Edit Integrate Review — Synthetik Studio Artist 3.0

Synthetik Software's Studio Artist 3 is an image-synthesis program that can be used to paint original compositions by hand. In that way it's similar to Corel Painter and Photoshop. Studio Artist is also able to generate “painted” images automatically based on an underlying source image or video footage without altering the source. The new image uses painterly effects that are created mathematically and, like vectors in Adobe Illustrator, are capable of infinite detail. This is exciting because it means you can create new full-resolution HD footage from DV footage.

Synthetik Software''s Studio Artist 3 features a complete set of image-processing tools, as well as hundreds of Patches, which are brushstroke presets with extensive
parameter controls.

In addition, Studio Artist has a complete set of image-processing tools such as warps and blurs that can be applied to an image before or after painting. You can, for example, import a DV sequence and use it to automatically generate a watercolor treatment of the footage, and then reprocess the footage with discrete areas of blurring, color correction, or any of dozens of postproduction processing filters. You can also go in and brush in specific areas of an image using a Wacom tablet and then output the entire sequence as a QuickTime movie or in Flash .swf format.

This is just a short summary of the power of Studio Artist. The program does all the above tasks with great flexibility and exhaustive control. I say exhaustive because you can create thousands of paint looks using dozens of parameters. Fortunately, there are hundreds of presets called Patches, which are essentially brushstrokes. This puts a lot of power at your fingertips from the moment you open the software. In addition, experienced users will enjoy the extensive parameter controls.

Much of the power of this program is based on its use of procedural imaging technology. This means that Patches are mathematical constructs rather than bitmap images. One of the main advantages of procedural textures is that they are resolution-independent. Because they are described mathematically, making them larger is just a matter of readjusting the math to rescale a Patch to whatever new size is required. If you try rescaling a bitmap texture, on the other hand, the image begins to look pixilated when it's blown up past its native size.

Patches are organized into collections in dropdown menus. There are more than 3,000 of them, so it takes a reasonable amount of playtime to get a basic understanding of how they look when applied to an imported image or video sequence.

The interface is relatively simple, with a big canvas area in the center flanked by a tool palette on the left. This is where you will find the Paint Synthesizer, Texture Synthesizer, and image-processing tools.

The Paint Synthesizer contains the Patches. As mentioned, you have a lot of presets, but you can reveal the parameters of any Patch to adjust the look. Or you can work from scratch and invent Patches and save them to your own collection. There are also user groups on the Internet where you can find free, downloadable Patches created by other artists.

Using painterly effects that are created mathematically, Studio Artist can generate “painted” images automatically based on an underlying source image or video footage without altering the source.

You can paint stroke by stroke with the Paint Synthesizer by selecting a Patch and drawing on a blank canvas, or you can import an image and paint over the image. The underlying source image is never altered when you paint over it. There is no limit to the number of Patches used on a single image, so you can mix watercolor with oil, for example. While many of the Patches mimic traditional art materials, many are just strange abstract patterns and textures.

Though you might use Studio Artist as a canvas for Wacom-style dynamically controlled brushstrokes, you can also hit the Auto button and watch as a Patch style transforms your image over time. The Auto process creates a new image based on the original source, and the paint strokes appear one at a time in rapid succession (several per second) so that it might take 30 seconds or a few minutes to completely cover the canvas. This is done on single frames or on video footage. The original source is left unchanged. Called Intelligent-Assisted drawing, this is the first operation that many people perform in the program.

Intelligent-Assisted drawing will make some artists wince, as the result has little to do with traditional painting or drawing. (Studio Artist actually can emulate certain paint styles reasonably well.) But the automatic process is really just the first step in working with the program, and auto-painting is probably the only realistic solution for transforming the thousands of frames in a video sequence.

Auto painting can be controlled. For instance, you can stop the auto process at any point, change the paint style, and continue to process the image. The new style is added to what was already there, essentially painting over the existing paint effects. There is no limit to the number of styles that can be applied to an image, so you can build up some very interesting collaged or layered images.

Patches have powerful attributes not found in other image-editing tools, with the exception of Corel Painter. There are options for dimensional brushes, ink-flow behavior control, and particle brushes. All are highly customizable. For instance, you can set the light direction for a dimensional paint Patch to resemble a very thick oil brushstroke. If the light strikes the paint stroke from above, the ridges and raised portions of the paint stroke cast minute shadows downward.

Studio Artist has 60 image-editing processes under Image Operations, including Invert, Deinterlace, White Balance, various blurs, Line Screen, and global paint effects such as Smart Contrast and Simplify. You might still need After Effects for some video processing of footage before or after using the program, but Studio Artist offers some standout image-processing tools with many applications, such as Watershed and Simplify.

Of course, with all these Photoshop-like tools you will probably want elements like selection areas and layers. Studio Artist has both. The tool palette provides Bezier (curves with handles) and marquee selection tools of the kind found in Photoshop. While the layers in Studio Artist are not as powerful as Photoshop layers, they are certainly useful for controlling where and how effects are applied.

Studio Artist also includes a large number of convolution filters, such as wave warps and other deformation tools, that can be used by themselves or with the Patch-based paint tools.

A set of image processes can be combined into a workflow and saved as a Paint Action Sequence. For instance, apply a de-interlace filter to video footage, add a contrast adjustment, and then apply multiple paint effects. A Paint Action Sequence saves these actions as a single file that can be recalled and reused on new footage. This is very helpful when processing multiple movies — for instance, a dozen variations on a design for a package of interstitials or segment openings for a corporate video.

At first look, the Texture Synthesizer seems rather routine: It's a basic fractal noise generator. But as with the rest of the Studio Artist program, the benefits come to those who noodle around with the parameters. Having said that, there are many texture presets to start you off. If you access the dropdown parameter panel, you get a thumbnail preview of the selected effect. Make a change to a parameter for the effect being considered, and the thumbnail preview updates immediately.

Textures can be created on their own using mathematical operations like Fractals or noise, or generated from an image. One interesting application is to use an image just for its texture. You can generate a grayscale texture influenced by the basic pattern of a digital photo or a texture from a stock library. A note of caution: Do yourself a favor before tackling the Texture Synthesizer. Go through the three video tutorials covering this part of the software. This will save you untold hours of confusion.

One of the most remarkable new features in Studio Artist 3 is its very powerful vector engine. This permits effects that recall Andy Warhol's celebrity silkscreen images or the rotoscoped animation in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life. Studio Artist allows for considerable control over the vectorization process, and the end result can be converted to the EPS file format for import into Illustrator or Flash. In fact, Studio Artist is a great new resource for Flash animators. Studio Artist has far and away the most flexible vector engine of any graphics program I've looked at. If all you do is Flash animation, definitely look into Studio Artist.

Studio Artist added a new category of effects in version 3 called MSG filters. MSG stands for Modular Synthesized Graphics. MSG filters appear as an option under Presets. Clicking on the Action button applies the filter. MSG filters have a few slider adjustments, but nowhere near the level of control you would find for a paint Patch. They bear a far greater similarity to the Gallery Effects filters in Photoshop, and Studio Artist ships with lots of them.

While Studio Artist can use MSG filters, it cannot write them. Apparently, Synthetik is planning on a new product to create filters. With Paint Action Sequences and the changeable nature of the Paint Synthesizer, it's clear that Synthetik sees an opportunity to offer the über filter maker. This might well be an artist-friendly version of Profound Effects Useful Things, the very powerful filter generator based on Java and aimed at the After Effects market.

Studio Artist offers a new way to work, and that makes documentation crucial. Fortunately, software creator John Dalton has done a good job with the video manual that ships with the product. Actually, a thorough PDF manual accompanies the product, but individual topics are covered in linked QuickTime tutorials, each about 5 to 7 minutes long. A comprehensive list of topics covers essentially all the tools in Studio Artist, plus some techniques and an underlying philosophy of the program. In total there are eight hours of video on three CDs.

While the videos (narrated by John Dalton) are presented well, project-based tutorials that cover actual looks and artist techniques would be great. In the meantime, Studio Artist offers the most complete free QuickTime support of any graphics program on the market. I wish some of the bigger developers would consider adopting this approach.

Frankly, I'm usually not a fan of image-processing plug-ins that create painterly effects. Though it's not the optimal tool for the traditional painter, Studio Artist is an exception, however, because its process creates a new paradigm for image creation. This new paradigm transcends the notion of traditional image processing. Rather than emphasize creation based on direct manipulation of line and form, Studio Artist offers a “found art” metaphor based on thousands of highly customizable painted looks. It's the sheer quantity of looks in Studio Artist that turns a plug-in approach into a genuinely new way to create images.

Now that I've used the program, I can't imagine not making it part of my graphics workflow — everything from previsualization to art comps to motion graphics and rotoscoping. Flexibility is one of the program's most prominent virtues, and version 3 is a mature and reliable tool.

Studio Artist is very easy to learn if you want to unlock 25 percent of what the program can do — and that 25 percent is considerable. Interestingly, the remaining depth does not require methodically learning the software so much as allowing yourself time to experiment. This is not true of 3D apps, where every creative leap is accompanied by lots of hard work learning the software. In that sense, Studio Artist makes the technical side of computer graphics far more transparent.

Synthetik's Studio Artist 3 is a great program and worth every penny of its very reasonable price. Highly recommended.

Company: Synthetik Software
Honolulu; (866) 511-9971
www.synthetik.com

Product: Studio Artist 3.0

Assets: Learn the software via QuickTime tutorials and creative experimentation; powerful and flexible brushes, image-processing tools, and automatic paint functions; new vector engine.

Caveats: Work through video tutorials before tackling the Texture Synthesizer.

Demographic: Creative video artists

Price: $379