Tutorial: Polar Coordinates to vary stroke direction (Fluff)

[Fluffbutt]

We've all seen the results of filters and plugins like Paint Engine, Virtual Painter, Impressionist, Dry Brush, etc.

Have you noticed that most of the output seems, umm, 'linear' - all the strokes in one or at most 4 directions?

Try this:
* Before applying the arty filter. apply Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates > Rectangular to Polar
* Apply your filter of choice
* Now apply Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates > Polar to Rectangular

You'll find the "arty filter" strokes going in many directions!!!!.

Drawbacks: The edges get ragged: Rectangular to polar then polar to rectangular works. The opposite sequence messes up the edges, too.

Another thing to try:
* Rectangular to polar
* Apply your arty filter
* Then the Wave filter with with one generator (very low amplitude)
* Finish up with polar to rectangular again.

Are we having fun yet?

[Leah]

Here's an example of playing around with this technique...

[Additional tip - to prevent too much fubar, before distorting the image I duplicated it, increased image size to 120%, then shift-dragged the original image's background layer so that it was centred on top of the new, bigger image and flattened the layers. Then I did the distort -> apply filter -> distort back, and then I cropped it back down to the size of the original image again.]

What we have here is, on the left, the image done with the Virtual Painter Colored Pencil plugin. On the right I have layered three images together - the bottom layer is the image after distorting rectangular to polar, applying the same Virtual Painter settings, and distorting back polar to rectangular; the middle layer is the image done with "straight" Virtual Painter (i.e. the same as the image on the left), at 50% opacity; and the top layer is the image after distorting polar to rectangular, applying the same Virtual Painter settings, and distorting back rectangular to polar, at 36% opacity.

I used a little bit of layer masking on the various layers - to deal with the bits that had been fubar in spite of my best endeavours, and to tidy up some areas which didn't quite align - but the whole process was really very quick and, I think, gives a much less "computerised" effect than a vanilla plugin or filter.

[Fluffbutt]

<Leah like my fubar it seems LOL!>

That's a good image to show the effect. Notice how the line in the 'brella are curved, in different directions, like a hand artist would do.

The technique works well for virt painter and PE filters. AND the standard photoshop filters that only have topleft/topright/etc can now have multi angles. Also p-r/r-p is a quick filter.

I like your idea of multi layer transparencies too. I'll have to incorporate that.