New Colorizer (dedicated to Ca Ike & Chilese)

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[Ara Ararauna]

Hi,

If you access the following link:
http://www.dtic.upf.edu/~npares/tmp/KiteColorizer/index.html
you will see the new colorizer I have developed.

It has the following characteristics:
1. It uses materials which are actual pictures of Icarex material. The pictures could be better, I haven't had time to get some really nice ones. All help will be appreciated.
2. It does not mark the edges between the layout panels unless you want to. As default is shows them as light lines that mark the seams. But you can either hide them altogether or make them solid black in case you like pin striping... 
3. It provides different backgrounds to check how the kite looks against them. The kite has a slight translucency that integrates it to the background.
4. It is really easy to adapt it to any kite model/plan. You just need to create an image as follows:
a. 600x300pixels
b. have the kite panel layout where frame is black, background is white.
c. the panel layout must have each panel fully filled with a different shade of grey (hence you can have up to 254 different panels)
d. there should be NO division lines between the panels
e. the image should be called kiteTemplate.png
the image should look something like this:


If anyone likes it, I am making it available for free under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA).
Any suggestions will be very welcome, although I have spent four days on it and now I will not have much time for it for a few weeks.

If we all collaborate to have nice scans/pictures of the different materials available for kite sails I'm sure this will look even better.

So there it is for all the community.
Enjoy    (if you like it)

[KaoS]

Top job! 

[chilese]

You did all the work so I don't see where the dedication is warranted.

But it is appreciated. Thanks. 

[Wayner]

well done.

Now I have another place to waste hours playing with a colorizer. 

[Ara Ararauna]

You did all the work so I don't see where the dedication is warranted.

But it is appreciated. Thanks. 

Hi, perhaps it is a matter of language (since English is my third language) but I don't quite understand this...

In any case, the work is not finished at all.
I was hoping that you, being one of the best kite photographers and collectors, would help me in getting the nicest materials pictures for the colorizer.
We need as many as we can.
For example we could have a front-lit set and a back-lit set and I could incorporate this option in the menu of the colorizer.

We can all also contribute with more (or different) backgrounds.

All these images need only be in PNG format at 600x300 pixels. They can be directly substituted for those I'm using now and they would start working immediately.

Also, I haven't tried the possibility of using transparent materials such as mylar. Hence, there are still things to experiment with.

Finally, we must make a template for each kite. Would'n it be nice to have them all in there?
If each one of us makes a different template we could have all the main kites available in a short time...

So I really think I have only provided the platform and the rest of the community can make it better and better. 
Cheers!

N.

P.S. I've just discoverd that my Samsung tablet does not have sufficient graphics power to show the result correctly so if any of you wants to use the colorizer, better do it in a full blown laptop or desktop computer...   

[chilese]

Even backlit and frontlit can have many variables;
  time of day
  cloud cover effects

Look at all the different white backlits (5 at least) there are in this 1 photo:



While I applaud your effort, my contribution will be down to saying that you can use any of my photos toward the colorizer you would like, as long as it is non-profit.

I also applaud you for having a 3rd language.
I have enough trouble saying the right thing in my 1 language. 

[Ca Ike]

Nice work Ara.  I'll see what I Can do about getting good closeups of the colors and mats in my kites.

[Ara Ararauna]

Even backlit and frontlit can have many variables;
  time of day
  cloud cover effects

While I applaud your effort, my contribution will be down to saying that you can use any of my photos toward the colorizer you would like, as long as it is non-profit.

It is indeed beautiful and hard to capture all this diversity. 
We could fake it a little by giving a few levels of randomized transparency or extra brightness (by program I mean). But of course it will never be the same.
I'm not trying to be photorealistic to the limit or in a naive way.
I just want to have a better way of imagining the final result.
So, for example, from that picture I would consider back-lit the three triangles that really shine. I think that would be a good compromise... 

Thanks for your offer of using your pictures. The thing is we need then to tile the parts we use to achieve a (more or less) continuous image of 600x300.
The scale of the squares in the ripstop must be correct to the scale of the kite, hence we cannot get a 600x300pixels image out of one single piece of already cut and sewn kite sail.
So I thought that you being a Photoshop wiz could give me a hand 

Concerning non-profit, well, I will not make a benefit on this, but if commercial builders wish to use the colorizer then this will be a profit oriented use...

Anyway, Ca Ike has joined the quest. THANKS!
And I guess others will join in too.

Cheers.

I also applaud you for having a 3rd language.
I have enough trouble saying the right thing in my 1 language. 

It is easy if you start as a kid. And it surely gets harder as you grow up.
At home we have always spoken Catalan (one Romance language as French, Italian or Spanish): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language
In society I learnt Spanish (also almost since I was born).
And I learnt English at school (and also a little French... very little)

[Ara Ararauna]

Hi,

There is a new version of the colouriser:
http://www.dtic.upf.edu/~npares/tmp/KiteColorizer/index.html

1. Many more materials thanks to the collaboration of HiFly and includding my addition of mylar.
2. Reset button

Enjoy!

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