Tutorial: AKVIS Sketch

Batch processing: Transformation of video into a cartoon

Batch processing option recently added in the new version of Sketch allows automatic applying of the plug-in to a group of files. For this purpose you will need to create an action with the help of Automate -> Batch command first, and then apply the action to a folder with images. An action can contain more than one command (Akvis Sketch) so that you can process a large number of images in one way.

You are asking where this can be needed. How about transforming a video or digital camera film into a cartoon?

Further on we'll show an approximate succession of transformations of a short video into a black and white cartoon. We used an .avi video file taken with a digital Canon PowerShot A410 camera as an example. You can download and watch the original video.

Step 1. In your hard disk, create two folders: 'frames-original' and 'frames-sketch'.
Step 2. Convert video files to frames and put these frames into 'frames-original' folder.
Step 3. After your video is converted into frames, you can edit the succession and delete the redundant frames. We decided to delete the first 148 frames out of the video and the resulted file had 740-149=591 frames.
Step 4. Choose one of the frames out of 'frames-original' folder and open it in Adobe Photoshop. We chose the 151 frame.
Step 5. Open Actions palette and click the Create New Set button. In the appeared window set a name for the new set of actions, for example, Film.
Step 6. Let us press the Create New Action button in the bottom of the palette. In the appearing window set the action name, for example Sketch film.

Press Record button, the recording of the action will start.
Step 7. The video is taken with the photo camera and the quality is much to be desired. Before calling the AKVIS Sketch plug-in, we deleted noise from the image with AKVIS Noise Buster. Call the plug-in and set the noise-reduction settings.

Let us apply filtration results with the chosen settings by pressing .
Step 8. Call AKVIS Sketch and select image settings for a pencil drawing convertion.

Apply results by pressing .
Step 9. In the File menu choose Save As and save the image into 'frames-sketch' folder.
Step 10. Stop action recording by pressing Stop playing/recording button in the bottom of the Actions palette.
Step 11. Close the image and delete the file we have just saved into 'frames-sketch' folder.
Step 12. The action is created, we can procede to batch processing of the video frames. In the File menu of the editor choose Automate -> Batch command.
Step 13. In the appearing Batch folder assign all the data and settings.
- In the Set field choose "Film", and in the Action field - "Sketch film".
- The Source field is used to select the sourse of the image. Choose Folder entry that allows to point a specific folder as a sourse. Press Choose folder and choose 'frames-original' folder.
- As far as we have not recorded the 'file open' command into the action, the Override Action "Open" Commands option should be disabled.
- In the Destination field choose Folder entry, press Choose, and select 'frames-sketch' folder.
- Enable Override Action "Save as" Commands option.
- In the File Naming section, the file naming structure for processed images is set. In order not to change the names choose Document Name in the first field and ĺxtension in the second.
- Step 14. Press OK button in the Batch window and Photoshop will start processing one frame after another out of the 'frames-original' folder and save them into 'frames-sketch' folder. The processing of one file takes about 18 seconds and the processing of the whole video of 591 frames should take about 3 hours.
- Step 15. All we have to do now is to assemble separate cartoon frames back into a video.