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…and I am.

So before my little sojourn interrupted me, I was talking about the book cover, right? Right.

I had found the photo I wanted and received permission to use it.  The original photo looked like this:

Original photo for book cover.

I absolutely loved this image, but I wanted a painting.  Using the free program FotoSketcher, I could convert it to look like one.  But there was another issue.

You see those signs and awnings?  I didn’t want those.  For one thing, there could be rights issues with those businesses.  For another, I didn’t want to pinpoint Newtonberg.  Since this photo is of a street scene in Sonoma County, California, and Newtonberg is in Texas, I didn’t want anything to identify it.  So the first thing I had to do was to blur those out.

Using TwistedBrush Pro Studio, I blurred out the words and other identifying marks.  This doesn’t look very good on a regular photo, but since I was going to convert it to a painting, that would obscure things.

Photo with text blurred

(Side note: TwistedBrush Pro Studio is not normally free, but an older version was one of the GiveAway of The Day programs at the time I was working on this, so my version was.  I can highly recommend GAOTD if you don’t already get their e-mails.)

Now I was ready to convert the image to a painting.  FotoSketcher couldn’t be easier to use.  I simply opened the program and chose the image.  Once the photo was opened, it asked me for parameters.

As I looked at my options, I decided I actually liked the way the sketch looked better than I liked the painting options.  So I chose “Oil Pastel Sketch (color)” from the drop-down menu and played with the settings until I liked what I saw in the preview box.  I did not add a texture at this point, since I was going to run the finished picture through it again to add a final texture to everything.

Then I clicked the “Draw!” button and waited.  Less than five minutes later, I had something like this:

FotoSketcher result

Now I was ready to add the title and author.

Next: PhotoScape…