Apple is highlighting Studio Artist 2.0 in a new online article.
Studio Artist is the “graphics synthesizer” tool from Synthetik Software. It runs natively in Mac OS 8-9 and Mac OS X 10.1. The software combines painting and drawing tools with image processing and video effects, and lets you edit images with both raster and vector tools. Using modeling derived from the study of human visual perception, Studio Artist can also automatically produce painting actions.
The software ships with over 2,000 factory presets that define various visual looks and tactile feels. Each paint preset includes over 300 editable parameters, as well.
“If you’re unfamiliar with Studio Artist, you’ll be impressed with how much it can do — and for whom,” Apple says. “Are you a trained artist? if so, it lets you create images from scratch, or modify existing digital images in thousands of new and unusual ways. Conversely, if you’ve never had any formal graphics arts training, it doesn’t matter — Studio Artist does the work for you, automatically. All you have to do is set the artistic parameters you want it to apply to your source image, hit the action button and watch it go to work.”
Studio Artist was first released in 1999 by John Dalton, the creator of Deck, a multi-track audio recording tool. And as music synthesizers can color, change and add effects to audio, Studio Artist can color, change and apply artistic effects to still or moving images, Apple says.
David Biedny, a Mac guru and former ILM effects specialist, recently used Studio Artist to render a series of photographs in a variety of painterly styles for one of his clients. Apple notes that Biedny’s example also touches on one of the “outstanding features” of the application: by automatically vectorizing raster images, Studio Artist can re-render high-resolution files from low-resolution source images. You can even resize low-res images to make larger images at higher resolutions.
With Studio Artist 2.0, you can also create animations from your QuickTime movies automatically. You can also apply a variety of video editing effects to your movies, including morphing, warping and other kinds of distortion.
To experience what’s possible with Studio Artist 2.0, it helps to look at examples of images and movies that others have created with it, according to Apple. Synthetik Software features a gallery of still and moving images by a variety of graphics artists and individuals. And Seattle digital artist Victor Ingrassia showcases a collection of “photo-paintings and moovettes” he’s created with Studio Artist on his iTools home page.
The suggested retail price for Studio Artist 2.0 is US$379, and registered users can upgrade for $179. More details are available from the Web site.