressure control on the Brush and General control pages.

Relief   Allows you to add surface texturing to your image with the selected paper texture, letting you create the illusion that the resulting image is rendered upon a textured three-dimensional surface. Move the slider to the right to increase the relief of the selected paper texture and the left to decrease the relief.

Note   When this control is set to zero, it has no effect and surface texturing is turned off.

Light Position   Allows you, when the Relief control is on (set to a non-zero value), to select the direction from which the paper texture is side lit. Choose one of the eight light positions from the list. Lighting from certain directions can reveal more or less detail in the paper texture.


Effects Controls

These controls allow you to choose a special effect to modify the currently selected brush. The effects can make the brush strokes appear three-dimensional (Emboss, Bas Relief, 3D Metallic), transparent (Glass), like a felt marker (Marker), or detail-enhanced (Modify Color).

To activate a brush effect, simply make a choice from the Effect drop down list. To turn off any of the brush effects, choose None from the list.

Emboss   Gives the brush strokes a three-dimensional appearance by side-lighting them from one of eight directions. Use the Light Position list to choose the direction from which the brush strokes are lit. To change the amount of embossing, use the Relief slider. Moving the slider to the right increases the apparent height and depth in the brush texture; moving the slider to the left decreases the height and depth. To invert the polarity of the brush texture (change peaks to valleys and vice-versa) select Invert Brush Texture.

Bas Relief   Gives the brush strokes a three-dimensional quality as if they were carved from stone in low relief and lit to accent the surface modulations. Use the Light Position list to choose the direction from which the brush strokes are lit. The Detail slider allows you to set how much of the detail in the original brush is revealed in the effected brush strokes. Move the slider to the right for the result to contain more brush detail and to the left to reduce the amount of detail. The Smoothness slider lets you control the overall smoothness of the effected brush strokes. Move the slider to the right to give the resulting brush strokes a smoother appearance and to the left to give them a less smooth appearance.

3D Metallic   Gives the brush strokes a metallic or shiny three-dimensional appearance. Use the Shininess slider to add more or less shine to the surface of the brush strokes. Move the slider to the right to make the brushes more shiny and to the left to make them less shiny. The Smoothness slider lets you control the overall smoothness of the effected brush strokes. Move the slider to the right to give the resulting brush strokes a smoother appearance and to the left to give them a less smooth appearance.

Glass   Makes the brush strokes appear as if they were composed of rough transparent refractive glass. Because the brush strokes are transparent and refractive, you can see a distorted version of the background through them.

Note   For the effect to become apparent, be sure that the Background control (on the General or Color controls pages) is not set to a constant color, as the background should contain detail such as that from the original image. For example, choose Image for the background.

Distortion   Allows you to set the degree to which the brush strokes distort the background content. Move the slider to the right for more distortion and to the left for less. The Smoothness slider lets you control the overall smoothness of the effected brush strokes. Move the slider to the right to give the resulting brush strokes a smoother appearance and to the left to give them a less smooth appearance.

Marker   Makes the brush strokes appear as if they were drawn with a felt marker. A characteristic of marker strokes is that they become darker in areas where they overlap. Use the Build-Up control to determine how quickly overlapping strokes get darker. Move the slider to the left to build up more slowly (that is require more overlapping strokes before the overlap area becomes black) and to the right to build up quickly (that is require fewer overlapping strokes before the overlap area becomes black).

Modify Color   Allows you to alter the attributes of the color of each brush stroke according to the texture or brightness profile of the current brush. Most of the brushes supplied with Impressionist are highly textured: they have peaks and valleys in brightness across the extent of the brush showing details of a particular stroke type. This effect allows you to modify the Brightness, Saturation, and Hue components of the color of each brush stroke in accordance with the texture or brightness of the currently selected brush. This effect can be used to emphasize the texture and detail contained within each brush stroke thereby making each stroke stand out more. As well, fanciful stroke coloring effects can be achieved.

Hue   Modifies the hue component of the stroke color according to the brightness of the currently selected brush. In brighter areas of the brush, the stroke hue value will be increased and in darker areas of the brush, the stroke hue value will be decreased. Move the slider to the right to modify the hue to a greater extent and to the left to modify the hue to a lesser extent.

Saturation   Modifies the saturation component of the stroke color according to the brightness of the currently selected brush. In brighter areas of the brush, the stroke saturation value will be increased and in darker areas of the brush, the stroke saturation value will be decreased. Move the slider to the right to modify the saturation to a greater extent and to the left to modify the saturation to a lesser extent.

Brightness   Modifies the brightness component of the stroke color according to the brightness of the currently selected brush. In brighter areas of the brush, the stroke saturation value will be increased and in darker areas of the brush, the stroke saturation value will be decreased. Move the slider to the right to modify the saturation to a greater extent and to the left to modify the saturation to a lesser extent.


Demo Controls

The Impressionist Demo Controls allow you to automatically run some or all of the styles on the current preview selection. This helps you choose a style that is appropriate for your image without doing a lot of repetitive style selection and button pressing.

To start the demo, click Run Demo. You can cancel the demo anytime by pressing the ESC key. The demo automatically runs some or all of the styles on the current preview selection that is shown in the Before window in the Preview group.

Note   This selection can be set anywhere on the image by moving the floating preview frame with the mouse. For more information on setting the current preview selection, see the Previewing and Applying section.

To run the demo on all of the styles that are contained in the Styles list, click Loop Over All Styles. To run the demo on just the currently selected category of styles, click Loop Over Current Category. To change the currently selected style category, choose a style from the category you wish to change to from the Styles list.

To control the minimum length of time between showing consecutive styles, move the Delay slider to the desired delay time in seconds.

Note   The demo will process both built-in styles and custom styles that you have saved.


Previewing and Applying

The Preview group of controls allow you to try out various styles and control settings on a small portion of the image without having to leave the Impressionist dialog box or wait until the effect has applied to the entire image.

The large frame in the Preview group contains a thumbnail view of the original image or selection. Within the thumbnail view is the Preview Frame.

To preview Impressionist effects

1	With the mouse, drag the Preview Frame over the part of the image you want to preview.

The portion of the image within the Preview Frame appears in the Before box.

2	Click Preview to preview the Impressionist effect with the current style and control settings.

3	After a short delay, a preview of the applied effects appears in the After box.

Previews correspond as closely as possible to how the style will look when applied to the full image.

To obtain a more comprehensive view of the final result, preview several different areas of the image before applying Impressionist to the entire image.

To apply Impressionist effects

•	When the controls are set the way you want them, click Apply to apply Impressionist to the full image or selection.

Note   Impressionist will only process the area defined by the current selection. This may be the entire image or some portion of it that may be selected with various selection tools that are available in Image Composer.


Tips and Techniques

The built-in Impressionist styles have been developed to create a wide variety of painting and drawing effects that can be applied to original images. You can use the styles as they are provided, or start with them as a creative beginning. By introducing new elements to the style or modifying an existing quality, you can create a custom effect from one of the built-in styles that suits your requirements.

The following tips describe a few of the elements in the Impressionist styles that can be easily changed to create a custom look.

Note   Most of the controls that are mentioned are accessed by first selecting More Controls and then switching to the indicated page of controls from the drop down list.

Changing the Brightness and Contrast

You might find that the final image is too light or too dark. These qualities can be modified by using the Brightness and Contrast controls on the Color controls page.

The Contrast control can also be used alone to change the look of the final image. Increasing the contrast of an image tends to increase the saturation of its colors as well, or in the case of a monochrome image, to make it appear as if the image has been painted with more opaque pigments. It is especially effective to try changes to the Contrast control with some of the Pencil styles. It is possible, from a single Pencil style, to create a family of variations that appear to have been drawn with a range of pencil lead hardness values, from very hard to very soft.

Jittering the Colors of the Brush Strokes

If you wish to create the impression that a drawing or painting has been executed in a hurried, vigorous way, the average variation of the colors that are painted with can be increased by using the Stroke Color Jitter controls on the Color controls page. When these controls are set to low values, the colors that are chosen to paint with do not vary from the Stroke Color method that has been indicated on the Color controls page. When the Jitter controls are set to higher values, the colors that are painted with vary more and more in a random way from the specified Stroke Color method. Note that any of the three components of a color (Hue, Saturation, Brightness) can be jittered.

For example, if the Stroke Color method is specified to take painting colors from the original image, and all the Jitter controls are set to 0, then at each location a brush is applied, it will be colored with the color of the original image at that location. If the Jitter controls are all set to a medium value (say 10), the brush stroke color will vary a medium amount from the color of the original image at that location.

The Jitter controls can also be used to add a pleasing variation to the average color of larger areas that are a constant color in the original image. This enhances the impression that the image has been painted with mixed color brush strokes in these regions.

Adding Surface Texture to the Final Image

For any Impressionist style, adding a surface texture quality or modifying an existing texture quality of the style can greatly enhance the appearance of the style or even change the style in a radical way, essentially creating a new style.

There are several ways to add the appearance of texture to an existing style. One is to specify that the brush that is used appear to be embossed or three-dimensional. Another is to apply an embossed texture throughout the image to make the image appear as if it has been painted onto a textured surface. The third method is to specify a paper texture which will create the impression that the image has been painted onto a rough background and that the pigment has only stuck to the higher areas of the texture.

Brush Embossing

To create the impression that the brushes that are used have a three-dimensional character, use Emboss on the Effects controls page. A fairly small Relief value will usually suffice. Different visual effects can be created by moving the apparent position of the light source using the Light Position control.

Paper Relief

To create the effect of the image having been painted onto a textured background, on the Paper controls page select an existing paper texture or specify one of your own using the Custom option. Any value specified with the Relief control that is greater than zero will cause the appearance of a three-dimensional texture to appear throughout the image. Once again, the direction of the light source can be changed to vary the effect.

Paper Grain

When a brush or drawing instrument is moved over a rough background surface, the pigment tends to only be applied to the higher areas or grain of the texture, while the depressions or pits in the background tend to remain unpainted. You can create this effect by selecting, on the Paper controls page, a texture and then specifying a Grain value. Low Grain values create the appearance that the texture of the background is fairly smooth, while high values make it appear as if the background is very rough.

It should be noted that the Pressure slider on the Brush controls page or the General controls page can also be varied when using paper grain texturing effects. Higher Pressure values tend to make it appear as if the brushes are being pushed harder onto the background, filling in more of the pits in the texture, whereas lower Pressure values make less of each brush stroke appear to have left a mark on the background as well as making the colors somewhat transparent.

Note   For both Paper relief and Paper grain, the Scaling control changes the apparent size of the texture that is used. Experimenting with various larger and smaller values than 100 percent can create a range of visual texturing effects.

Creating Your Own Paper Textures

Specifying a texture for the paper is one of the easiest ways to add realism to an image created with Impressionist. An unlimited variety of provided and custom textures can be used and each will create a unique effect.

There are numerous ways to create textures to use as paper textures. Perhaps the easiest way is to simply find an interesting texture and create an image of it using a scanner or electronic camera. If the texture image is smaller than the original image, it will be tiled by Impressionist to cover the entire area of the image.

Various commercial texture creation programs can also be used to create interesting textures. Additionally, painting and drawing tools in commercial paint programs can be used to create custom textures that are very specific to the needs of a particular image. For example, the texture could be made to vary in different areas of an image by masking out portions of the texture image to correspond to the original image.

The Custom option on the Paper controls page allows you to read in any texture from a file. Note that if you place your custom texture file in the Impressionist Paper folder, it will show up in the visual paper picker on the Paper controls page.

Using Custom Backgrounds

Changing the type of background used in an existing style can often change the appearance of the final image in a dramatic way. When a style uses a background of a single color, consider changing that color to harmonize with the general tones of your image.

Scanning In Backgrounds

In addition to changing the color of solid backgrounds, you can also create custom backgrounds that can be used. Choose the File option from the Background list on the Color controls page to specify stored images that you have created or scanned in.

Creating Backgrounds Using Impressionist Styles

You can also use Impressionist to create a painterly image from an original image that can be saved as a file and then used as the background in the creating of another style. By building up an image in layers this way, styles of painting can be created that cannot otherwise be done in a single step.

Changing the Coverage of the Background

You will want to strike a balance between the type of background you are using and the amount that the background is covered by brush strokes. This can be controlled in two ways.

•	Change the Coverage control on the Placement controls page or the General controls page. Higher values cause more of the image to be covered by brush strokes, showing less of the background.

•	Vary the Pressure control on the Brush page. This method can be used along with the Coverage control. Any value less than 100 causes the brush strokes to be somewhat transparent, which will allow more of the background to show through.

Changing the Brush

One simple but effective way to develop new variations of a style is to simply select a different brush on the Brush controls page. There are a large selection of brushes supplied with Impressionist and you can also create your own.

Creating Your Own Brushes

Creating a custom brush is easy and can be done in several ways. One is to make a single brush stroke using natural painting or drawing media and then scan it, creating an image file. For example, you could paint a stroke with a brush and India ink or perhaps a piece of chalk and then create an image file of it with a scanner or electronic camera.

A brush can be an image of anything: clouds, paw prints, scratches, etc. Surprising results can be obtained from simple objects. Experimenting is the best way to discover what works best. Brushes can also be created by using commercial paint or three-dimensional rendering programs.

Use the Custom option on the Brush controls page to specify a file that contains your custom brush. Note that if you place any custom brushes that you create in the Impressionist brushes folder, they will show up in the visual brush picker on the Brush controls page.

Changing the Brush Size

There are a variety of ways to change the nature of an existing style that have to do with altering the size of the brushes used in the style. Please note that the size of the brushes used can be changed both on the General controls page and on the Size controls page.

Obviously, the average size or range of sizes of brushes that are used to render an image can change the appearance of the final image radically. Depending on your preferences, you might want to specify a smaller size for the brushes if you wish to capture the details accurately, or you may want a larger size to show off the brush stroke shapes and to hide details in the final image.

If you find that the brush stroke you are using has a distinctive shape and its repetition throughout the image is obvious, you can specify a minimum and maximum size of that brush and the number of sizes of brushes over that range. The distribution of various sizes of the brush in the image will tend to hide the similarity of the shape of the brush.

This distribution can be further fine-tuned by changing the way brush sizes are allocated in the image using the Size Distribution control on the Size controls page. There is a range of choices offered with this control, from Mostly Small to Mostly Large.

Increasing the Brush Pressure

An easy way to change a style is to vary the Pressure slider on the Brush controls page. This slider increases the apparent opacity and density of the brush strokes that are used. Use the Pressure slider when you want to solidify a style that appears too transparent or too watery.

Turning On the Brush Family Check Box

To increase the variety of brush strokes that are used in an image while retaining their general character, check the Use Brush Family check box on the Brush controls page. This indicates that you want to use up to eight different, yet similar, brush images in the style. This can also be done if you find that you notice a rubber-stamp effect in a style, that is, the same brush shape appears to be repeated over and over again in an image. The use of a family of two or three brushes, instead of one, will create enough variety within the image to eradicate that effect.

Animation: Changing Impressionist Control Values Over Time

When used with Adobe Premiere or other similar programs that have the capability to process sequences of digitized images, various Impressionist control settings can change value over the duration of the sequence. In Premiere, you can bring up the Impressionist settings dialog once to choose the starting set of control values and then bring up the Impressionist settings dialog a second time to choose the ending set of control values. For controls whose value you wish to have change over the duration of the sequence, set their end values different from their start values. For each image in the sequence, Premiere will pass appropriate settings to Impressionist so that those control values will change from their start values to their end values over the duration of the sequence to be processed.

Controls That Change Well Over a Sequence

•	Brush Size (on the General and Size controls pages)

•	Pressure (on the General and Brush controls pages)

•	Scaling (on the Size controls page)

•	Coverage (on the General and Placement controls pages)

•	Smudge (on the Brush controls page)

•	Grain (on the Paper controls page)

•	Brightness (on the Color controls page)

•	Contrast (on the Color controls page)

•	Relief (on the Paper and Effects controls pages)

Controls That Change with Some Success Over a Sequence

•	The Style in the Styles group box can be changed over the sequence, but it is not always a smooth transition.

•	Changing the Background Color over the sequence duration is possible (on the General and Color controls pages), but again the transition is sometimes erratic.

•	The Number of Sizes of brushes (on the Size controls page) can be changed over the sequence but it looks rough.

•	The Effect (on the Effects controls page) will change over the sequence (for example, from Emboss, to 3D Metallic), but it is not a smooth transition.

•	You can modify the settings of the Modify Color effect (on the Effects controls page) over the sequence duration, but it's not a smooth transition.

Controls That Cannot Change Over a Sequence

•	Place the Strokes (on the Placement controls page)

•	Repeatable Results (on the Placement controls page)

•	Orient the Strokes (on the Orientation controls page)

•	Palette (on the Color controls page)

•	Stroke Color (on the Color controls page)

•	Paper type (on the Paper controls page)

•	Inverting Texture (on the Paper controls page)

•	Light Position (on the Paper and Effects controls pages)

•	Brush type (on the Brush controls page)

Performance: Processing Speed and Memory Usage

Because Impressionist is a very processor-intensive program, most styles take a long time to execute. Here are a few pointers for improving execution speed performance:

•	The fewer brush sizes used (Number of Sizes on the Brush controls page), the shorter the processing time.

•	The fewer brush orientations used (Number of Angles on the Orientation controls page), the shorter the processing time.

•	The lower the quality setting used (Placement Quality on the Placement controls page), the shorter the processing time.

•	The lower the coverage setting used (Coverage on the General and Placement controls page), the shorter the processing time.

Impressionist is also a very memory-intensive program. In general, it requires twice the amount of memory needed to store an uncompressed version of the input image to operate. This memory requirement is in addition to the memory that Image Composer requires to store an input and output version of the image to be processed. So, the rule of thumb with Impressionist is that you should have four times the memory required to store an uncompressed version of the input image available to run.


Impressionist File Organization

The files and folders required to run Impressionist are organized in the PlugIns folder as follows:

Impressionist Accessories

Brushes

Factory Settings

Paper

User Settings

The Brushes folder contains all the Impressionist brush files. You can add any custom brushes that you create to this folder and they will show up in the Impressionist Brush picker on the Brushes controls page.

The Factory Settings folder contains all the Impressionist built-in styles.

The Paper folder contains all the Impressionist paper texture files. You can add any custom paper textures that you create to this folder and they will show up in the Impressionist Paper picker on the Paper controls page.

The User Settings folder contains the custom style files. When you save a custom style (see Saving and Removing Custom Styles), the file containing the custom file is stored in this folder.


About Impressionist

Impressionist is a feature of Microsoft® Image Composer, Version 1.0

© 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

This computer program is protected by copyright laws and international treaties. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this program, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties. Known violations will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible under the law.