Paint
Smear flat image regions into a painted look with a Kuwahara filter, keeping edges crisp.
What it does
Paint runs a Kuwahara filter over the image. Each pixel takes nine taps arranged as four overlapping quadrants, and the quadrant with the lowest luminance variance wins. Flat regions smear into broad patches while edges stay where they are, which reads as a painted or brushed surface.
The filter is isotropic. It does not follow the direction of an edge, so patches do not curve along a contour.
When to use it
Flattening photographic or rendered detail into painterly patches with silhouettes intact.
A stylised pass ahead of posterising, quantising or edge work.
Reducing noise without the uniform smear of a blur.
| Parameter | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
content_in | Raster | — | — |
size | Number | 1 | Painterly region size — larger = broader patches |
strength | Number | 1 | Blend amount (0 = original, 1 = full painterly) |
spatial_strength | Field | — | Spatial field controlling where the effect applies (0=bypass, 1=full) |
Gotchas
Size is a texel offset, not a normalised radius, so the same value reads differently at a different resolution. Its range is 1 to 4 and the stencil is always nine taps: raising Size spreads those taps further apart rather than adding more, so patches grow broader and blockier at no extra cost. Changing Size rebuilds the kernel; dragging Strength does not.
Content In takes a Raster or a field that bakes to one. A Volume is rejected at graph preparation rather than converted, so slice it first.
A wire dropped on Size or Strength is dead. Both read their stored value when the node builds its plan, so a driver's value never arrives. Keyframe them or type into them instead.
Spatial Strength applies only when Paint cooks on its own. Paint fuses with the node above it whenever that node has no other consumer, which is the common wiring, and the fused path skips the mask: the effect then applies everywhere at full strength.
Worked example
Wire an image into Content In.
Raise Size to 2 or 3 for broader patches.
Lower Strength to blend the painted result back towards the original.
Follow with Quantize to collapse the patches into flat bands.
See also
Blur · Quantize · Sharpen · Rasters (images)