Hi folks.
It's been a while since I've promised myself to add a 'Puzzle' filter to the G'MIC plug-in, and never had the time to do so.
But fortunately, I had some time yesterday and gave a try. So, here is a new filter available, located at G'MIC / Arrays & tiles / Puzzle.
You should be able to get it by clicking on the 'Update' button.

Here is how it looks with the default settings :



The filter parameters are divided into three distinct groups which are :

1) Pattern parameters : they set the aspect of the puzzle pieces, if they are all straight or have some variations.
2) Blending parameters : they tells how the puzzle pattern must be blended with the background image. You can set how the outline and the relief render.
3) Recomposition parameters : the most interesting (and original) one in my opinion.
Each puzzle piece is in fact extracted and recomposed afterwards, and you can set how those pieces are drawn : you can scale and rotate them with some random variations, and you can shuffle the pieces order. Here is an example of what you can get when playing with this last set of parameters :



Now, with this filter, it becomes quite easy to render things like this. I've just added a drop shadow effect and a flat background behind to get this :



Isn't that cool ?
I admit I don't know so much what similar puzzle fiters do, so maybe this is something very classical. But however, I'm quite happy with this one.
If you have suggestions and experiences to share related to this filter, please post here !

Hope you will find some creative uses for this one.

Cheers,

David.

Nice!
I like how the puzzle's individual shapes are randomly placed. IMHO... This makes for an over all more realistic looking puzzle effect.

Very cool indeed David; commented at your Flickr for the Mona Lisa before discovering you posted this thread.

Good stuff.

Very cool and nice funny!

Thx David!

Another cool option would be that have all pieces on their own respective layer then you can take a few and place them randomly while the bulk of the puzzle would be complete. There's a Photoshop action that allowed for this that I toyed with many years ago.

Oh now this is super cool David!

Original-


Modified with Davids Puzzle filter -



On a side note is it possible to add a puzzle knob connector shape alter slider?
Most puzzles do not have the same shape of connecting knobs in them. Just thought it would greatly enhance the realism look to the filter.

Lyle : interesting idea, I guess I can do that in a near future (done!, update your filters ).

Rod : There is already the 'Height' parameter that changes the shape of the connectors, but probably something to change their roundness could be nice to have too. I'll try something in this direction tonight.

Lyle, with the new 'Output each piece on a new layer' option, we can do nice things too, thanks for the suggestion

Rod, I've also modified one option to make more different connectors.
Hope you'll like it.

Indeed cool stuff. One more feature, if I'm not too overly asking. I would like each individual piece to be autocropped (easier to manipulate pieces then such as rotate and such). No big deal if that feature gets too complicated. lol

Well, I've thought about that but unfortunately, the plug-in is not able to set the location of each layer independently (they are all located at the upper-left corner).
So, I've preferred not to crop them, so that the final image looks good.

That's cool David; only need to do this for the few pieces that I would move around anyway.

If they are on their own layers Lyle there is always the autocrop linked layers by Ofnuts.

Thanks David i love both the newer features you've added!
Would it be too hard to get the connectors to move side to side? So they wouldn't be directly centered on every puzzle piece?

Rod, you can already do this, with the 'centering' parameter.

Sweet! Thanks David.

So with all pieces on their own layers there is nothing to stop you from making cool GIF animations.



i just noticed i didn't reset the size correctly for the pieces. They all seem to be fitting together wrong.

Yes, looks like you've upscaled the size of the pieces a little bit.
However, nice effect

I wanted to do such an effect for at least 2 years, but for 2014, I had decided I would do it for my happy new year card. And you did it, with many more features than I had planned... Special thanks Davids!

Now I have to find a great photo to cut in peaces, I guess I'll have to do that part alone.

BTW, nice one Rod.

Nice to hear that ZondeR.

Looks like at least someone else appreciate this filter too (in French) :
http://la-vache-libre.org/gmic-1-5-8-2- ... -du-poney/