Create your own paint by numbers

Sorry if this is a repost, I don't come here too often.

I'm a big fan/dork of paint by numbers and would like to generate my own PBN from fotos. I already found and bought two different programs, but they really leave me disappointed as they don't show much resolution/details.

I've also seen all the tricks with Photoshop, posterize etc but that's way too much work and also doesn't look great.

Anybody have a great source/software they can recommend?

 

Thanks Matt!

I found one interesting lead and will report about it here later on. Fingers crossed.

 

I found this place online:
Personalized Photo Paint-by-Number Kits | Easy123Art

I sent them a picture of a submarine and they turned it into a PBN with over 40 colors.

Lots of work obviously, but very promising. I love PBN as a technique, I just can't stand their traditional subjects of Unicorns and kitschy landscapes.

Ultimately it all boils down to good software to transfer a foto into a PBN and it appears that this online shop has a good program. Nothing I could find and buy otherwise comes even close: The programs I bought did a very poor job transforming the image. I realize it could be done manually in photoshop, but what a pain.

 

I will definitely come back here with some updates on how it is going. Problem is: there are about 3 other PBNs on the assembly line first

Agreed on the larger scale, then again: Once you have it in their size, you can scale it up at e.g. Kinkos*. Granted the resolution doesn't scale (although I have seen some entire walls painted with scaled up PBNs for effect) but what easyart sent back to me needs surgeon's magnifying glasses to work with. In some areas it is almost like a Seurat. So you could easily double the existing canvas without much loss.

* First thing I do before starting on a PBN is take some good hi-res shots of the canvas with the PBN outline for exactly that reason.

 

I did find meanwhile a pretty good software to create your own PBNs:

pbnArtist by Mr. Tim's Workshop

I have no affiliation with them and their software is dirt cheap. Based on some early tests it does a pretty good job transforming the picture into all the color layers. Not surprisingly it is using over 40 colors to do so, the de facto standard for a decent PBN (as I figured out in my "research").

I'll have to do the ultimate test by getting a picture layout on canvas, but what I've seen so far easily trumps the other two software products out there, which I also bought and which are utterly crap.

Of course if you want a ready-to-start kit, you'd have to go with the website I mentioned earlier as they actually send you a canvas and the assorted colors in jars.

 

Good point. And this software here not only costs close to nothing at 20 bucks, the writer even sent me a personal email note thanking me for the purchase. I like that in particular as it not only shows dedication, but might also be a way to give him feedback at some point.

I tested the program in more depth yesterday and found that his overall transfer process is pretty good. However PBNs done by computers are still never as good as one done by an artist who makes up for the shortcomings of the process with creative and clever use of colors. A program can't really do that, so in this case here, the software gives you an alternative: It leaves sketches of the original behind. So in practical terms that means that while the colors still cover the whole image, the outlines of an object can be left standing giving the object more structure and form. The effect of that is completely controllable. So you can go from something resembling a children's coloring book to a true PBN with no black lines at all.

Since I'm looking for more "manly" subjects like airplanes and warships, this is pretty useful and I'll end up with something in between the settings. I "printed" a "Sink the Bismarck!" type of image onto PDF, which I'll take now to my local's Kinko store to have it printed and framed onto white canvas. I'm pretty sure that'll work. Then it is off to the local artists' store to get the 40+ shades of blues to fill in.

PS: Nice to see you here Ian. Can you envision some epic F1 battle paintings as a PBN? Say Senna in the rain at Monaco? Sheesh I could even turn some of my own F1 fotos into a PBN. Like Gilles in qualifying at Brands Hatch...Hmmm, there is an idea...

 

The old adage "garbage in, garbage out" is definitely true and the program actually has its own "photo editor" to smoothen out certain areas etc.

Not that I want to jump on this, but to give everybody a better idea of what we're talking about here, I did a quick example. Here a shot I took of Arnoux at Monaco: The PBN sketch with the numbers and also a "finished" example of what the software thinks the final painting will look like:
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Here a different example of Alboreto at Monaco. It shows the same picture without and with sketch mode turned on. While having the program draw the black lines is somewhat cheating for a PBN purist, it does increase the realism in the picture.
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