Many image editing applications from Corel Paint Shop Pro to Adobe Photoshop have had filters and even what they call natural media painting brushes and tools for converting a photograph in to an oil painting, watercolor, pencil drawing, etc. However, most of these filters and brushes for the so called natural media brushes have just been plain bad, some like Adobe Photoshop worse than others. So if you wanted to turn your photograph in to a painting or drawing or something like that you really only had one choice and that was Corel Painter.
However, this has all changed. Finally we have a plug-in that not only quickly turns an image in to a work of art, it does so in such a way that it really looks real and it provides you with a lot of customization tools so you can tweak the effect to your hearts content. This plug-in package is Alien Skin SnapArt.
SnapArt like the other Alien Skin plug-ins has a clean tab driven interface (basics tab, colors tab, canvas tab, lighting tab, settings tab), large preview window that can show the before image, after image or both the before and after image in a split preview window. There are dozens of sliders for adjusting the effects and thanks to the live preview you see your adjustments instantly on screen. There are dozens of presets included so you can just use one of them and have your image turned in to art in seconds. You can save and load your own presets so if you create an effect you really like you can easily use it over and over. You have tweaking controls for color, lighting, canvas and more so if you want a watercolor painting on a brick wall you can do it.
Unlike Corel Painter Alien Skin SnapArt doesn't cover all of the possible artist's mediums. But, it does have a nice selection of the most used and most asked for including: colored pencil, comic, impasto, oil paint, pastel, pen and ink, pencil sketch, pointillism, stylize and watercolor.
Unlike some other plug-ins that attempts to convert your photo in to art but does a poor job of it Alien Skins SnapArt looks very realistic in my opinion and the effect is quick to apply to your image. No multiple minutes of rendering time required. You can also use the effects in Adobe Photoshop actions. However, Alien Skin SnapArt is not an Adobe Photoshop only plug-in it will work with any host application that supports Adobe Photoshop plug-ins.
If you have always wanted to quickly and easily convert your photos to works of art and you wanted the end result to actually look like the real thing then Alien Skin SnapArt is what you're looking for. I am very impressed with this package and have had a lot of fun playing with it.
TIP: Make a duplicate of your image and apply one of the SnapArt effects to the duplicate image and then with it on top of the non-modified image adjust the SnapArted images layer opacity and/or blending mode. You can create some really nifty effects doing this. Effects like this. |
