Essentials Cafe

When I ask Painter Essentials 4 to do the automatic photo-painting--where you watch as it turns your photo into a painting in the style you select--the process works normally until the last few seconds, and then goes awry: Instead of painting normally, it starts making thick, sharp, black marks all over, completely defacing the painting. Just as the detail in the painting would normally appear, the picture gets ruined.

I am running Painter Essentials 4.0.048 on the Mac OS X 10.5.2. I had hoped that updating Painter Essentials to the latest released version would solve the problem, but it has not.

Is this a known issue? Has anyone found a workaround?

Thanks!

just a thought - is it possible you had left it in illustration mode accidentally, everything looks normal till the last few seconds and the mad slasher takes over.

Hi Charles:

Does this happen with all the auto-painting presets or with one in particular?

Thanks!

Wendy

Wendy, I have not tried all of the possible settings, but it does happen several of them. Usually I choose acrylic brush settings, but I know it also happens with watercolor. The look of the "mad slasher" strokes is the same no matter which brush I select. If you would like me to try certain modes in particular, just suggest them and I'll do it.

Tolouse, I am not sure what you mean, which I guess means it is possible. If I have a photo loaded and choose one of the photo painting options, how do I make sure it is not in this "illustration mode"?

 Thanks!

it is the 7th option down on custom settings, and if it is chosen you can get an effect similar to the one you describe. It is difficult for us to imagine what is happening to your pics - hows about posting one with this problem in show your creations, to give us all a chance to visualise the effect you describe, after a day or so you can always delete it, but more than one working on the problem might help. Apart from deliberately choosing illustration in custom settings I can't get the effect you describe any other way.

It's possible that at one point you selected 'Illustration' from the autopainting styles drop down list and then changed your brush.  When you choose a brush that is different from the one associated with the autopainting style, 'Custom Settings' will show in the autopainting style box.

Try choosing 'Oil Painting' from the autopainting styles drop down list and then change your brush to one you want.

If I am completely misunderstanding what you are seeing, would you mind posting a screen shot of what you're seeing?

 Dear Wendy and Tolouse:

 I'll have to do some more experimentation to be sure, but it looks like the Illustration thing was exactly the problem!

I did not have Illustration selected, but the combo box showed "Custom", and it is possible that Illustration was the last thing selected before I 'customized' the settings by changing the brush. When I followed Wendy's advice and change the combo box to show "Oil Painting," the problem seemed to disappear.

I have only tested with one image, so I'm not 100% sure, but I am very hopeful that the mad slasher has been put to rest for good.

Thank you both!

No problem!

Have fun experimenting - looking forward to seeing the results posted