That's about it, except after the blur I do a level adjustment on the alpha channel to decrease the transparency, as when you blur a hard edge it becomes semi-transparent (50% right at the old edge) and increasing/decreasing following a Gaussian curve on either side.

Repeat until no transparency exists.

It also increases the selection each iteration to speed things up.

This was done as a "shortcut" method since reading the colour directly out of images is slow in script-fu. I'd assume that in G'MIC you would do something like:

for each transparent point, locate the closest X non-transparent points and perform a weighted average across circular hue colour-space to determine the colour for that point.

-Rob A>

I keep playing with this script. I beveled the text with this one.

Nice Script RobA > thank you

That is a nice effect ! I tried to 'reproduce' it in G'MIC. It should be already available when updating the filters, under 'Enhancement / Solidify' :


I don't know what algorithm RobA used, but the one I made is based on iterations of averaged erosion/dilation of the image colors, until no transparent pixels remain. This may take long too compute, as it is an iterative process.
Here is an example where it reconstructs a lot of pixels :



If you have some time and the G'MIC plug-in installed, please have a try. There is a working preview window as well, for this filter. I would be interested also by any comparison with the RobA algorithm.

And for curious people, here is the G'MIC code I wrote for this filter :

http://pastebin.com/Qth8z80V

Thank you David, looks very good. I will give it a try after lunch.

Pretty cool, David. Works great!

Quite different results - both very interesting.

In this last example, I'd say I prefer the RobA's one.
I have to think about how I can improve mine

I think it is a side effect of your dilate/erode process, where it is working on a 3x3 matrix, so it favours 90 and 45 degree angles. can you increase the size of the matrix?

-Rob A>

I like that David but wish it was faster (I asketh for too much; lol).

RobA : Yes, I've tried with larger eroding and dilating elements but in that case it creates less smooth transitions. Anyway, I've got another idea that I must test before doing something else

Lyle : In your example too it is really clear how it favors 45° angles.

the gmic version

I have to admit G'MIC's faster then Script-fu (just tested RobA's on my sample; lol). Still, the result looks good to me. Again, thanks RobA; David. Always good to be able to skin cats multiple ways.

And you just ninja'd me PC. lol

On larger images you can pull the slider higher in the script and it will run faster. It just starts blurrier that way.

-Rob A>

Your right Rob (w.r.t increased radius); I wonder how fast Flaming Pear's plugin is though? Maybe when GIMP get's hardware acceleration (better GPU, but I can tolerate even taking advantage of the CPU more) ability, operations like blur will be faster. Saw on GIMPUsers that hardware acceleration will be included with 2.8, but I'm still not holding my breath.

After using it, I gotta say, very awesome! It did exactly what I wanted and it looked pretty good too.

While waiting for it to fill, I couldn't help but wish there was a stop button or a setting or something. While the fill effect looks cool at the end when it's over the entire canvas, I really only needed about 10px beyond the edge of the object. Or maybe there is a setting and I didn't recognize it... I used the default settings.

I've uploaded the script (same loaction) to run offscreen on a duplicate image so it is about twice the speed.

@Amanda47 good idea - I think I'll add an option to specify a distance 0=everything, or a specified px distance out from the transparent images.

@SaulGoode - anyway to make the layer drawable active rather than the mask drawable at the end? I can't find an appropriate call.

-Rob A>

what about a option to fade the effect over any chosen color,not only full transparency.?
(here full transparency may be most reasonable default)

PS i think the script going to be better than the original PS plugin

Here are my two to compare.
GMIC


RobA