Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others

Reviews


Mediachance Dynamic Auto-Painter

by Kay Michael Kuhnlein

 

Review Date: July 28, 2009 Recommend? yes | Rating: 10 

 
Pros: Realistic painting effects, various styles, you can watch it paint
Cons: Slow when rendering for maximum resolution
Website: http://www.mediachance.com/dap/

 


If you like painted pictures, you can do nothing wrong with Dynamic Auto Painter. Even if this program is only available as a stand alone version and not as a plugin, the results are astounding. Come with me on an exploration of this software.


The ?Auto? in Its name is already telling: the most difficult task is the selection of the photo that you want to start with. After that put your legs on your desk and observe the program doing its job. This review is based on Version 1.6 of the software.


For the first test I have chosen the picture of Mona Lisa. I wanted to see how the famous work of Leonardo Da Vinci appear with the style of another artist. In Dynamic Auto Painter I chose die preset ?starry?, activated the ?continuous? setting and reduced the value of ?Max Brush Size? a bit. With ?continuous? the program is painting brush strokes without end until you hit the ?Stop? button. After one or more hours it may stop because there is not enough RAM.


Before you do that you have to decide for which purpose you want to use the painted result, because you can choose different image sizes in the drop-down menu ?Canvas?. For Mona Lisa I decided to use ?Medium Resulotion 6Mpix?. Click start ?Start? when you are ready.


pictures/dap_1_small.jpg

Full of fascination I am observing how the brush strokes are magically distributed on the canvas. After I am satisfied I hit ?Stop? and received an image with 2400 x 1584 pixel in first-class quality. This is enough for printing on canvas at 90 x 60 cm.


That is the great strength of the program: Beginning with a picture of few pixels I receive a painting with a big image size without a noticeable loss of quality.

For my second attempt I use an image with 1000 x 750pixel. This time I use the preset ?Camille? and ?Canvas High Resulution 10Mpix?. Again I reduce the ?Max Brush Size? setting.


pictures/dap_2_small.jpg

Please notice the 100% image detail in the top left corner

A few minutes later the program delivers a painting of Havanna at 3200 x 2400 in astonishing quality. On canvas the image would decorate my living room at a size of 120 x 90 cm.


The results are so convincing that I want to try to explore the borders of this extraordinary technology.


For my next try I prepared a wallpaper in Photoshop with a size of 400 x 400 pixel. Normally you can only print such an image at stamp size.


In Dynamic Auto Painter I choose the preset ?Monet? and keep ?Canvas High Resulution 10Mpix?. Now I discover different settings under the term ?Palette?. I use ?Grayscale? from the list and here we go.


pictures/dap_3_small.jpg

A 100% crop of an eye is below the full image

Maybe you cannot judge the result because of its small size here. But I did not know what to say. I got an image at 3200 x 3200 pixel ready for a canvas print of 120 x 120 cm. (Why is my living room not big enough?)


Now I am getting even more daring. From www.haraldheim.com I grab a portrait photo that I cut down to 228 x 228 pixel.


Nice, but very small to be useful for something. My ambitions rocket to the sky, so I keep the ?Canvas High Resolution 10Mpix? setting with the preset ?Camille?. And again I receive a painting with 3200 x 3200 pixel, that is a eyecatcher on every wall.


]pictures/dap_4.jpg  pictures/dap_5_small.jpg

Original low-res image on the left and painted hi-res result on the right

Again the ?Painter? did a great job.


As you can see it is possible to cast a painting of undeniable beauty from the smallest bad-quality image. You can have it even bigger with the Canvas setting ?Ultra High Resolution 16 Mpx (Speciality)?. But for that you will need a fast computer, otherwise you will have to wait very long. For most purposes the ?Standard Resolution 2,5 Mpix? setting should do fine anyway.

Dynamic Auto Painter offers further adjustment for the size of the brush strokes and sliders for ?wet? or ?dry? strokes. Furthermore, you can influence the detail level of the painting process with the ?Realistic? option. More parameters are waiting for you to explore in the trial version.


For my last try I used a image of 2304 x 3456 pixel. It was rendered with the preset ?Benson? with standard resolution.


pictures/dap_6_small.jpg

Making a great team: Kay Michael and his buddy Harry

This results in an image of 1600 x 1066 pixel. If you want it smaller, you will need to use an image editing application of your choice to do that.


If you managed to read as far, I want to thank you and wish you many great paintings with Dynamic Auto painter.


Yours
Kay Michael Kuhnlein

 

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