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. Apple Mac: OS X Yosemite (10.Faster filters with more realistic default settings than in version 1 new focus regions work well for reducing filter effects.Technical Details and System Requirements System Requirements Overview of Alien Skin Snap Art 4 Features Your most recently applied effects are automatically remembered too.
In Snap Art you can tag your favorites so you can get back to them later. Find specific styles with fast searching by name or description. You can quickly filter by categories like Impasto, Crayon or Watercolor. This helps you quickly batch process multiple images and supports workflows that don’t use plug-ins.Ĭhoosing your look is the focus of Snap Art, so the preset browser now uses thumbnails for a more visual experience. Snap Art works as a standalone application too. It integrates seamlessly with Exposure, Photoshop, and Lightroom. Whatever your workflow, Snap Art will blend right in. Later, you can apply it to a photo (or batches of photos) with a single click. Save your new look as a preset with a name, category, and even include notes. If you discover a preset that sparks an idea, it’s easy to mold it to fit your needs. It comes loaded with a wide variety of presets, but they are just starting points for your own unique style. You make the creative choices to turn your artistic vision into reality and leave the brushwork to Snap Art. With Snap Art, no hand-eye coordination or technical training is required.