MediBang Paint, a free rival to Clip Studio, is no longer free in its latest version. It’s now $50 on the Windows Store. There is however still a download link to the “old version” for now, which is v29.1. I seem to recall that the free version was ad-supported, though.
Monthly Archives: July 2025
PzDB R.I.P.
Moving to Windows 11 means losing the venerable PzDB Poser Library database / manager, which regrettably no longer works on Windows 10/11. Which for me means moving back to using Poser 11 as my main Poser, so that I can run Shaderworks Library Manager 2. Library Manager builds a runtime database like PzDB did, so its search is reasonably fast on a vast runtime. It also docks into the Poser UI. As a bonus, I get my XS-Toolbar and Scene Toy back. The Library Manager UI is a bit painful (subtle colour-coding might have helped), but not impossible once you get the hang of it and better than the native Library.
To build the database you first need to undock the native Library and close it. Then build the Library Manager 2 database of your runtime. Otherwise you’ll get crashes on a vast 20-year runtime. Also, Library Manager 2 needs the AVfix to run.
In Poser 11 there’s no Superfly for 30-series graphics cards, unless one renders on CPUs. But actually I find a CPU render with 2 x Xeons (24 threads) at 1024px is quite bearable. Currently, I’d only want SuperFly for a colour blending layer in Photoshop. I can always go over to DAZ or Poser 13, if I want to build a super-photoreal picture at a large size.
The only thing Library Manager 2 lacks is a “what’s new” view, showing the stuff you just spent time installing into the runtime. Although Everything can approximate that (Large Thumbnails / View By Path / Search for Picture / Date Created), after a re-indexing of the runtime. ‘Everything’ is also especially useful for quick “do I already have it?” lookup when shopping. The filetypes list to exclude from its search are: *.lnk;~$*;$*;*.xmp;*.jpg;*.obj;*.tif;*.bmp;*.txt;*.bat;*.py;*.pyc Sadly the one thing you can’t do with it is add keyword tags to individual or selected search-results — for that one would need DigiKam.
Those with Poser 2014 also have the option of launching that alongside Poser, then reducing it to the taskbar while just keeping its fast floating Adobe AIR library to lay over the Poser 11 interface. Both AIR and Library Manager have drag-and-drop onto the Poser stage. But AIR has the disadvantage of tiny, almost inscrutable, thumbnails until you click on an item. Also, it won’t dock into the Poser 11 interface, and you have to have two versions of Poser running at once.
Perfecting 1:1 watercolour in Flux Kontext
Could Flux Kontext Dev handle a backdrop as well as a character, thus bypassing the need to composite later? To find out I threw together a basic garden around Nursoda’s Ronk figure and his snail. Obviously, one would spend a lot more time constructing a garden that was destined to appear in many scenes in a storybook or comic. But this is just for a workflow demo.
Pretty ugly from Poser (Comic Book mode lineart and a bright light preset helps it along, but like all 3D it’s desperate to go ‘dark and grungy’). Yet Kontext handles it nicely. Note the new word at the start of the prompt, ‘Filter …’
The problem is then the garish day-glo nature of the colouring on the new image. But because we have 1:1 registration with the Poser source-image, we can easily lay the colours back in by using it as a colour blending layer in Photoshop. Here that’s been done. Then just a little of the Kontext colour has been brought back in. The layer was then flattened and auto-contrast applied, then desaturated slightly to take account of the colour-boost caused by the auto-contrast. The final result…
And since it’s come from Poser, we can have easy-select masks galore via a clown pass / toonID render, should any further postwork be needed. And if a holding-line around the character, or a blurring or fading of the background, is needed… then Poser can also supply the masks needed.
1:1 watercolour in Flux
A quick Poser experiment with the new Flux Kontext Dev. Nursoda’s Ronk and his snail, in Poser. Render to real-time Preview at 2048px, with high texture quality and a little Comic-Book applied. Lay this Poser render on white in Photoshop, reduce to 1024px and use this as the seed image.
The prompt gives a pencil and watercolour effect, but does not cause the layer-registration to shift. It remains an exact 1:1 match, despite the style change. In other words, Kontext can act exactly like a Photoshop filter would. Takes about 70 seconds on a 3060 12Gb graphics-card, at 1024px. This speed is comparable with intensive Photoshop filter plugins such as Reactor or G’Mic. There is a ‘turbo’ version from a third party, said to give a 2x speed up, but it appears to require intense Python wrangling and lots of tracking down dependencies to get it to work.
A 1:1 match means we can restore the Poser colour, by using the original render as a colour-blending layer in Photoshop. Which means we can have consistent colour from panel to panel and page to page, when storytelling in a comic or storybook.
We get a little drop-out of definition. For instance, the spiral of the snail’s shell is lost. If we had a lineart only Firefly render from Poser, we could bring it back by layering in Photoshop.
Update: It appears that if you go back to it then next day, and experiment with style descriptions, then try to go back to the original prompt, the earlier styled generations somewhow adversely affect the later output (more hard and cartoony than it should be). Possibly old latents are being partly re-used? Anyway… start from a fresh launch of Comfy, then go to the workflow and don’t tinker or change anything before starting your output.
Update: It seems a Poser .PNG render with transparency is the best to drop in as the seed image. Rather than needing to first place it onto a white background. Also, “filter” rather than “convert” seems a better choice of words for the prompt.
Exact 1:1 registration in Flux Kontext Dev
Kontext is wayward in terms of wanting to resize things. But it’s a matter of getting the prompt right, for exact 1:1 registration.
Add a layer of simple black and white lineart, while showing the photo beneath and keeping identical subject placement, camera angle, framing and perspective.
Layer the result in Photoshop, and blend via Multiply. Brush a soft eraser over teeth etc. Then filter the base photo to lighten it up. I imagine it would blend nicely with a Poser real-time comic-book lineart render, for added line variation. You’re welcome.
Source image from the official test workflow. Using the official default GGUF workflow, but made compact by moving things around and with upscaling nodes removed.