{"id":17309,"date":"2021-08-21T15:52:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T15:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jurn.link\/dazposer\/?p=17309"},"modified":"2022-06-23T19:18:17","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T19:18:17","slug":"gmic-as-a-topaz-clean-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/2021\/08\/21\/gmic-as-a-topaz-clean-replacement\/","title":{"rendered":"G’Mic as a Topaz Clean replacement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update, June 2022: this solution is now broken in the latest G’MIC, due to regrettable changes in the required filter. Should work on G’MIC 3.0.x or lower.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve found a way to just about emulate the Topaz Clean 3 Photoshop plugin, using the free G’MIC filter<\/a> set in its new Photoshop .8BF form. Since G’Mic also runs on Paint.NET and PhotoLine, it will also work there. I can’t vouch for Krita, as Krita bundles its own variant of G’Mic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why is this needed? Because Topaz Clean 3 is no longer sold<\/a>. Clean was unique and useful for 3D comics people, old manga scanners, and those who wanted to perk up character screenshots from The Sims<\/em> etc. My specific use case is filtering a ‘colour flats’ base render from Poser, which could be very nicely de-grunged with Clean 3.1 in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

This is as close as I can get in 2021 to Clean 3. It uses G’MIC’s standard Artistic | Comic Book<\/em> filter with the sliders tweaked as you see below. There is also a comparison with the original and the old Clean 3 result. The original render had already been taken some way by using a flat IBL light in Poser, but still had unwanted grunging and speckling.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pretty close, but there are drawbacks:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> It takes a long<\/em> time to run, 60 to 80 seconds on a workstation. Compared to a much more nippy 15 to 20 seconds for Topaz Clean 3.1.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> You cannot take the Comic Book lines off altogether. Their lowest setting is locked at 0.5. This matters little, however, as you’re going to drop a real-time lineart render on top.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> There are still some artefacts, that seem like posterization of the colours, here and there. Topaz Clean smoothly cleans them away, but G’MIC doesn’t.<\/p>\n

But there you go… if you need free and no longer have Topaz Clean 3 for some reason or can’t (cough) find a copy, then this should help with the degrunging job for 3D comics when using layers (colour flats \/ details \/ lineart \/ shadows, all on their own filter-able and editable layers). <\/p>\n

And it can do so in a more satisfactory way than the obvious and cringe-y ‘Posterized in Photoshop’ look, or by applying some swirly-blurry mess-filter that destroys edge details. The aim here being to somewhat emulate the crisp ‘paint-bucket’ flats that a professional comic-book colourist might start the colouring process with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update, June 2022: this solution is now broken in the latest G’MIC, due to regrettable changes in the required filter. Should work on G’MIC 3.0.x or lower. I’ve found a way to just about emulate the Topaz Clean 3 Photoshop plugin, using the free G’MIC filter set in its new Photoshop .8BF form. Since G’Mic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11,13,9,3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automation","category-comics","category-companion-software","category-freebies","category-poser","category-tutorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19054,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309\/revisions\/19054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}