I thought I would kick off the blog with my thoughts on the Topaz Impressions plug in. First off I have to say that I really like it. Is it perfect? No, but it is really great and I believe Topaz will keep making it better and better. My one big negative on it is that it runs kind of slow on my desktop computer. I don’t think this is really a problem with Topaz. I think that after I upgrade my video card it will run a lot faster. I use it on my laptop, which is a bit newer and it runs considerably faster but still not as fast as I would like. That being said, I really love it. I will try to post a training video on it in the near future.
Topaz Impression does some really cool things such as replicating all types of painting styles be it Monet, Van Gogh, Hopper, Rembrandt just to name a few. It also does really well at pencil sketches and colored pencils. It has tons of presets built right in so you can turn your image into a piece of art fairly quickly. I don’t like to use the presets but they do help me to see which direction I would like to take my image. There are lots of sliders giving you the ability to really tweak your image and make it special. In my work flow I like to mix different types of media in creating my original art images. I do this by applying several styles of painting typers and using layers and masks inside of Photoshop to bring my artwork to life and give it my signature look.
I have included several images that I have produced using Topaz Impression and a whole host of Photoshop techniques and various other plug-ins from Topaz and Nik Software as well as applying textures to many of the images.
And here are the images:
Eden Bridge Photography Blog 