Waterlogue
Ever wondered what your digital paintings would look like in watercolour? Wonder no more!
waterlogue aims to be a fast way to create watercolour prints by enabling you to make broad aesthetic decisions without having to do the hard graft of actually painting.
The app works by selectively removing information from an image, then working it up again using coloured paints based on the filter and settings you apply. There are 14 pre-set styles you can select from an easy-to-use control ribbon. The styles are Instagram-like filters of different tone and hue, but they also apply variations in white spots and unpainted areas, to reflect the way watercolours are traditionally laid down in a single wet pass.
The app was designed for use with photos, but we’ve seen artists having a lot of fun turning their well-rendered digital paintings into softer, watercolour images. There are lightness, border and detail options; the latter is a ruler for changing the pixel number setting, so selecting Giant increases the pixel count and results in finer detail, for example. This brings out definition in close-up shots, while the Small setting creates a more impressionistic canvas that works better on landscapes. Applied filters of a photo stand in an album-like CoverFlow arrangement, making it easy to swipe between passes and 'heart' ones you want to save, copy or share.
The one downside is that faces don't turn out so well, but results look authentic and you can create a variety of effects with vector and 3D rendered images. The new art may lack the depth of a Turner or Hopper, but don't look half bad for an algorithm.