With Topaz Simplify, you can transform your photos instantly with one click into oil or watercolor paintings, monochrome sketches / line drawings or bold cartoons. I like best the oil painting modes, especially for vibrant and colorful images, but each image may benefit from a different filter, so it’s best to experiment with several filters. Fortunately, the rendering is very fast, and you can quickly test various options before committing to one. Or you can apply multiple filters to an image, stacking them onto each other, or even mix them with some other effects from Topaz other plugins.
Cut Flowers
To illustrate some of the painting filters and the different looks, I used a colorful street image scene and ran it through various filters. Each filter supports also an extensive group of parameters with easy-to-use sliders to optimize your rendition, but for the purpose of this demonstration, I never touched any sliders and used just the provided default settings.
Street Scene – Original
Before applying an oil or watercolor painting filter, I ran the image through Topaz Adjust Boost to get a more vibrant starting image. If you don’t have Topaz Adjust, you could just saturate the colors slightly.
Street Scene – Topaz Adjust Boost
then I applied the Oil Painting Toned II filter (one out of about twenty oil filters)
Street Scene – Topaz Simplify Oil Painting Toned II
to get a more contrasty scene with very vibrant colors, I used another oil filter, called Oil Painting IV
Street Scene – Topaz Simplify Oil Painting IV
For softer, less contrasty rendition with more subdued colors, the watercolor filter works well.
Street Scene – Topaz Simplify Watercolor
Another street scene using the BuzSim filter
Street Scene – Topaz Simplify BuzSim filter
and a 100% crop of the same image to see the details
Street Scene – Topaz Simplify BuzSim filter magnified to 100%
Landscape scenes lend themselves very well to artistic interpretations
Lake Superior North Shore – Topaz Simplify BuzSim filter
The following image is an artistic interpretation of an image shown in my earlier post “Drive to Lake Superior”. You can compare the two images and see how Topaz Simplify reduced the details and smoothed out the rocks.
Canoe on a rocky beach – Topaz Simplify BuzSim filter
As stated on the top, in these examples I never changed the default settings that are located in the right control panel. For each preset, you can change all kinds of parameters, including saturation, contrast, simplify modes (the abstract rendering), handling of edges, vignette and other things. Once you start playing with those parameters you’ll have almost unlimited options as how to render the image. On top of it, you can make also your own presets, and configure them exactly to suit your specific needs.
One more example of a vintage car, processed in two different ways:
Vintage car – original look
Vintage car – used Cartoon preset
Vintage car – Used Buz Sim III preset
As stated on the top, in these examples I never changed the default settings that are located in the right control panel. For each preset, you can change all kinds of parameters, including saturation, contrast, simplify modes (the abstract rendering), handling of edges, vignette and other things. Once you start playing with those parameters you’ll have almost unlimited options as how to render the image. On top of it, you can make also your own presets, and configure them exactly to suit your specific needs.
To buy Topaz Simplify, use the following link:
http://www.topazlabs.com/861.html
By using the above referral link and a discount code “lespalenik” you’ll get at anytime any of Topaz single plugins or a complete bundle at 15% off
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