In the fuzz of being laid horizontal on the couch with a flu that feels worse than covid, I glanced at the phone noticing an app I had not opened in maybe 8+ years (is there a name for these apps we just leave dusty on devices).
It’s called “Virtual Painter” and is in a folder with a few other iOS apps that were more commonly used a decade ago to do creative fun with images- you upload a photo, and chose from a set of maybe five styles, and it turns a photo into an image that looks like it was painted say watercolor style or oil paint style.
Just for the heck of it, I loaded up a photo I took of our old yellow tractor (her name is Matilda, does anyone else also name all their vehicles?) rendering it with the style “Purts”. It’s rather nifty to my untrained art eye.
It’s described in the app as “Oil Painting: This is a conventional oil painting with a glaze finish. Broad strokes are used for the background while the detail is added with a finer brush.” If my phone were in a Flintstones episode, we’d peek inside to find some harried little bird painting with a brush.
I knew there was an extra story of the app, but the brain is fuzzy, right? Of course there’s a blog post, and darned if it’s just another rabbit holing story like part 2 of yesterday’s The Best Holes of Curiosity
This was classic. I noticed in flickr that a user name Taka Umemura had favorited a photo of mine and followed me. I maintain my still high level of disdain of the “like” button but for some reason (though I know when Bryan Alexander favorites a flickr photo he will reuse and attribute it in his blog), I was curious. I found that he had made a version of my photo of the dome of a building in Mexico that looked like it had a rough painted texture you could almost feel.
I commented on his photo my thanks for liking the photo and making an artistic version of it, asking how it was done. He replied:
Thank you very much. I’m glad to see your comment. I am providing some app on my web site. Please visit once.
www.livecraft.co.jp/EN/index.html
That was in 2015 that I was able to download from Taka’s site my copy of Virtual Painter.
I was thrilled to click 11 years later and see that his Livecraft site is not only still there, but he has continued to explore painting and storytelling even now with of course a bit of AI. The real joy is here is the effort of one single person expressed on their own web site.
But it also gets me wondering about the blurry lines between photo filter/alteration effects, which have been around a long time, and the current ranging crop of GenAI image tools. One could argue with me (and likely win) that there is no difference. Somewhere in Virtual Painter is an algorithm for altering the pixels of a photography to resemble the style of paintings.
To some degree I might not even care how I made an image, but more, does it please me? Does it communicate something I want to hang under me name? I have no real hand in what Virtual Painter does (well there is a slider for the effects intensity). Can I really claim I created that oil painting of a tractor?
Just for fun, I uploaded the same photo to ChatCPT, and asked it to create an oil panting style version of my tractor.
Personally I like the Virtual Painter one, but I guess I could re-prompt ChatGPT for more texture in the sky. I am not sure that is the point.
Which image to I feel more like it was me who created it? I can’t say. But the difference I can say is that the image pn the rate was the product of one digital artist, craftsperson in Japan, for whom I have had a small personal connection. As far as on the left? me and Sam are not in the same circle.
Is any of this meaningful? Maybe not (remember my brain is fuzzy today).
And all of this pales to the nearly accidental path I took years ago to find this app and make a broef connection with a Japanese digital artists.
So if there are two paths on the digital woods, that is to road I prefer taking.
Featured Image: Rendering in Virtual Painter app with purts style of my ohoto of a farm tractor. Do with it as you like!
