Thanks to KVR for hosting the Skytopia/SonicPhoto forum on their site.

Any queries, feature suggestions, philosophy, or support for SonicPhoto, feel free to post!

Links to SonicPhoto:
Main website: http://www.skytopia.com/software/sonicphoto/
At KVR: http://www.kvraudio.com/product/sonicphoto-by-skytopia

The idea behind SonicPhoto - converting pictures to sound - has been seen before, but there are quite a few ways you can go about it. The basic idea is simple. You represent higher pixels with higher pitches (and lower with lower), whilst the X axis acts as time. This way, you get a reverse spectrogram, and can theoretically reproduce any sound imaginable.

Features not previously seen include harmony quantization and the ability to set the fundamental wave to achieve crisper and 'grittier' results.

See the video at Youtube for a demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BGr1u-Oz8M
Last edited by twinbee on Sat Feb 02, 2013 8:58 am; edited 1 time in total

Pretty amazing program, thanks!
Should be great for ambient/space drone, as well as dark spaces for DrumNBass.

Oh, it seems to capable of sounds like radio and tv from the 50s back.

Thanks for the feedback!

Let me know if you have any feature suggestions for SonicPhoto and feel free to post any really cool sounds you've made if you like.

Hi!

First of all, thanks for creating such flexible and interesting tool. I just bought it today, but even now I am sure that it will become important part of my musical workshop.

It is ergonomic and easy to use - for example sliding (not rotating) knobs, ability to enter numeric values directly in editable forms - I like precise tweaking. My CPU is not clogged just because of mouse movement on knob or image And this is when SonicPhoto wins with its main competitor

I tried SonicPhoto on images generated by Apophysis - I got interesting evolving ambient pads. I use Apophysis with other images sonification programs as well.

Things that could make SonicPhoto even more interesting (and unique):

* Batch rendering of project files to wave files (I really have a batch of images to sonify)
* Randomization of selected or all parameters (and something like "lock parameter" checkbox, to make it non-randomizable).
* Layers: using two (or even more) images at once with configurable opacity of layers.
* "Stretched morph" - ability to generate kind of horizontal "strip" from morphing from image A to image B - strip starts from image A, and end with image B, with fluid intermediate form in between. Something like graphical equivalent of wave vector transition.

I will explore and test SonicPhoto during this week, and I will report all remarks and suggestions.

Thanks for your post and order!


I have to agree with you on that one You can use the mouse wheel on them too, and press RMB on the each label to reset it btw. The other thing you might have picked up is the logarithmic response for many of the sliders. For example, adjust the 'sound time' increases slowly at first, then higher values increase much more rapidly.


Good idea. So let me clarify, you want the same slider and textbox settings, but for multiple pictures via batch?


Another good idea! I'd like to do a good job here, and add checkbox locks for each option like you say. Only tricky aspect might be how I'd randomize the 'chord notes' and 'note harmonics' text boxes - there are a few ways I could go about that (or I may leave them out altogether for now...).


I might put these off for a while, because they can be done via image processing/photoshop before loading into SonicPhoto. If I implement horizontal picture morphing for example, there'd be a trillion other effects I could add too...

Anyway, thanks again for your comments, and feel free to post on whatever else you find or can think of.

By the way: I like your licensing policy - especially lifetime upgrades.
This is very atractive offer.


Yes, exactly. I want to create queue of graphic files to process
under same sonification settings.


I observed that settings randomization feature increases popularity of given effect/instrument. HG Fortune's synths are good example of implementation of such idea.


Well, there is another idea:
Is RGB color data used by SonicPhoto? Description says only about presence of pixels by Y axis and brightness.
If you enable three "channels", related to RGB channels in image, and make possible to "wire" them to some parameters as oscillators, that could be an interesting enhancement. There are image sonificators interpreting RGB data in some way.

Yes, separate RGB channels would be good, but would require quite a bit of work and planning. Maybe for v1.5 or v2.

By the way, feel free to post any cool sounds or music you come up with.

I added to my collection on FreeSound, first drone generated by SonicPhoto:
http://www.freesound.org/people/Trebblofang/sounds/176681/

More samples to come...

Cool!

I've made separate threads now - one for sounds, and one for music, so look forward to seeing any new stuff there

GUI and controls organisation:

In section "Harmony and instruments quantization" there are two
input windows, "Note harmonics" and "Chord notes".
At the right there are two expandable menus "Select...".

Propositions:
1) instead of "Select", place selected preset name in menu window, after
selecting said preset.
2) please, add function to define and save own user presets in these menus
(to save not in project, but in configuration of program itself).

Question: Is SonicPhoto multicore-optimised? I'm changing my current PC on server machine, which I will use as music workstation and I'm curious if I will profit from two Quad-Core CPUs on board, when using SonicPhoto? I plan to render longer image sonifications (at least 30 minutes long).

It defaults back to "Select" because if you change the accompanying textbox afterwards, the description may no longer accurate anymore. Hence it's more of a 'copy'.


Interesting. I might just add a tickbox to load instrument/harmony stuff only from a given project. This would achieve the same effect as a completely separate set of save/load buttons.


Not at this stage. However, I'll look into this at some point, hopefully soonish (maybe a few months?)