Frequent Questions about ToonIt! Aperture.

Don't see the answer you need? Contact us with this Request Form. You can also go to our Anarchy Underground Forum to post a question.

Does ToonIt work on animal images?

We would like to turn our wildlife photos into different cartoon images like outlines and pencil drawings. Will work ToonIt work for this?
Yes, ToonIt would work nicely for that kind of photograph. The plugin is terrific at transforming the human or animal face and form into a cartoon. For instance, if you look on our ToonIt Gallery page the artist Nick Cattermole has done some nice work with monkeys in India.

I installed ToonIt but it does not show up in my Aperture 3.0.
There are two items we should check on. First, look at this location on your hard drive: Hard Drive>Library>Application Support>Aperture>Plug-ins This is the location that ToonIt gets installed to. You should see a 'Digital Anarchy' folder with a 'ToonIt' folder inside. Please note that you are looking in the top-level Library folder, not your User>Library folder.

If the plugin is in that location, let's make sure that you are accessing it correctly inside Aperture. When you select a photo in Aperture, you should be able to control-click and bring up a menu. That menu should list ToonIt as one of the plugins that you can choose through 'Edit With'.

Does ToonIt work with RAW files? This image is the final result of running the flower photo through ToonIt. As you can see, things did not work out so well.
ToonIt does NOT work with RAW files. One of two things will happen. You may be able to apply ToonIt to the file but the cartooned results will look odd. (See example at right.) Or Aperture may crash completely when you apply TooonIt. You will need to convert RAW files to a different format, like TIFF or JPEG, before running the image through Toonit.

I have downloaded the trial version of your product. However, there seems to be lines going across my images when I use the product. Is this normal or will it go away if I buy the software?
The crosshatch lines that appear are the demo watermark. This allows you to evaluate the product before purchasing. When you purchase the product, you get a serial number will unlock the crosshatch watermark.

Your website says that Toonit will run in Aperture 3 in 64-bit. I upgraded my ToonIt to run the 64-bit version and I'm running Aperture 3 in 64-bit mode, but ToonIt still opens up as 32-bit. What is the problem? I get the message "Please close Aperture and restart as 32 bit version. Contact vendor for 64 bit version of plugin."
We definitely support Aperture 3 in 64-bit! You mentioned that you have upgraded the ToonIt Aperture plugin. A common problem occurs when you have the 32-bit version AND 64-bit version of ToonIt installed. The plugin gets confused and may open the wrong version.

Please check this location to see what versions of ToonIt you have installed: Hard Drive/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-ins/Digital Anarchy. A folder called 'ToonIt 2.5.1', 'ToonIt 2.5' or 'ToonIt 2.0' is a 32-bit version. A folder called 'ToonIt 2.5.2' is the 64-bit version. To fix the issue, place the 32-bit folder(s) in the Trash. This will allow the 64-bit version to open when you are in Aperture 3. If you need help installing, this Update page has great info.

Why doesn't my ToonIt! preset look the way it did when I created it?
Since every image is different, the presets won't have the same effect. Sometimes they will come out as expected, sometimes you will need to tweak them a bit, and sometimes they just won't work for a given image. In general, the presets are designed to work with an image that is a well lit face, with a dark or simple background, and not much detail in the clothing. The further away you get from that imagery -- like a subject in shadow with a bright background -- the less likely the preset will produce an expected result.

Can I run ToonIt! in Adobe Lightroom? It is also non-destructive to the pictures and the changes can be shown right away without waiting for preview time.
Not at this time. Adobe Lightroom isn't doing its image processing in the way that ToonIt! does. So it's really difficult to make ToonIt! work efficiently or real-time on large images. That said, we will be looking at using GPU's in the future and that may get us closer to supporting Adobe Lightroom.

I did a render into Aperture and there are a number of differences between the image I previewed and the image that came out. For instance, the render has added outlines to some areas and removed them from others.
Something to understand about ToonIt! is that the Preview Window is just a preview. If you want to see exactly what the image is going to look like once rendered in Aperture, you need to have the preview at 100% (which will slow you down somewhat). If there's a difference between Preview at 100% and the final render, that's a problem. But ToonIt! is based on the pixels in the image and applying the effect to a 1000x1000 image vs. a 500x500 (50% and a lot less pixels) image will yield slightly different results.

I'm used to installing plugins for Photoshop, but have no idea how to install your product for Aperture. Help!
Installing the plugin for Aperture is a pretty straight forward process. Just run the installer and click through the welcome and license screens. There's really only one place to install the Aperture plugins and the installer does that automatically. You should not need to change the install location or move the plugins.

The location the plugins gets installed into is:
Library>Application Support>Aperture>Plug-ins

The preview was quick but Toonit! takes a long time to render when I click Ok. Why is it so slow? Can I make it render faster?
ToonIt! Photo is a quality vs. speed effect. It simply requires a lot of processing to create the desired cartoon effect. Other cartooning effects use glorified Posterization algorithms to create their results. This runs pretty fast but doesn't create as sophisticated a look. ToonIt! Photo provides pretty spectacular results and again, which is why its Preview and Render times are often quite high.

Some tips for speeding up the render:
Some factors that make ToonIt! Photo run faster are working in RGB instead of CMYK and working in 8-bit instead of 16-bit. We have found in our tests that ToonIt! Photo will run faster in Photoshop CS4 than Photoshop CS3, though this is dependent in part on your computer specs. Still, it's important to keep in mind that you need a little patience to work with ToonIt! Photo.

We are committed to improving the preview and render times as ToonIt! Photo matures, and already have some plans for optimizations in the very near future. However, we are even more firmly committed to making sure that the quality of the results are rivaled only by manual rotoscoping. The high quality results are what make it stand out and makes the product worth using.