Pixel bender for CS5

davev

Some other folks on a different forum were showing off this plugin for CS5.
I had to have it.

It's more of a suite of plugins, but I was interested in one, OilPaint.

It's fun to play with, and takes no time to figure out.

Artist Point in Yellowstone.


The Badlands


Great Grey Owl


The link to it can be found on this page. LINK

ghinson

Just stumbled on it this past week and have had a blast editing some previous photos with it.

When I used it initially, it was fun to push the limits of the filter to make something that looked like a painting. But I soon realized that that would get old soon.

Examples:





But as I continued using it, it occurred to me, much like Photomatix, if you really tone it down some, you can get an image that is more subtle, and often quite beautiful as something of a hybrid.

Examples:






Now I am trying to decide if there is artistic merit here, or if it is still just a fancy PS parlor trick. I am not sure if I am going to show these in the gallery or not, but I am going to print a couple on canvas and watercolor paper to see how they come out.

Any thoughts?

Drazick

Pixel Bender is a great Technology.

We utilized it into a real Image Enhancement Algorithms:
PSKiss Pixel Gear Suite

All GPU accelerated!
We added a simple Panel as a GUI to improve the user experience.

CWSkopec

ghinson wrote: »

Now I am trying to decide if there is artistic merit here, or if it is still just a fancy PS parlor trick. I am not sure if I am going to show these in the gallery or not, but I am going to print a couple on canvas and watercolor paper to see how they come out.

Any thoughts?

This one is stunning, Greg! Very nicely done!

Is this hybrid with Pixel Bender what you used to process your DSS entry? I was staring at it for a while this morning trying to figure out what process you used to make it look so good!

John Mueller

Nice use of PB.
One of my new favorite plug-ins.

ghinson

Chris, yes, that was the process for the DSS pic. I might be a little addicted to it right now.

JAG

I spent the better part of the past couple days trying to get this pixel bender on my computer. I am not very saavy on the computer and get confused very easily if its not just a simple download type thing. I have a cs4 and had to do lots of reading at the adobe site to figure how to get it on my computer. I had discovered that even though I have a 64bit OS, I had downloaded the 64 version....but it wouldn't show up in my filter in ps. Did a ton more searching on the adobe forum deticated to just this plugin and finally discovered that if I unistall then re install the 32 version it would work and it did. I don't know why....my cs4 is a 64 version and the 64 pixel blender should have worked on it.

Now my problem is that though the pixel blender shows up in my filters menu and I can open an image (small as it may be), the one effect I want the most, the oil painter is NOT on the list of plugins!! It has a bunch of typical filters that I do not see a use for. I am ready to give up on this but I really want that oil painter. In the most point by point easy language you can muster...does anyone know what the problem is?

Also I am wondering what a gpu is....my gut feeling is the video card? On several occasions since I got the cs4 suite it has said I need to update my driver. I have a brand new computer and when I go to the site for my vc driver site it says that my driver is up to date. At least I think that is the driver they are talking about.

CWSkopec

JAG wrote: »

I spent the better part of the past couple days trying to get this pixel bender on my computer. I am not very saavy on the computer and get confused very easily if its not just a simple download type thing. I have a cs4 and had to do lots of reading at the adobe site to figure how to get it on my computer. I had discovered that even though I have a 64bit OS, I had downloaded the 64 version....but it wouldn't show up in my filter in ps. Did a ton more searching on the adobe forum deticated to just this plugin and finally discovered that if I unistall then re install the 32 version it would work and it did. I don't know why....my cs4 is a 64 version and the 64 pixel blender should have worked on it.

Now my problem is that though the pixel blender shows up in my filters menu and I can open an image (small as it may be), the one effect I want the most, the oil painter is NOT on the list of plugins!! It has a bunch of typical filters that I do not see a use for. I am ready to give up on this but I really want that oil painter. In the most point by point easy language you can muster...does anyone know what the problem is?

Also I am wondering what a gpu is....my gut feeling is the video card? On several occasions since I got the cs4 suite it has said I need to update my driver. I have a brand new computer and when I go to the site for my vc driver site it says that my driver is up to date. At least I think that is the driver they are talking about.

I've had a similar problem, Jag. I've got CS5 and even though I could install the plug-in, it won't run. Since I first tried to run it, I get an error message everytime I open PS saying the same thing about my GPU and updating my video driver, even though under Device Manager, it says the driver is up to date.

The best I could figure out, based on some searching was that it was "likely" an issue of not having enough RAM. My system is a 3.5 year old laptop with only 1GB of RAM so I'm inclined to believe the "likely" issue.

Since it's not an officially supported plug-in, that's the best I could find. So I've put off further reading until I've upgraded my system. I guess that's not super-helpful for you (unless you like outdated hardware like me ) but I was also under the impression that Pixel Bender was a CS5 only plug-in. Maybe some of the filters are CS4 compatible, but the Oil Painting one isn't?

Richard

CWSkopec wrote: »

The best I could figure out, based on some searching was that it was "likely" an issue of not having enough RAM. My system is a 3.5 year old laptop with only 1GB of RAM so I'm inclined to believe the "likely" issue.

Probably, though you should also check that you have disabled GPU processing to rule that out as a problem source. I've tried using it with CS5 on a 3GB XT machine and have had mostly crashes. The only success I had was with a very small cropped image. Too bad, because it looks like it could be useful.

CWSkopec

Richard wrote: »

Probably, though you should also check that you have disabled GPU processing to rule that out as a problem source. I've tried using it with CS5 on a 3GB XT machine and have had mostly crashes. The only success I had was with a very small cropped image. Too bad, because it looks like it could be useful.

I think the error message that pops up when I open PS says that it has disabled GPU processing due to issues with the video driver and that I should update the driver.

It's been a couple weeks since I gave up on figuring it out, so maybe I'll tinker around with it again this weekend to see if I can get it working. The images in the previous posts are just too cool to not want for myself!

Richard

CWSkopec wrote: »

I think the error message that pops up when I open PS says that it has disabled GPU processing due to issues with the video driver and that I should update the driver.

Adobe claimed that it would work without a GPU, only more slowly. They also warn that it puts a heavy load on the GPU, and since my Nvidia chip has known overheating problems, I didn't want to risk it. However, since I haven't been able to get it working reliably, I guess I shouldn't be giving advice .

CWSkopec wrote:

It's been a couple weeks since I gave up on figuring it out, so maybe I'll tinker around with it again this weekend to see if I can get it working. The images in the previous posts are just too cool to not want for myself!

Yeah, the last two images that ghinson posted were especially good, IMO.

Drazick

@CWSkopec, Which kind of Graphic Card do you have?

CWSkopec

Drazick wrote: »

@CWSkopec, Which kind of Graphic Card do you have?

It's a Nvidia GeForce Go 6150. Pretty much just an integrated video card on my laptop. Overall, my system specs are far below where I'd like them to be, so I'm not overly surprise if my system can't handle it.

Drazick

I don't think Pixel Bender support this kind of Video Driver.
Usually nVidia "Go / M" numbering is one generation back, meaning GeForce Go 6150 is based on GeForce 5xxx.
It doesn't support Intel Video Cards as well (I hope this will change with Sandy Bridge).

gecko0

I've only had issues if I try to use this plugin on huge resolution files. It states it is limited to 4096x4096 or something. It HAS worked on larger, but was definitely much more unstable than with small files. Oh, and I love this one...

thegridrunner

Wow, what a great filter. It is pretty easy to use and works very well with flower shots.

davev

I know very little about trying to get this to work on your computer, so I'll leave that to people that know way more
about it than I do.

I agree that this can be used for subtle adjustments.
I think with a bit of practice, it could be a very good noise reducer on some photos.

But hey, that's no fun.
This is made for play time.

Stella


Brodie


We have this one printed on canvas, it looks great.


Butterflies turn out nicely.


And don't forget about landmarks
Dead Horse Point


It's alot of fun.

This is a shot of me taken by Grimace.
After a run through Topaz, I then did a small amount of bending.
Looks like Santa is coming to town.:D

RogersDA

Very nice effects/results, Dave. It would be nice to share some of your PB settings. wink

ghinson

For settings, I have found that I like the results best when I put brush size and contrast down low. Colorization, I leave at 1.18. Cleanliness I crank up high. Then I move the Stylization slider left and right to desired effect. You Dave?

aj986s

I need to use & learn PixelBender more. There are some GREAT examples here!

RogersDA

ghinson wrote: »

For settings, I have found that I like the results best when I put brush size and contrast down low. Colorization, I leave at 1.18. Cleanliness I crank up high. Then I move the Stylization slider left and right to desired effect. You Dave?

I am all over the various scales on that.

Here is Oil @ 10/15/2/2.526/0

davev

It'd be to tough to try to explain how or what I do in PS at 12 words per minute typing.
So I made up a couple of these with Quicktime.

I will say that I leave the bottom 2 sliders at their lowest value.
Early on, I did use them, but I just don't like the results.
In the videos, you'll see that I was moving them around, that's just to show folks
that haven't downloaded it (yet) what those sliders do.

I hope this helps with what I've been doing with it.






Another thing that can be done is if you have a face in the shot, and you want the eyes to be clear,
make a copy of the layer, do your work to the top layer, then either erase or mask out the eyes.

I did that for this shot.


That's about all I have.

JAG

I am so out of my league at figuring how to get this filter to work on my computer. I bought this computer new not even a year ago because I burned out my laptops processer with all the heavy duty things I was doing with it using two power hogs at the same time (pspX2 and cs4). So this desktop has an Intel Core i7 cpu 920 @ 2.67GHz (supposidly a quad) , installed memory (RAM) of 9.00GB, 64 bit OS, ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic card.

Now really I see my computer as an extention of my camera. I don't care how its made as long as it does the things I want it to do. I was assured by some very reliable computer programers that this system would do very well with anything I put it though. So just a guess here....I think maybe the problem is that its only for the cs5? I do not believe I want to pay more money into cs products as I do not find the cs4 all that usable as much as I do the pspX2. But I have not seen a program that can paint like this PB. I use to do my own painting like this by hand and it takes hours and hours to get it to look somewhat close to this. Now I am disappointed I cannot have this PB to work on my computer. Thanks for your input guys. I guess I will only get to admire your work at a distance and sigh at what could have been......

davev

JAG wrote: »

I am so out of my league at figuring how to get this filter to work on my computer. I bought this computer new not even a year ago because I burned out my laptops processer with all the heavy duty things I was doing with it using two power hogs at the same time (pspX2 and cs4). So this desktop has an Intel Core i7 cpu 920 @ 2.67GHz (supposidly a quad) , installed memory (RAM) of 9.00GB, 64 bit OS, ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic card.

Now really I see my computer as an extention of my camera. I don't care how its made as long as it does the things I want it to do. I was assured by some very reliable computer programers that this system would do very well with anything I put it though. So just a guess here....I think maybe the problem is that its only for the cs5? I do not believe I want to pay more money into cs products as I do not find the cs4 all that usable as much as I do the pspX2. But I have not seen a program that can paint like this PB. I use to do my own painting like this by hand and it takes hours and hours to get it to look somewhat close to this. Now I am disappointed I cannot have this PB to work on my computer. Thanks for your input guys. I guess I will only get to admire your work at a distance and sigh at what could have been......

I know how you feel.
I was running CS3 when someone posted about this plugin.
I really didn't want to upgrade .... again, but because I really wanted to use this, I paid the price.
It's like anything, you have to pick your spots on where and when to spend those hard earned dollars.
Me, I just had to have it.:D

I must have missed that you had CS4. I had read early on that the plugin that I've been using is only for CS5.
Sorry about that.

tbaybucs

for me i have found that pixel bender has rescued a ton of images that were basically trash. thats what i really like about it

RogersDA

tbaybucs wrote: »

for me i have found that pixel bender has rescued a ton of images that were basically trash. thats what i really like about it

That's the problem with these plug-ins. People use them as a crutch to create an image, and their effect is/becomes abused/overused. Look at Orton, OOB, selective coloring, etc. Don't get me wrong - these plug-ins/techniques have a purpose and a place (and I have used them). But one should get good photos first then see how these effects can be sparingly applied to give a unique, personal touch.

And, welcome to DGrin!

ghinson

New reason to like Pixel Bender. The latter three images I posted in this thread, along with one other, were all printed on an 11x14 gallery-wrapped canvas (from Artistic Photo Canvas) and put in the Holiday Small Works show at the local Artists Association gallery and sold on opening night!

But David is right. Got to be careful with the plug in. And we need to stop telling others about it, so that the look won't become Photomaticized!

Drazick

A review of Pixel Bender Based Plug In:
http://www.moosepeterson.com/blog/?p=18194