Tag Archives: topaz

Quick and Easy Digital Art

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Most people like art of some kind or other – watercolours, oils, abstract, line drawing; the list goes on and on. But not all of us can paint, though I do believe anyone can draw! Often the artistic-side of us gets minimised at school as we get older – the focus is more on “practical” subjects. I think that’s a real shame and stems from a misunderstanding of how important creativity and art is to each of us.

Well, thanks to the digital photograph you can tap into your long forgotten arty side! Anyone can be an artist! I use a few cool tools to help me create digital art, the main ones being; Snap Art, Topaz Simplify and Filter Forge. Of course the glue that brings everything together is Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements). I’m going to focus on the least expensive one out of these three – Topaz Simplify (TS). TS comes as part of a suite of plugins from Topaz Labs, these you can buy either individually or as part of the complete package. I’m pretty sure that once you have tried a few you will end-up wanting them all!

Anyway for now, I’ll just give you a quick tour of Simplify and show you want can be done on even the most basic of images. Download a trial here and once its installed it will be available from your plugins menu (under Filters in Photoshop). Just to show that it works well on any photo, I’ve picked one I took with my iPhone. Here it is unedited:

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Not to bad out of the can!  Lets see what we can create in Simplify…

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When the plug-in starts you will get three areas displayed; on the left are some quick and easy presets, with a preview of what the changes will look like. The middle section is your image with either before or after (preview). I like the full-screen version you can see here but you can also see a split view if you prefer. The right-hand side is where you can alter low-level controls; these can work globally or locally (as you paint in the changes you want).

On this photo I settled on the Oil Painting preset and painted-out some of the effect in the foreground using the Local Adjustments window.  I did this, as I wanted some more detail back into the rocks.  Here is a close-up of the window:

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Here is the final result – achieved in just a few minutes!

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Download the trial and have a go on a few of your photos. If you do decide to buy it use the coupon code “stewartbaird” to get a nice 15% discount!

Finally, remember to post your final results to the Topaz group on Flickr for everyone to see. You can find it here.

Here’s one more photo I updated with Topaz Simplify, making a more graphic or cartoon look:

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After -

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Black Shag at Sunrise

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Topaz Clean is a cool Photoshop plug-in that you can use to create a kind of painterly or art effect to an image. There way I see it the plug-in alters the edges of objects by either removing detail or turning a straight line into a wiggly one. The effect is easier to see than explain! I find it works best on nature or landscapes. When you use it on an animal with feathers or fur you can create a very interesting look. On this bird (a black shag) you can see in the feathers look more pronounced. As you might guess its one of those effects that can be over-used. More advice is to push it to extremes and then use a mask to paint-in just the bits that work.

Download it from Topaz and give it a whirl; you will love it!

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These tools helped me work the magic:

Alice in Wonderland Photo Shoot

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I did fun “Alice in Wonderland”€ themed photo shoot the other day. The idea was to add some drama and fun to a standard couple photo shoot. In this case we used costumes, dress-up and some quirky props to build the scene. The goal was to capture something a bit offbeat, surreal and manic. Setting the whole scene at the beach at sunset, helped too. You can imagine that a wild, stormy night would have been great as well.

Once the scene is set its important to get the “actors” into their roles. I had asked them earlier to begin thinking about mood, poses and actions. I reckon props really help when it comes to actually making the picture. Sometimes its hard to know what to do with your hands!

I used the natural light from the setting sun bounced off a large reflector or diffused through another one. In post-processing I took a few different approaches; dreamy, realistic, grungy and muted tones to convey some of the drama.

Let me know if you’d like a dramatic photo shoot like this!
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Here’s another one with the Mad Hatter sneaking a little kiss:

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These tools helped me work the magic:

Classic Car Sparkle

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Topaz Labs have released another great little plug-in – Star Effects.   They seem to like to build plug-ins that are focussed on a particular area (detail, black and white, lens effects etc).   The good news with this approach is that the price-point is much lower than with more integrated plug-ins, like Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4.   I find that some of these more “creative” type plug-ins, that the key is use them in a subtle kind of way, blending-in as required.  Topaz Star Effects is a great example of this, as you can create some pretty strange images if you’re not too careful.

On this photo here I just wanted to bring-out a little more sparkle on the chrome.  So, I duplicated a layer in Photoshop and opened it up in Star Effects.  I used the Starry Night 1 preset and the adjusted the size of the star too suit.  (If you don’t get any stars then there is a threshold slider that sets when the effects kicks-in).

The really neat part of this is you can brush-out the sparkles you don’t want.    Topaz Star Effects works on any light areas in the image (I mean on the right-hand of the histogram); you don’t just paint stars anywhere.   In my image it found some bright areas in trees and sky.  Having a sparkle or “star” in those areas would have looked pretty strange to say the least.  In the easiest way to spot this on-wanted sparkles is to select “stars only” in the Star Settings adjustment panel, then press “Remove” and paint over the areas you don’t want.  Once the layer looks nice and “sparkly” I save it back to Photoshop and blend-in (if required).  In this car photo I also applied a little extra detail contrast using Lucis Art.  You do same kind of thing using Topaz Adjust/Detail or within Photoshop itself.

You might only use this plug-in a few times a month but its certainly worth it for that one shot!  I used it to create some nice sparkle on a birthday cake the other day.  (By the way I do have a filter for my lens that creates sparkle but I left it at home this time).Download the trial and give it a go.

Classic Citreon

These tools helped me work the magic:

In Need of Repair

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Want to know a great combination?  Of course you do!  Well, it is Topaz Adjust, a wide-angle lens and a junkyard car.  There are so many colours and shapes to be found within the decaying body of an old vehicle.  Topaz Adjust works on images what seems close to magic, by opening-up these tonal differences.  In my experience, Topaz Adjust is ideally suited to landscapes and these kinds of still-life’s.  I have used it in portraits but only in a very controlled manner (typically, these means only using it on the eyes or perhaps hair, then masking-in).

This shot is taken with the Canon 10-22 EFS lens attached to my Canon 7D.  It’s such a fun lens in these situations; you can get into those little corners, exploring  every little nook and cranny.  You could use lens correction in either Lightroom or Photoshop but I like the dramatic effect of all these crazy lines.I encourage you to download and try Topaz Adjust for yourself.  In fact  if you were to only buy one plugin, I’d choose Topaz Adjust.  When you do use it, make sure you copy the base layer and then mask-in the effect as you see fit.  I’d have to say that I almost never apply Topaz Adjust without, noise reduction, sharpening or in some cases adding back in some Gaussian blur.

Try the 1-2-3 approaches on your own car (hopefully its in better shape than this one).   Use the widest angle you have the wider you can do the better.
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These tools helped me work the magic:

 

Be Prepared

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I try to make it a habit to always take my camera with me whenever I go out; even to those mundane places we all visit. I figure that you never know when some unexpected event will happen. This happened to me on the weekend when a helicopter flew past at sunset just at the right time; I had to be quick on the draw to get my lens focussed on the chopper as it zipped past.

This photo here is not quite as exciting but still a good chance to practice that quick fire shooting. Again the 70-200mm lens is so much fun when walking about. I managed to capture an image of this terrier as he scurried along. Then I used a bit of Topaz Lens Effects on the image€; just for a bit more fun and drama. Download it and try it out. I am giving away 3 copies of Lens Effects as well. See here for details.

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These tools helped me work the magic:

For Topaz Lens Effects – use the code “stewartbaird” at the checkout to get 15% off this fantastic plug-in.

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