Black Skimmer

[Joe Senzatimore]

Going through images and trying many with the Fractalius plug-in. Not every image seems suitable , but I thought this one worked pretty well. Painted out some of the effect after it was applied. Also cropped and fliped horizontal as it works better left to right.

Wondering if eveyone who uses this plug-in finds it slow to apply to an image??:2:2:2

Thanks for your input.

[Indranil Sircar]

Excellent composition. Joe. Very good choice of base image and the fract looks great to me. The light is particularly nice on the skimmer.

Fractalius FAQ suggests images above 3M pixels will take long time. I typically keep to around 5M pixels by resizing it to 1500 pixel on the longest side.

[Kerry Perkins]

Joe, I agree with you that this image works really well with Fractalius. I love the colors and the constrained application of the effect. If it were mine I would clean up the specular highlights in the water (white round highlights). Nice image!

I run Fractalius using Windows XP on my Mac with Parallels and CS3. I find that it actually is one of the faster filters out there. All filters and plug-ins consume a lot of memory when they run, so I'm wondering if you have other programs running or windows open when you run it.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Very nice image, and fractalius well suited to it!
Now about the filter's performance.

My attitude is the bigger the file that I start with, the better. Of course it depends on the effect that is desired, and often it is better to start off with a smaller image since the filter effect will be more pronounced.
I use fractalius for a much more subtle effect; for enhancement of lines that the program does better than the PS find edges filter. I work with very large file sizes that originate from a 24 MP sensor, that when opened in PS are 69MB, with a fractalius layer' 139 MB. Of course I do crop, but generally not substantially. Fractalius does run a bit slow, but not nearly as slow as I would expect and 2-3 minutes seems about average, but most importantly it does not freeze up and I do not run out of memory. This may very well be due to the system specs: Intel i5 processor (M450 2.4GHz), 6 GB RAM, Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit, PS CS5 (32 bit version).
I previously used the program extensively on a XP pro machine (3GHz) with 2GB RAM with images originating from a 12.4 MP sensor. Again, I try to avoid extensive cropping. Sometimes I ran into the out of memory problems, but the program running excessively slowly was not a problem. As a work around for the memory problems I'd save the image after the fractalius layer addition, reopen the file and then apply the filter. regards~Bill

[Joe Senzatimore]

Thanks all for the info. from what you all have said it sems about right. 2 to 3 minutes on average.
Thanks again.

[denise ippolito]

Joe, I was wondering when you would fract a skimmer. Beautiful base image and the juvi looks great with the sharp eye rand beak revealed. I love the way the water rendered from the filter. Nice work!

[Joe Senzatimore]

Joe, I was wondering when you would fract a skimmer. Beautiful base image and the juvi looks great with the sharp eye rand beak revealed. I love the way the water rendered from the filter. Nice work!

Thanks Denise. I finaly got around to trying the plug-in on some birds. I see that it is very important to pick the right base image , as not all things look good with this filter applied. I am having great fun with it.