Brusspup convert photo to dots

[ibclare]

Ha, see there were writings too. Now he tells us. The video didn't say sqaut about whether he did prep work in PS or Spritecraft or anything else. He could as well have drawn it. Anyway while playing around with the idea, I made a map of the general location of color (experimented with inverted halftone and reticulation and making a dot pattern to apply and so forth). I was messing around with blend modes and I got this strange image. Using RTC's portrait. Some of you know how much I like painting and fine art. Maybe I stumbled onto a new PS process to mess around with. Oh, I don't kid myself into thinking it's "new" to PS users, but it is to me.

subtract


difference

 

[Robert68]

Thanks ibClare... this looks great too!! I will try this too...

Haven fun everyone!

Robert

 

[ibclare]

OMG, that was a joke. You're funny, and I hope you're having fun!

 

[Tom Mann]

@Robert - As you have seen, there are a huge number of variants possible when you want to convert something to dots. If you look carefully, you'll see that the version apparently produced by Spritecraft has an unusual number of lines of blocks rather than a more truly random pattern. If you absolutely need to duplicate that look, sure, go with Spritecraft, but I would suggest that you don't disregard the huge number of other possibilities for making a look which is entirely your own using some of the techniques already mentioned in this thread.

FWIW, here is yet another possible look for the girl.

I also had a different file open from another forum thread, decided to spend 30 seconds making it into a graphic dot pattern. Also, don't forget the seminal work in this area by Roy Lichtenstein (1 example also attached below),

Tom

 

[bgoodman4]

I have been playing a bit with this challenge and have come up with a not bad technique which I will describe below. If anyone wants a copy of the relevant files let me know and we can make arrangements to get them to you. They are too large to upload here. I took a screen shot of the final image which is what I have attached to this post. I should say that I tried a number of different approaches and this is the one that gave the best results. I have simply recorded the steps as I did them.

1- I created a dot grid pattern in 16 bit mode grey scale 300 dpi (I used a CAD program to generate this pattern as its easier to do it there than in PS - if anyone wants a copy of the grid let me know).

2 - copied photo from beginning of this thread.

3 - paste photo above grid and sized the photo to fill the entire project space

4 - duplicate photo layer and turn off the dup layer

5 - move the grid to the top of the layer stack

6 - select all of the black dots (magic wand not constrained)

7 - turn off the grid layer and make sure the photo layer is active

8 - run a Gaussian blur (I used a 43 pixel radius), after running the blur invert the selection and clear the now selected area

9 - move this layer to the top of the stack, the layers should now be in the following order. Top - Gaussian blur layer, middle - grid layer, base - photo layer.

10 - make the middle layer active, select the white and clear leaving only the black dots. This is important as leaving this layer off or removing it has a negative effect on the results. I do not know why this is so as the Gaussian blurred dots cover the grid dots at this point,,,,, but it is what it is. Try it yourself and see if you can avoid having this layer as part of the final image.

11 - scale image up 150%

12 - reduce the opacity of the base layer to 70%13 - merge visible (all 3 layers) or leave project as is

Thats it. I have no idea what any changes to the above will give in the way of results. I do know that if the file is saved as a jpg some of the effect is lost. I tried saving the file as both a tiff and pdf file and the effects were maintained. In addition, as you can see from the attached, a screen shot saved as a jpg seemed to capture the effects.

The grid file is 6.4 megs and the tiff project file is 13.6 megs.

 

[ibclare]

Very nice bg and Tom. Thanks for doing the written tuts. I am going to bookmark this thread for future reference. Thanks everybody for all your ideas.

 

[bgoodman4]

Thanks clare, I found this one interesting. I like the effect very much and I will have to try it in the future for my jewellery product shots.The image has an unusual feel to it which becomes evident if you pull back from the computer screen 3 or 4 feet. There is a sense of depth that I really like.