Images generated by RastaConverter

[+CyranoJ]

And a proper Viper (Or "Bloodhound" if you read the novel) - not that rehashed crap version

 

Viper.xex

[Rybags]

Nice, but I have to wonder if it'd benefit more if the entire picture was monochrome except for the red stripes. The green and brown areas would IMO have their colour entry better devoted to detail elsewhere.

[Heaven/TQA]

And a proper Viper (Or "Bloodhound" if you read the novel) - not that rehashed crap version

 

Viper.png

 

Viper.xex

As Kid i always dreamt to fly like Apollo or Starbuck in a Viper....

[+CyranoJ]

Nice, but I have to wonder if it'd benefit more if the entire picture was monochrome except for the red stripes. The green and brown areas would IMO have their colour entry better devoted to detail elsewhere.

 

I tried that, it looked too flat. It's much better with the detail around the engines.

[+Stephen]

OK - finally ran into the bug where the output display doesn't natch the generated executable. The "generated output" is perfect. The exe has a nast black line in it. I'm attaching all files in the ZIP.

 

Crab Nebula.zip

Stephen_CrabNebula.xex

 

[+CyranoJ]

OK - finally ran into the bug where the output display doesn't natch the generated executable. The "generated output" is perfect. The exe has a nast black line in it. I'm attaching all files in the ZIP.

 

 

 

I had that with the Viper image. I ran it again and all was good. Very annoying though, what a waste of 20m evaluations.

[Gunstar]

 

I had that with the Viper image. I ran it again and all was good. Very annoying though, what a waste of 20m evaluations.

Shite, that's nothing, I'm often tossing and starting over with images between 50-100m evaluations. On a nearly daily basis I just restarted one today for the 4th time and the first three were all nearing 100m. And that's not due to line errors most of the time, I just don't like what I see and start over with new adjustments.

 

The Viper image is awesome, by the way!

Edited March 18, 2018 by Gunstar

[snicklin]

I haven't released my lion image yet as it has been around the clock (it seems to start again at 10 billion evaluations) and I think it is at around 13 billion. "Black holes" have appeared in the output picture, which aren't in the output picture.

[Rybags]

You could do checkpointing - just Esc to stop the conversion then make a copy of the whole RCGUI directory.

By the looks, it doesn't use any work files in AppData, everything looks to be self-contained within whatever folder it's installed in.

[Gunstar]

Shite, that's nothing, I'm often tossing and starting over with images between 50-100m evaluations. On a nearly daily basis I just restarted one today for the 4th time and the first three were all nearing 100m. And that's not due to line errors most of the time, I just don't like what I see and start over with new adjustments.

 

The Viper image is awesome, by the way!

Well, I just exceeded the above with the same image I have been working on for 2 days now. I just trashed an output at over 244m evaluations and am starting over.

[jmccorm]

I tried that, it looked too flat. It's much better with the detail around the engines.

 

Only because your Rasta image is so awesome, if you're willing to put more work into it, here are two more images which strike a balance between monochrome and preserving some of the red. (All red can't be preserved because of the JPEG compression errors.) The second image has more of the red areas preserved.

 

Again, these are source images.

[+CyranoJ]

Thought I'd torture rasta, but this came out better than expected, so 266m evals later....

 

 

Jessica.xex

 

As for the viper images above... if you want to run different ones, feel free. Posting source images for others? Meh.

[jmccorm]

As for the viper images above... if you want to run different ones, feel free. Posting source images for others? Meh.

 

You struck gold with that image. Okay, I'll give it a go.

Thank you!

[jmccorm]

As for the viper images above... if you want to run different ones, feel free. Posting source images for others? Meh.

 

Viper image attached, 3.3 billion evaluations, approximately 10,000 interim steps were adopted. Guess what? Despite carefully desaturating most of the image, the green interlopers worked their way back into the darker areas! [sad face.] Anyhow, if I were to redo this conversion (unlikely, since I was already beating to death something that CyranoJ already did -- and thank you for your work) it would be to use a detail mask to try to try to get some nice and clean red stripes. The rear engine housing and thrust chamber turned out pretty nice.

 

IMAGE:

 

BINARY:

Classic-Viper-Jmccorm-Rasta.xex

 

Enjoy.

Edited March 19, 2018 by jmccorm

[Gunstar]

 

Viper image attached, 3.3 billion evaluations, approximately 10,000 interim steps were adopted. Guess what? Despite carefully desaturating most of the image, the green interlopers worked their way back into the darker areas! [sad face.] Anyhow, if I were to redo this conversion (unlikely, since I was already beating to death something that CyranoJ already did -- and thank you for your work) it would be to use a detail mask to try to try to get some nice and clean red stripes. The rear engine housing and thrust chamber turned out pretty nice.

 

IMAGE:

Classic-Viper-Jmccorm-Rasta.png

 

BINARY:

Classic-Viper-Jmccorm-Rasta.xex

 

Enjoy.

This has been discussed in this thread before, the "green interlopers" are an issue with Rasta in many areas that should be strictly gray scale. I'm not sure there is a solution, some images get the grays right, some get greens thrown in. I've managed to minimize through trial and era using Rasta settings with some success, but there is no "golden ticket" that I have found.

[+Philsan]

Columbo, 39 colors.

 

Philsan_Columbo.xex

[Gunstar]

Just a few random images. Or are they?

 

Brain in a box. 54 colors.

 

Fu Manchu: Signs Of Infinite Power. 22 colors.

 

Diesel Punk Mech-Tank. 29 colors.

BrainInBox.xex

FuManchuSOIP.xex

DieselPunkMechtank.xex

Edited April 6, 2018 by Gunstar

[a8isa1]

Jungle Creek. 70 colors.

 

Rain Forest Creek. 38 colors.

 

Summer's Eve. 71 colors.

 

I give up!

 

Every conversion that I have attempted has a broken or unfinished look. It doesn't matter if I let rastaconverter run for 500 million evaluations or 15 billion (well, once I did).

 

Gunstar, if you don't mind, would you please present an example picture, the rastaconverter parameters, and the palette (if it's custom one) that will actually work? I'm tired of looking at my ugly, line filled, wrong pixeled, color smeared conversions!

Edited April 16, 2018 by a8isa1

[+MrFish]

BTW, that reminds me; I had that country road photo running for several months, off and on.

Everything was looking great and it just kept getting better and better. It was somewhere

between 35 and 40 billion evaluations in February or so. Then, Rastaconverter suddenly

crashed at some point. I quickly (maybe a mistake) started it back up with the continue

option, and the bloody thing restarted the conversion from square one.

 

I know it's really no big deal, as it will evaluate fine, again with the same options, or even

more solutions. But man, what a huge bummer. Anyway, I learned that if you're going to

evaluate that high, make a backup periodically.

 

I started processing it again, but lost my steam for keeping it going. I just turned it back on

a few minutes ago and noticed I was only at 1.5 billion evaluations so far. I'll try and get

my enthusiasm back so I can finish it though.

 

See you all again in about 4 or 5 months.

 

[Gunstar]

I give up!

 

Every conversion that I have attempted has a broken or unfinished look. It doesn't matter if I let rastaconverter run for 500 million evaluations or 15 billion (well, once I did).

 

Gunstar, if you don't mind, would you please present an example picture, the rastaconverter parameters, and the palette (if it's custom one) that will actually work? I'm tired of looking at my ugly, line filled, wrong pixeled, color smeared conversions!

Well, first off, as I've said many times in this thread, a quality image has NOTHING to do with letting it run for millions or billions of evals. I still, as always, get my images within the first 50-100 million evals, more than that is not necessary and if it is, you are doing it all wrong. Second, number of solutions is key to allowing Rasta to find the right choices; I usually set it at 1024 or 2048 solutions. Third, as I've also stated many times, it's all in the color settings with importance in this order: Contrast, when reducing from so many colors to so few, this is KEY. Next, color level, and then gamma. 99% of my images, these are the ONLY things I change.

 

There is no magic process beyond this for me, only trial and error until I get it right; I actually do go through billions of evaluations with each image, but not in one run, it's cumulative, re-attempting dozens of times to get it right. If by about 30 million evaluations my image isn't looking at least 80-90% "done" the way I want, I throw it out and start over because if it isn't mostly "done" by then, the settings are wrong and need to be tweaked further. The vast majority of my images are done in Altirra palette, and YUV color distance, rarely try others if I can't get what I want out of those after many attempts.

 

No secret pallette, no masking, no dithering 99% of the time and when I do, I reduce dithering level to 0.5 or 0.6. But as much as I say it, every one seems eager to ignore me, to their own detriment. The only other advantage I may have over some, is that I am a real artist, with a real artist's eye, which I use to choose my settings.

 

As to examples and giving all Rasta converter parameters I use, etc. I've done that before, for quite a few images where I spelled out every setting and total evals, etc., It's been a while, you may have to look back 20 pages or more to find them, but I've already done that until I was sick of doing all that. Just do a search for only my posts in this thread and it should narrow things down for you.

 

Forget about everything else you've been told by others and follow these simple rules I use, and your chances will be much greater. Through out this thread, there have been johnny-come-lately's who try to "figure out" all these other ways of doing it, with full descriptions of their "studies" and I just keep pumping out good images the way I do it and ignore what they say. All freshman thinking they suddenly know everything, yet they still never reach my level consistently. And those who keep suggesting I'm finding just the "right" images to work with Rasta, because they can't match my level. I've done hundreds of conversions by now...that's a LOT of images that just "happen" to be "right" for Rasta converter. Go figure.

 

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT and patience to keep trying, and not fearing discarding something and starting from scratch even after waiting on it for some time. NOTHING else. PERIOD.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Gunstar

[snicklin]

Through out this thread, there have been johnny-come-lately's who try to "figure out" all these other ways of doing it, with full descriptions of their "studies" and I just keep pumping out good images the way I do it and ignore what they say. All freshman thinking they suddenly know everything, yet they still never reach my level consistently. And those who keep suggesting I'm finding just the "right" images to work with Rasta, because they can't match my level. I've done hundreds of conversions by now...that's a LOT of images that just "happen" to be "right" for Rasta converter. Go figure.

 

You really are self obsessed. Nobody has ever tried to claim to be better than you, even though quite frankly although most of your pictures are alright, they're mostly not exactly perfect. Look at all those stretched out lines on the Diesel Punk image. Do I claim to be better? No. But do I want to contribute to this scene? Yes!

 

And as for the comment of "Johnny-Come-latelys", take a look through the Atari scene and see how long I've been producing Rastaconverter images. For goodness sake, I even did a Linux port of it.

 

Just let this conversation be a passive general conversation of how to make good Rastaconverter conversions in everyone's opinion, not "you must do what I say to get good images". While I completely agree with a lot of you say for converting, your attitude stinks. You're a person who wants to shout out loud to stand above others, as you're so convinced with it, let your work do the talking rather than that belligerent mouth of yours.

[Gunstar]

 

You really are self obsessed. Nobody has ever tried to claim to be better than you, even though quite frankly although most of your pictures are alright, they're mostly not exactly perfect. Look at all those stretched out lines on the Diesel Punk image. Do I claim to be better? No. But do I want to contribute to this scene? Yes!

 

And as for the comment of "Johnny-Come-latelys", take a look through the Atari scene and see how long I've been producing Rastaconverter images. For goodness sake, I even did a Linux port of it.

 

Just let this conversation be a passive general conversation of how to make good Rastaconverter conversions in everyone's opinion, not "you must do what I say to get good images". While I completely agree with a lot of you say for converting, your attitude stinks. You're a person who wants to shout out loud to stand above others, as you're so convinced with it, let your work do the talking rather than that belligerent mouth of yours.

I never said anyone claimed they were better than me, and I've never claimed to be the best either, period. And if you have been around longer than me, the OBVIOUSLY you are NOT a johnny-come-lately and my statement has nothing to do with you. But it's not about time, but experience. put it this way, there's a person who's been a pilot for 10 years with 50 hours of flying time under his belt, and then there is someone who has been apilot for 2 years, but has 200 hours of flying time; which would YOU pick to trust?

 

I also never said my pictures were perfect, I know they aren't, but I'm pretty damn consistent and I don't try to get them perfect, just good. My attitude is what it is because I have been through this before, told how I do my images before, yet people still ask me how I do it. So if no one listens, I tend to get a little upset. I'm not egotistical, I'm a humble guy just doing what he can, hell, I'm probably the only person who doesn't even put his own name/handle on the images because I don't think I deserve credit for them. Unfortunately, it's become my signature, since everyone else feels the need to slap their name on some one else's artwork that all they did was use a converter on, so now everyone knows my images because they are the only ones without a name slapped on the front, something that was never my intention.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Gunstar

[Gunstar]

Look at all those stretched out lines on the Diesel Punk image. Do I claim to be better?

 

I've done many Diesel Punk images, so you might want to be more specific. If you mean the one just above on this page, the only stretched out lines that aren't in the original are on the edge of the shovel, anywhere other than that area, it's in the original.

 

But I've never claimed anything except that I've already told how I do what I do many times before, with examples. I do so many images and practice so much because I'm still not happy with my own results, I just post those I find "passible." I don't even bring any of this up except when others have asked me how I do it, otherwise, I'd just mind my own business and keep doing what I do. It's not my fault that you've take my generalized comments so personally, that's on you.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Gunstar

[a8isa1]

Sorry, I was exasperated and tired. I didn't mean to irritate people.

 

I'll keep plugging away. Eventually I'll post pictures...

[+CyranoJ]

Maybe the real reason people keep asking is because the thread is eleventybillion pages long, filled with many great images from many different people and finding the posts is no longer simple.