"Painting" plug-ins and stand alone apps

[sanjosedave]

This is one of my first uses of Topaz's Impression, recently released. I've used other painting aps such as the ones from Alien's Snap Art, and DAP's stand alone. I haven't found a good, at least for me, tutorial for Painter.

This was taken with 60D, 70-200mm 2.8 (probably with 2x); 1/1600; f6.3; ISO 400

Location was Pescadero, CA

 

[MARKOE PHOTOE]

Very nice painting Dave. I love this area around Pescadero and the beach/Hwy 84/Rte 1. I've used Snap Art with pleasing results. The new Tonal Impressions plug-in from Topaz unfortunately does not work with my video card.

Would love to see more of your work with this app.

 

[sanjosedave]

I forgot this: Impressions requires a lot of HW resources. Topaz should put the check HW applet up front, rather than embed it into the download or at the bottom of the screen. I've noticed multiple threads on their FB page with users saying it doesn't work with their HW because of an older version of GL and having problems updating.

Windows 7+ x64, OpenGL 3.2 is required.

One feature that is missing, when compared to Snap Art, is the ability to back off an effect in a specific area from within the app. Plus, it doesn't supply layers within the app. For example, in Snap Art, sometimes I want the background to be abstracted, the edges of flowers to be realistic, and the rest of the flowers to be Impasto with some fine tuning of brush width etc. I guess there is a way to do this with layer masks in PS/CC, but that means I have to have a workflow plan thought through, rather than making and seeing changes in real time.