Bold Brushstrokes v2.0 (March 11, 2023)

[Robot Graffiti]

This plugin draws your image with many overlapping brush strokes.

 

 

Menu: Effects->Artistic

 

Plugin file: 

 

BoldBrush.zip

 

It creates a painterly effect.

 

It has options to create a range of different styles.

 

 

 

Versions:

 

-2.0 Now requires Paint.NET version 5. Stroke shapes are more varied. GPU rendering is enabled. Menu has been totally re-arranged. Other minor tweaks and optimisations.

-1.2 Brushstroke positions are now jiggled a little, pseudorandomly, to reduce an unwanted pixelation-like effect when drawing wide strokes. Plugin is now optimised to run a little faster than before.

-1.1 Replaced "effect strength" option with "preserve fine details" option. Cleaned up control panel a little. Maybe hopefully fixed a crashing bug.

-1.0 Initial Release (made with CodeLab)

 

Version 1.2 (for peasants who aren't using Paint.NET 5 yet) is here:

BoldBrush 1.2.zip

Edited March 11, 2023 by Robot Graffiti
New version of plugin

[ReMake]

@Robot Graffiti, an interesting effect and welcome to the forum.

 

Can I advise you to replace the radio buttons with drop-down lists. This will reduce the size of the interface (it seems cumbersome now for me).

Perhaps this information will be useful to you.

[Robot Graffiti]

Thanks mate. I'll keep that in mind if I make another version later.

[lynxster4]

@Robot Graffiti welcome to the forum and Thank You! I like this effect; does a pretty good job simulating a painted canvas.  👍 😊

[Pixey]

Hi @Robot Graffiti what a great Plugin - thank you 😊 and welcome to the forum 🥳

[Red ochre]

Initially very impressed but sadly it crashed paint.net - without any useful crash information.

 

On Pdn 4.3.12, opened the effect, looked good!, changed to rough stroke - looked even better, increased "chonkyness" - Pdn just closed?
Re opened Pdn and looked at the crash log but nothing listed under Exception details?

 

I really hope you can find the bug as it is potentially a very useful artistic effect.

[Robot Graffiti]

You're right Red, it does seem to get an out of memory exception sometimes that can crash Paint.NET. Not all the time but occasionally. I'll fix it if I can find the cause.

[Red ochre]

Perhaps a G.D.I+ graphics object is not being disposed of correctly? - just a long shot guess!
If so, wrapping them in 'using' blocks often helps.

 

I'm not an expert but there are some extremely knowledgeable and helpful plugin experts on this forum.
If you can't find the problem, do consider starting a thread in the developer central section.

In my experience, sometimes fresh eyes can spot problems in code that the author can't see.

[null54]

58 minutes ago, Red ochre said:

Perhaps a G.D.I+ graphics object is not being disposed of correctly?

 

From looking at the dissembled code it appears that all of the GDI+ objects are being disposed.

I am wondering if the 'out of memory' error is a multi-threading issue, the plugin is not configured as single threaded and GDI+ objects do not like to be used by multiple threads.

[Rick Brewster]

If it's using GDI+ (System.Drawing) for drawing then this is a very good candidate to convert to GpuDrawingEffect with PDN5. Direct2D is much better than GDI+ for this sort of thing. You can access the source image with this.Environment.GetSourceImageBgra32(), then Lock() it for direct access, then draw whatever you want into the IDeviceContext you get in OnDraw(). The multithreading / tiling is handled for you after that.

[Robot Graffiti]

I have uploaded version 1.1.

 

Made extra sure to dispose of GDI+ objects as suggested by Red ochre, and compiled with the single threading option in CodeLab as suggested by null54. I hope this will make this version less crashy. I guess the intermittent error was probably GDI+ complaining about multiple threads accessing the same image.

 

Replaced "effect strength" option, which tended to produce ugly results, with "preserve fine details" option that selectively makes the effect more transparent in high contrast areas only.

 

Replaced radio buttons with dropdowns to make the control panel a slightly less intimidating size, per ReMake's suggestion.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Robot Graffiti

[Red ochre]

Just tested the new version... no crashes!... useful and fun too.
Thanks for the update and thanks to @null54 for his single-threaded suggestion.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I really like this. Makes me wistful for the paint-by-numbers artworks of the 70's.

 

[Pixey]

This Plugin is really awesome  

 

[Scooter]

Well I tried...Hummm?

[lynxster4]

@Ego Eram Reputo, @Pixey, @Scooter  All three of your images look great. Well done!  😍

[Robot Graffiti]

I made a new version.

 

Updates:

• Version 2.0 will not work with Paint.NET 4. You need Paint.NET 5.0 or later.
• GPU rendering is enabled now thanks to all the new stuff in Paint.NET 5.
• Brushstroke shapes are more varied now (they're rough little SVGs I drew; the previous version just used lines with novelty endcaps).
• I totally re-arranged the menu.
• Slightly better handling of transparency (but still not perfect).
• It now does some of the calculations with premultiplied alpha and linear colour space, for better colour accuracy (though to be honest it doesn't make a big difference in this case since the whole point of the plugin is to make photos look less realistic).
• There are various other minor tweaks and optimisations.

[sashwilko]

Nice updates, works great thank you. 

[BoltBait]

On 3/10/2023 at 8:48 PM, Robot Graffiti said:

I made a new version.

 

@Robot Graffiti, please read the following post:

 

My tutorial for adding tabs to an effect had a bug in it.

 

https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/121345-tutorial-adding-tabs-to-your-visual-studio-based-paintnet-v50-plugin/?do=findComment&comment=617053

 

It just requires one line of code change on your part.