Two More Fun Ways To Create Something New With Public Domain Images

December 9th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Public Domain How-To

This week, my friend J. Arthur Davis of www.artreproservices.com showed me a couple of image utilities that let you do some pretty cool stuff with Public Domain photos and images (or any photos and images for that matter).

At www.caricaturesoft.com, you can download shareware versions of two unique programs (Windows only I believe)…

Photo to Cartoon – “Photo to Cartoon converts photographs into cartoons with a few clicks. No drawing required! Use the result cartoons as avatars, to sign emails and letters, make greeting cards and party announcements, or create a unique art gift. A caricature makes an original and amusing present that even that person who has everything would be happy to get.”

PhotoS – “PhotoS converts digital photos into artistic line drawings. Just load a photo, click the button, and you are an author of a fine line drawing, often indistinguishable from an artist work. Drawing never been so easy!”

Both of these image tools are very, very easy to use and with a little creativity, you can do some really amazing things with old photos and even paintings.

Here’s a an image that’s an old personal favorite of mine. I’m not sure why but I have always “connected” with this public domain photo in a way that I can’t quite explain ~ say “hello” to Chief Joseph…

In just a few minutes of playing around with the Photo to Cartoon tool, I created the following really cool image ~ talk about breathing new life into an old black-and-white photograph! I think the result here is beautiful and it would make a fine poster…

A few more minutes spent playing with the PhotoS tool resulted in the line drawing below…

What’s cool about the PhotoS tool (as well as the Photo to Cartoon tool) is that you have all sorts of options for just how much detail you want to capture from the original image.

I set the PhotoS tool to capture just a minimum amount of detail from the original photo of Chief Joseph and ended up with the line drawing above ~ a little clean-up by hand (which you can do right there from within the tool) and I could have a fine line drawing.

Can you say “create your own public domain coloring books”?

My buddy and fellow PDTH subscriber Adam came up with the idea of creating children’s coloring books using public domain images ~ here’s a great way to do it!

Both programs operate as stand-alone applications in other words – no Photoshop required. Also, if you work with Public Domain images a lot and you find these tools worthwhile, the cost of a license is very reasonable ~ $25.00 each.

The trial version on Photo to Cartoon will let you make 10 cartoons while the trial version of PhotoS will allow you to make 30 line drawings. Both trial versions are fully functional so you can play around with them a little and decide if you’d like to add either one of these to your toolbox permanently.

Thanks for sharing these great tools Jim!