Hey Everybody!
I recently did a video review of the art program Impression from Topaz. It’s a great tool for adding style to your digital photos and art. Check it out.
Oh and here’s the link to Topaz Impression that I mention in the video: http://www.introvertartist.com/impression/
Here is the transcript of the video:
Hey, everybody, I’ve got a really cool product to tell you about today.
It’s called Topaz Impression, and it’s a really great way of adding some unique styling to your photos and your digital art.
It should take me about eight minutes, and it should be pretty quick.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
Alright, so here I’ve loaded Topaz Impression.
As you can see, it starts with an image.
This is the default that comes with the application.
We’re not going to use this today.
I’m going to use one of my own images.
Now, typically you’d load a photograph in this, but, since I’m not a photographer, I’m just going to load up one of my artworks.
And, to load up something, you just go to the top menu here, select “open”, and find your file.
I’m going to use my “Iguana Coffee” image.
You can see here: it loads the image and then it starts to immediately apply…I think this first preset up here…which is “Charcoal 1”.
We’ll get to the presets in just a minute, though.
…couple of things to show you first
You have different ways of viewing you enhanced version and the original side by side, or top and bottom.
This is a kind of a neat little feature here where you can sort of see how much it’s changed, how much Topaz has changed it.
Here’s side by side full versions and top and bottom full versions.
I’m just going to go the the filtered version thoough.
This is just a quick zoom feature.
And, this is just another way of viewing that zoom.
And then, you can also just snap to the original.
Let’s turn the original off, and zoom to this level.
Down here at the bottom, I beleive this is the strength of the filter
Right, So, this is how much the filter is applied to your original image, and there’s various blend modes here to change the way that you…that the two are mixed together.
So you can say…multiply…screen…some fun things to play with.
And now over here, on the right hand side you have presets.
Let’s go back to normal blend mode and 100% strength.
And this is really just a starting point for whatever filter you want to use.
And they also have sets of these presets.
So, we’ll go with the “Ancient” preset.
Here’s some interesting looking ones…go with “Cracked Fresco”.
That’s kind of interesting, but I don’t think I like that one.
Let’s try “Cave Dweller”.
That one’s really wild!
Anyway, we can…once you’ve kind of picked a preset that you like…
Let’s try impressionistic…and, “Monet 1”
It looks kind of painting like.
Anyway, once you’ve picked a preset you like, you can click on this set up here, and this will take you to the individual parameters for your…for your image.
You can pick like your brush style…pick maybe a finer brush…the size of that brush…a whole bunch of other things.
I’m not going to show you all of them for time’s sake.
But, it’s a lot of fun to just figure out what works for you.
Let’s see…whoa!…That’s a little bit too extreme there.
Alright…stroke length…
Well, you get it to pretty much where you like it, and then…a few other things to cover.
You have down here the color section.
This is the same kind of color adjustments you can make in any program, such as GIMP or Photoshop…you can do them here as well.
You can change the hue and the saturation as well as the lightness…contrast.
This vignette thing here sort of gives it a spotlight type effect.
Let’s turn it way up here so you can kinda see it.
So…as if you are looking at it under a concetrated light.
Light Direction I think applies to this texture stuff down here.
Now, texture is what you do to kind of…give the image a look like as if it was painted on a canvas.
I like this “canvas 3” here.
You can’t really see it here just yet until I turn the strength up.
Turn it WAY up…and, reduce the size a little bit.
And now this really looks like it was painted on a canvas…I mean…this would fool a lot of people.
Now, my signature down here has been kind of destroyed, but the rest of the image is looking pretty good.
When you get to a point that you like, you can…save the presets. So you can apply this to other images of yours.
And this is kind of, would, is a way of working towards a consistent style.
So you just click the “plus” button up here and the pick a place to save it and then give it a name…call it “MyImpression2” on this one.
And now, that should be saved.
I’m not going to go back an look at it now.
When your ready, though, you can save your image by clicking on the “Save As” button down here, and…I’ve save this one before as…you gotta be careful when it…the first time you try to save it, this is what I got and it was the original name of the file, and it would overwrite the original file,
and I don’t want to do that.
Okay, and now I can go to my desktop and have a look at the file.
Okay, so here’s the original…and then here is the enhanced version.
You can see it’s definitely got a much more painterly look to it.
So, I’ve experimented with this a little bit with a few of my images,
and here I have one that I uploaded last September of a…Beachcraft Staggerwing.
And…um…I actually sold a print of this within just a few weeks, and…won a few contests as well.
So, it’s sucessful!
I mean, I’m probably not gonna…probably not gonna use this for most of my images, but it’s sort of a…an interesting thing to do every once in a while.
So, if you…wanna try Topaz Impression…in the description of this video, there will be a link to the Topaz site.
Or, if you want, you can…I have a forwarded link…in a…from my blog: go to www.introvertartist.com/impression, and it will take you to the site.
And from here you can buy it!
Now, in a…for a…in all honesty that is a…an affiliate link, so I will get a small commission if you do happen to buy Topaz Impression within the first thirty days of visiting the site.
So if you liked this video and you’d like to see more, ore read my articles, or even see some of my latest art, you can always follow me on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheArtOfDanielEskridge
So, thanks, everybody, and goodnight!