Abstractor

Regular visitors will know that I have a particular passion for 'artistic' effects. Well, I've been trying for some time to achieve something like an 'abstract painting' effect; this plugin is as close as I can get... at the moment. This kind of effect is so interesting to work on that I'll almost certainly keep on trying!

The filter has just four sliders:

Abstraction	Controls the way in which the colours are smoothed and spread.
Simplification	The image is reduced to simplified regions of colour derived from the original; this slider controls the number of colours used.
Colouration	Controls the overall colouration of the image, from a near-monochrome at the lower extreme to an exaggeratedly bright at the higher settings.
Outlining	After simplifying the image, the filter applies a dark outline derived from the original image; this slider controls the strength of the outline.

	My wife, Kathryn, says this flower is a periwinkle. I'll take her word for it; I thought it was a violet, so it's a good thing I checked. Anyway, the image has nice, bold shapes that are ideal for the Abstractor treatment.
	And this is the result. The 'Colouration' slider was set to 50 to brighten things up a little; all other controls were left at the default settings.