My personal workflow is usually conceiving an image mentally, creating it and rendering it in e-on software's Vue, and then bringing it into Photoshop for refining.
In this review I will give examples of the Alien Skin presets using them directly on photographs as well as 3D rendered images. Now I use them for special purposes to soften and make more life-like 3D renders. They can be used very successfully to imitate an oil painting, printed on canvas, or they can be used to add an interesting "painterly"effect to an image. I liked to use these media presets and ones I created for my own effects. However, I never desired to imitate an oil painting or a watercolor. When I did mainly photography, I used Snap Art to give my images effects similar to natural media painting.
Once you’re happy with the effect, save it-and your mask-by pressing Command-S (it appears in the User Settings area at bottom left).Snap Art 4 by Alien Skin Software is a plug-in as well as a standalone program to turn photographs into "natural media paintings." Snap Art has been my favorite plug-in for creating "painterly" images. Once you’ve added a mask, it’s preserved while your photo is open-even when experimenting with other presets. Click the triangle to its right to reveal even more options for fine-tuning your art. Once you’ve added a mask, use the Effect pop-up menu to change the way the masked area is handled (choose Detail to apply fewer effects to the masked area). Click the tiny triangle to the right of the Mask Tool area and you’ll reveal even more options for changing mask softness and strength (think opacity). The program automatically switches to the Layers tab on the right, too, which contains controls for refining the effect and the mask itself. Mouse over to the preview area and paint across any areas you don’t want affected by changes made with the settings on the right side of the interface.Īs you paint, your brush strokes appear as a magenta overlay (toggle the overlay on or off by pressing M). To add a mask, click the circle within a square icon at the bottom of the Snap Art interface (it’s identical to the mask icon in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements). For example, by using masks you can apply more of an abstract painted look to the background of your photo, yet retain detail and photo realism in your subject’s face. This is helpful for fine-tuning effects in specific areas of your photo in different ways…an absolute must for portraits. Snap Art 3 lets you create up to three layers, each with an individual mask. Sure there are a slew of sliders, but the video tutorials on Alien Skin’s website are incredibly helpful.īy using detail masking, you can apply an abstract effect to your photo while keeping faces recognizable.
Each tab contains a preset pop-up menu as well as multiple sliders for even more customization (hover over each slider for a descriptive tool tip).
These settings are categorized into clickable “tabs” and include Background, Layers, Color, and Canvas. On the right side you’ll find settings that let you fine-tune effect presets with controls for paint coverage (so more or less of the canvas shows through), paint thickness, stroke color variation, color saturation, canvas texture, lighting, and more. Tools beneath the viewing area let you pan and zoom, as well as add a layer mask (more on that in a minute). Once the plug-in opens, you’ll notice a streamlined interface with hundreds of presets on the left-use your arrow keys to peruse them-and a large preview area in the center.