Killer Charcoal / Sketch Effect

Norm Sanders

Norm Sanders

Script Wrangler
I've discovered what I think is the best looking charcoal/drawn effect so far, and it's fairly simple.

  1. Copy your video layer to the track above/below.
  2. On your top layer, put the composite mode to DARKEN
  3. On your bottom layer, add gaussian blur & increase the blur to taste.
That's it. Very convincing I think. I discovered this when I was actually looking to give a cartoon effect to a real picture within Photoshop. Came across a forum during my search that gave this instruction for Photoshop, and I just applied the same principles to Vegas. I'm assuming any pro level NLE can do this as well, for any FCP, Avid, or Premiere users who may trip across this.

Have fun with it & hope you find it useful. Here's a simple screengrab of my wife in the park with two of our kids in the b.g. to show the effect ... looks great in motion!:

charcoaleffect.jpg
 
You're welcome ... now you can teach me that great design work you do with banners & graphics! :thumbsup: :evil:
 
Envision said:
I've discovered what I think is the best looking charcoal/drawn effect so far, and it's fairly simple.

  1. Copy your video layer to the track above/below.
  2. On your top layer, put the composite mode to DARKEN
  3. On your bottom layer, add gaussian blur & increase the blur to taste.
That's it. Very convincing I think. I discovered this when I was actually looking to give a cartoon effect to a real picture within Photoshop. Came across a forum during my search that gave this instruction for Photoshop, and I just applied the same principles to Vegas. I'm assuming any pro level NLE can do this as well, for any FCP, Avid, or Premiere users who may trip across this.

Have fun with it & hope you find it useful.
Click to expand...

This is similar to how the "Romance" looks in Ultimate S 2.0 work, you might try adding the Levels tool and the Convolution Kernel/Sharpen Edges to it as well for even more creative fun.
You might find the "Glamour" look to be useful too. Here's a short tutorial on it if you're interested.
Pretty amazing, all the fun things you can do in Vegas with the various modes.
 
stevesnj said:
Sounds cool...can you post a sample clip?
Click to expand...

Didn't do a sample clip, as I wanted something that would show the side-by-side comparisons, so I've edited my original post to include some examples.

Spot said:
This is similar to how the "Romance" looks in Ultimate S 2.0 work, you might try adding the Levels tool and the Convolution Kernel/Sharpen Edges to it as well for even more creative fun.
You might find the "Glamour" look to be useful too. Here's a short tutorial on it if you're interested.
Pretty amazing, all the fun things you can do in Vegas with the various modes.
Click to expand...

Spot, I've JUST purchased Ultimate S2 today and LOVE it ... using it right now for the multi-camera. It's taking me a few steps to learn & get used to it, but I can already tell it's a super valuabe tool & will save me TONS of time in the future, especially as I get more & more used to it.

That said, the reason I wanted to post this thread was because when I checked out the sketch FX, it seemed to include the bump map which just didn't sell me as much as the other method I came across for photoshop. That said, however, I didn't try removing the bump effect ... but it was just my own personal taste.

Anyway, AWESOME software & worth every penny IMO, already in just the first few hours of messing with it!
 
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