GIMP: How to Automate the Tedium?

[jfrazierjr]

Okay, so here's one for you great GIMP overlords of cool:

Say I've got a transparent background tab with some blobs of color on it, and I want to take the smudge tool and randomly smudge these blobs of color inward (toward the center of the blobs) and outward, to give the color blobs a radial-like pattern that blends into the background layer.

Now, let's say I have a lot of these blobs of color, and it's going to take a long time to apply this "radial smudge" to all of them. How, oh great ones, would you automate this to make it easier on yourselves? (I tried using using alpha-to-select then stroke selection with the smudge tool selected, but this basically treated the smudge tool as if it was the painbrush tool, laying down whatever color I'd selected in whatever brush shape I'd selected instead of smudging anything.

Any thoughts would be duly appreciated, in the form of a nice soft wack from my +1 blackjack of repping...

How solid do you want the "spurs"???? Perhaps distort against a plasma layer (perhaps motion blurred in a specific direction). Alternatly, perhaps whirl and pinch might be what you need.

Perhaps an example would help.....

[RobA]

With the script I munged up, if I start with this:
before.png

and do a selection to alpha then alpha to path, running the script will do this:
after.png

Enlarging and shrinking the selection first (to make an outside path and an inside path), then running the script first on the outside then on the inside I got something like this (after playing with spacing and such):
after2.png

Of course, randomness lengths could be added in. Unfortunately, pdb calls won't use new settings like jitter ;(

Let me know and I'll upload a copy if this is the effect you are looking for.

-Rob A>

[jfrazierjr]

Let me know and I'll upload a copy if this is the effect you are looking for.

-Rob A>

umm... YEAH!!! thats kind of neat.. I would give you rep, but I just did that for the script you created for me the other day.

Of course, randomness lengths could be added in. Unfortunately, pdb calls won't use new settings like jitter ;(

If it does not take long to do, go ahead and add it in. Mo options is mo bettah.

[jfrazierjr]

With the script I munged up, if I start with this:
before.png

and do a selection to alpha then alpha to path, running the script will do this:
after.png

Hmmmm.... with some playing with the right colors and some dodge/burn effects, this would make for a somewhat quick way to make top down(symbolic) mountains effect. With variable lengths, I expect you could make some niceish hills...

[jfrazierjr]

Rob, I just had a thought, what if you use your top down mountain technique with the angular gradient fill, and then run this on top of the resulting height map?

[torstan]

I'd be interested in getting my hands on this, for just the reason Joe mentioned.

[RobA]

Rob, I just had a thought, what if you use your top down mountain technique with the angular gradient fill, and then run this on top of the resulting height map?

It does take a bit of futzing about.... Here is the result on the HF of the recent mountain tut I had posted.

The lines are a bit regular... adding some random to the code would probably help.

test.png

-Rob A>

[jfrazierjr]

It does take a bit of futzing about.... Here is the result on the HF of the recent mountain tut I had posted.

The lines are a bit regular... adding some random to the code would probably help.

test.png

-Rob A>

That is THE BOMB DIGITY!!!! As you said, if you can get some randomness into the "smudge stroke"(perhaps a displace???), this would be pretty much perfect.

[Karro]

It does take a bit of futzing about.... Here is the result on the HF of the recent mountain tut I had posted.

The lines are a bit regular... adding some random to the code would probably help.

test.png

-Rob A>

Even if not, if I've got the outline of the mountains on a transparent layer, I can alpha to selection, then run a stroke selection or two with paintbrushes or erasers set to jitter or something to break up the lines and give it some randomnes, even if it turns out to be too difficult to add the randomness into the script itself.

[RobA]

OK, I rewrote it as a script and added a bunch of parameters.

Start with the defaults. It shows up under the Edit menu...

It works against a path, not a selection, so you will have to convert a selection to a path.

The only "weirdness" about it is that path slope is not differentiated by direction. here is a sample run on a circle to show you what I mean....
temp.jpg

The top half stokes "inwards" first and the bottom half strokes "outward" first.

Depending on the pressure this might not matter, but it can be worked around by selecting inside the path (assuming it is closed) with a path to selection, running the script, then inverting the selection and running it again.

Have fun!

-Rob A>