The filter controls haven’t changed much with this version so you can recreate the Snap Art 1 results with a little tinkering, but having more realistic results upon launching Snap Art 2 makes it a better product (Figure 5).įigure 5: I processed this fish with the Watercolor filter’s factory settings, which produced a beautiful watercolor effect. Snap Art 1 (left) generates too much black but Snap Art 2 (right) captures the bright rosette patterns expected in comic book art. You can see the difference particularly in the Pencil Sketch and Comics filters (Figure 4).įigure 4: The Comics filter’s default settings show much improvement. Many of Snap Art 2’s filters are faster and use more realistic factory default settings than in version 1. Little Improvements Make a Big Difference I would love to see a rethinking of the focus region in Snap Art 3 that allows multiple settings within a single image.
I might have been able to create the effect by placing multiple focus regions in the background, but that would have been unwieldy. Unfortunately, focus regions aren’t designed to do this: They only reduce filters, not increase or change settings for them. In one of my tests, I wanted to apply relatively flat color to the background with the Oil Paint filter and increase the painterly effect on the subject. If you were hoping to use focus regions to apply multiple filter settings to an image, you’ll be disappointed. At right, the same filter with a focus region applied to maintain detail in the center petals. Fortunately, this is easy to do if you set Snap Art 2 to duplicate layers when applying filters this is on by default and can be turned off in Snap Art 2’s preferences.įigure 3: At left, the Oil Paint filter applied with no focus regions applied. To fully mask the filter, you should apply a layer mask in Photoshop. They work well for reducing filter effects but don’t apply a true mask: Color and canvas settings will still affect the image. They’re designed to retain detail in important areas, such as a portrait’s face. These focus regions are basically selection ellipses applied to reduce the filter’s effects (Figure 3). Snap Art 2 boasts a variety of small improvements and one major addition: focus regions. And CMYK is still not supported.įigure 2: The user interface hasn’t changed much since Snap Art 1, except some changes to view settings and the addition of focus region controls. The Snap Art 2 interface (Figure 2) is similar to its predecessor: The settings haven’t changed much (except the Photorealism slider the filters now share), and the filters are still the same:Īlien Skin still ships Snap Art with presets for all filters, though there have been some changes to these both good and bad. Here I used Snap Art 2’s Pencil Sketch filter and a Photoshop layer mask to selectively apply the filter. Snap Art’s filters are designed to improve the realism of Photoshop’s default artistic filters without the complexity of a separate application like Painter (Figure 1).įigure 1: Snap Art and Photoshop work very well together.
Some artists turn to Corel Painter, an application that’s very good at capturing the look and feel of paint but also complex. While Photoshop does have many artistic filters in the Filter > Artistic and Filter > Sketch menus, some aren’t realistic enough for artists and illustrators. The new version 2 of Snap Art ($199/$99 upgrade) has improved some of these things, and Alien Skin has thrown in some other enhancements, too. However, there were some things to be improved upon, such as lack of CMYK support, slow rendering speed, and unrealistic presets. Version 1 of Alien Skin’s Snap Art, a Photoshop plug-in that applies realistic art effects to photographs, was already mature despite being a new product.
New focus regions don’t apply a true mask and don’t apply multiple filter settings to an image. Factory Settings category folders make organization much easier.ĬMYK is still not supported. Faster filters with more realistic default settings than in version 1 new focus regions work well for reducing filter effects.
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