AKVIS Sketch plugin: Photo-to-Sketch Conversion Released by: AKVIS LLC Web Site: http://akvis.com Plugin for photo-to-sketch conversion Email: submit@akvis.com Keywords: photo-to-sketch conversion, pencil drawing, watercolor drawing, color sketch, charcoal Update Date: 2/20/2007 4:14:32 AM Hits: 76 Descrption:  AKVIS Sketch is a plugin for conversion of photos into pencil sketches and watercolor drawings. You can make any photo look like B&W or color drawing, imitate the technique of graphite or color pencil, charcoal or watercolor painting. Photo-to-sketch conversion can be a lot of fun and open for you new ways of creativity. If you have always been wondering how to draw or paint, now you can embody your ideas with AKVIS Sketch. Many photo editing enthusiasts have already appreciated the Sketch’ s features. You can see a gallery of examples (many created by users) at http://akvis.com/en/sketch/examples-pencil-drawing.php AKVIS Sketch also enjoys attention of professional designers. The program was awarded “Best Image Editing Software 2006” by "DT&G Magazine". New to version 3.0 of AKVIS Sketch: By popular request, the possibility to save/edit user presets has been added. Now it is possible to save favorite settings for subsequent use. The new version fixes the bug that caused false display and processing of an image in the plug-in's window after layer transformation/movement. Version 3.0 offers a new installation method on Macintosh: just drag the folder AKVIS Sketch from the Installation Wizard into the Plugins folder of your photo editor. Compatibility with Windows Vista has been added. You can use Sketch in many ways. Surprise your friends and relatives by presenting them their pencil portraits. Make a watercolor drawing out of a photo from your last nature shooting to decorate your room. Convert your own photo into a color sketch to print on a T-shirt. Create a comic out of your party videos. The program can be helpful to designers who need to quickly bring images to one style for a web-site or an advertisement booklet. In contrast to the similar standard filters (like the built-in filters in Photoshop or PSP) that offer an approximate sketch, AKVIS Sketch provides a convincing result that comes very close to hand-drawn works of a human artist. AKVIS Sketch has a simple interface with a few sliders. At first you can process the image with the default settings and then touch up the photo adding color, or trying different techniques - from pencil to charcoal or watercolor. You can make the hatching denser or finer and change the pitch angle of strokes. Using batch processing in Photoshop or Paint Shop pro you can even convert a film into a cartoon. Like here: http://akvis.com/en/sketch-tutorial/cartoon-film.php For a free trial, AKVIS offers 10 days of fully functional use. Details are available at http://akvis.com/en/sketch/index.php AKVIS Sketch plugin is compatible with Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, Corel Painter, Corel Photo-Paint, and Paint Shop Pro, ACD FotoCanvas, and Ulead PhotoImpact. AKVIS Sketch runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista and on Macintosh Mac OS X 10.4, PowerPC G3 and above.