Movie Cartoonizer

After the converter is initialized, the first converted frame appears on the right in the main window, under Current Frame. Depending on the project, it may be necessary to edit some of the frames. Most often, it makes sense to edit the first frame as the later frames are built on the preceding ones.

To edit a frame, first adjust the Smooth-Crisp slider.

For example, the two images below were produced with different Smooth-Crisp settings.

Changing the crispiness of a frame cancels all edits that were previously done to this frame and therefore this should be the first step in editing a frame.

The second step is adjusting the Fewer Details - More Details slider.

The converted frame consists of solid-color areas, like mosaics. When the slider is moved to the right, the number of areas increases, and when the slider is moved to the left, the number of solid-color areas decreases.

The two images below have different Fewer Details - More Details settings. 

Changing the level of details is the second step in frame editing. It doesn't cancel changes made on the first step, but it resets any previous edits of the third step.

The third and the last step is splitting and/or merging individual areas. It is similar to changing the level of detail in the second step, but now it is done locally, one area at a time. Editing a frame with this software is like assembling an image from a mosaic. When a mosaic piece is too big, it can be split into multiple ones. When two pieces need to be joined together, they are merged. Different movies and frames require different amount and type of editing.

To split an area, select Split in the Step 3 toolbar

and click on the area. It will be split into two or more areas. Any result area can be split again.

The Step 3 toolbar has three radio buttons for three modes: Split, Merge and ReColor (Replace Color). To change the mode, select the corresponding radio button. After the mode is selected, click on the area of the image to be changed. In the Merge mode, the first click selects the first merging area and the second click selects the second one and actually does the merge.

To merge two areas together, select Merge in the toolbar and click on the first area; its border will be highlighted by a blue outline. Next, click on the second area, the two areas will be merged together. The two areas do not have to be connected. If areas that are not connected are merged, their colors become the same. For example, when making a portrait, it may be useful to merge two eyes so that their color become the same. To select a different first merging area, right-click on that area.

When two areas are merged, the color of the new area is the average of the two colors. So during both split and merge operations colors of the areas are always changing. If you would like to save a color for further use, check the Replace Color option and click on the area. In the pop-up color menu, click Add to Custom Colors and than click OK. Up to 15 colors can be saved this way.

It is possible to change the color of an area to the previously saved color or to any other desired color. Select ReColor in the toolbar, click on the area and choose a new color from the saved custom colors or the color palette. It makes sense to replace colors after splitting and merging for this part of the image is done because if a re-colored area is split or merged, its color is changed to the old one. Also merging is usually best done after splitting.

There is an additional toolbar just above the Step1-Step2 -Step3 controls.

It includes controls for zooming into the image and undoing and redoing frame edits (aside from the Step 1 changes that can not be undone).

The Save button on this toolbar saves the frame edits to file and updates the frame image in the preview. All edits are also automatically saved when user navigates to the next (or preceding) frame. See Navigating between Frames for instructions on how to move to the next frame.