Gertrudis Pro
Reviewed: Geetesh Bajaj
Date Created: November 4th 2005
Last Updated: February 23rd 2009
About Gertrudis Pro
Gertrudis Pro is an image manipulation software of a different kind. It takes your digital camera pictures (or any other picture) and transforms it to beautiful works of art that look like everything from watercolors to oils and crayons to pastels.
The product is created by Gertrudis Graphics, an Argentina based design software company that also creates several other versions of Getrudis such as Gertrudis PS (converts pictures to vector strokes).
My contact at Gertrudis Graphics for this review was Enrique Nieloud - thank you, Enrique.
Download and Installation
You can learn more and download a demo version of Gertrudis Pro from the product's web site...
The demo version is identical to the full version, but it only allows you to work with the pictures provided with the product. If you want to apply the effects to your own pictures and save them (which you certainly want to after playing with the demo!), you'll have to buy a copy of the product.
Installation is quick - and it creates a Gertrudis Pro group in your Windows Start Menu.
Using Gertrudis Pro
When you open an image in Gertrudis Pro, you will see two panels as shown in the screensot below:
The left panel shows the original image and the right panel shows a blank canvas. As you work with the image, the right panel will show the modified image.
At the bottom of the working area, there are four panels from where you can select the tool, size, color, and style. Once you select the brush and the required style and colour you are ready to create your modified image.
You can either apply the chosen style to the entire image or just to a brush stroke that you draw on the right panel. If you use the second method, you will be able to see the image converting to a beautiful painting, and the best part is that in-between this ,odification, you can switch to some other style and also change the brightness, contrast and saturation of the brush. All put together, this is truly powerful stuff. The screenshot below shows what I was able to accomplish in under five minutes.
You can save your finished painting to several file formats including JPEG, BMP and TIFF. Moreover, you can save the output to a much larger canvas and resolution than your original image since Gertrudis Pro can save those strokes to any resolution required! So the low resolution image you took with that cheap digital camera can actually become a large sized print that can be framed up and put up in your living room!
End Note
Gertrudis Pro is priced at US$ 67 - support is by email. From Monday to Friday, most responses are answered within 24 hours.
For its price Gertrudis Pro is a great product - and a perfect complement to Adobe Photoshop or any other image editor.
