Digital Creativity Snippet
#4
Art-filter Image
Choose an image to upload
Several websites such as Pixabay and Pexels offer royalty-free stock images that you can download and use for your own projects. Of course, it is highly appreciated when you offer the artist a donation and/or include a reference to the artist in your creation. Sometimes a free account is needed to be able to download the image. For a large version of the image, a premium account is needed. But the smaller image sizes usually have a good enough quality to be used in your design projects. The Art-filter effects tend to be most amazing when you use images with clear colors and shapes. For this example, an image of a turtle (found on Pixabay) was used, downloaded in the dimensions 1280 x 960. The image is often saved in your downloads folder.
Comparing online Art-filter results
Many websites offer the opportunity to upload an image, and process it online with editing options and artistic effects. The most impressive results are showcased below. But these websites have many more available effects that deserve your attention. Be warned, this can keep you busy for hours and hours.
- The Lomo Photo Effects Tool is a great website to get fast editing results. For example, you can modify the edges of the images. Below you see the results with the corner editor, the brushstrokes effect, and the vignette editor.
- Some effects from PhotoFilters are worth trying, such as the technicolor effect for intensified color and the old boat effect for a sepia look:
- PhotoFunia has some attractive Art-filters, such as the oil painting effect and the watercolor effect, as you can see below. For a more dramatic effect, you could consider running the filter twice. After the first time, you’d have to save the filtered image and re-upload it to run the same filter again.
- The best filters from FotoRam create impressive artistic effects. You can choose the percentage of the filter that is applied. Most of these results were achieved by applying the filter at an intensity of 70%. Below you see the disco effect, the la muse effect, and the fairy-tale effect:
- LunaPic also offers some interesting effects, such as the polygons effect and the psychedelic effect. When the desired result is at an intensity of 70% or 80% of the filter, but instead the full intensity is used when saving the file, you could consider taking a screenshot. On Mac, you do this with the keyboard combination shift-command-4 and then select the frame you wish to capture. It will automatically be saved on the desktop. On Windows, you would need to use print-screen and crop the image after saving or download a Windows snipping tool to select the image.
- The last awesome effects are found at GoArt. The processing time is slightly longer than at the other websites, but the results are worth the wait. The examples below are created with the surrealism effect and the abstractionism effect. The same point applies here that the online editor might not save the desired percentage of the filter-intensity.
- For the best Sketch effect, consider sending the image to your phone and using the Cartoon Photo Editor. After the phone has processed and saved the image, you can email it back to your computer. Especially Cartoon 6 creates a beautiful pencil sketch effect:
Editing the Art-image
To make some final adjustments you can use a simple image editor such as Preview on Mac or Paint on Windows. It allows you to crop a certain part of the image, or rotate the image. Also, you can adjust the brightness and color of the image. It could be wise to first duplicate of the image, and then make your adjustments. This way you can always come back to your previous versions. In Preview, select tools → adjust color to make changes, and make the image appear exactly the way you like it.
A limitation these online editors and artistic filters have, is that some processed images will have a white background. This will cause problems when you want to integrate your images on a background with a different color, or if you want to use shadow effects. In that case, you’d be better off learning how to create similar effects with more professional software that will allow you to have a transparent background. Hopefully this Digital Creativity Snippet has inspired you to start creating awesome images with artistic effects!
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