David Thoiron has announced the release of FotoSketcher 2.50, his excellent tool for transforming digital photos into paintings, sketches, cartoons and more. And while it doesn’t exactly transform the program, the update does include one or two very welcome improvements.

Top of the list has to be the new linear halftoning effect. With its default settings this is a very effective abstraction tool, and delivers great results on both colour and black and white images. But as usual with FotoSketcher, the effect has a host of configuration settings (Abstraction, Angle, Colour Intensity, Texture and more), and it’s easy to produce more customised results to better suit individual images.

Pasting a source image will no longer automatically erase the destination, when their sizes are the same, helpful when you want to merge images.

The new linear halftoning effect works well with colour and black and white images

The last effect you applied is now displayed at the bottom right of the program window, useful if you’ve combined multiple effects and have lost track of their order.

There are assorted smaller interface tweaks, bug fixes and other improvements, while the program now also has a Serbian translation.

And if you were put off by the optional browser toolbar in the setup version, then good news: it’s been removed.

Put it all together and FotoSketcher 2.50 remains one of the best free tools for easily converting your digital images into works of art. Go grab a copy, try it for yourself.