Topaz Labs does it again with a wonderful new addition to their stable of programs with, Impression. Topaz Impression allows you to create art from your photography and the results are ridiculously amazing! I’ve used a lot of painting plugins and filters over the years and I love creating these paintings. I’m very impressed with Topaz Impression!
I love love love this new program..eeks I am spending a lot of time painting lately! Why? Topaz Impression let’s me paint even though I can’t draw a crooked line! It’s like your fairy godmother came along and sprinkled her fairy dust on the computer and made you an artist! So much fun!
The thing about Topaz Impression is that it works so easily, and it’s loaded with presets (47) to inspire your creativity. And when I mean inspire I mean Topaz Impression can render like 7 billion variations! It’s also very responsive if you make a brush adjustment it happens in real time with little or no lag. The controls are thoughtfully laid out and offer a wider arrange of adjustments than some of the competition. All of these paintings look their best at fill size so be sure to click and embiggen the paintings.
Really big files like the Sea Lions (10,000px and 150MB) render really fast even on my MacBook Air!
The provided presets are so good right out of the box that I didn’t use the options to change things on some of the paintings. Not very creative of me, but I told you I could not paint. Or you could just say their artists are better than me! Of course playing with the brushes and such is half the fun! This elephant took about a minute to create with Topaz Impression. I feel a little guilty calling these art, when it is sometimes so effortless like this one…OK, not really!
The presets are great starting points and I look them over live by just clicking the preset and then the program will render the effects on the open image. Once I go through and see which preset suits the image the best (this often takes me the most time) I click on the Adjustments button in the center of the presets and release my inner artist! The first time I played used the program I pushed every slider to the far left and then to the far right so that I could see what each of them did to the image. I find this playtime is a much easier method than reading the manual…then I again I’m a guy!
I really love the results with this Elk image. I started with the Charcoal II preset and then “painted” it my way with the sliders. I brought the colors back to give it a hand-tinted look by selecting orange and yellow in the color palette and then increasing the saturation of those individual colors…kudos to Topaz Impression for that feature.
Last Thoughts
Well this is more like a nitpick, I wish the brush samples and the texture samples were bigger or separated by categories. Ok that’s all I’ve got and that really has not slowed me down…obviously.
I’d love to see them make an iPad version!!
Topaz Impression Art Gallery
Here are some of the paintings that I have created with Topaz Impression. Roll your mouse over the slideshow to take control as well as to go to my art collection! :-)
Art of Creative Photography Workshop
In addition to my photography workshops, I also teach digital classes to help you learn programs such as Topaz Impression. You can find out about all of my workshops including my next Art of Creative Photography class…HERE.
Topaz Impression
I’ve only touched the surface in describing what Topaz Impression can do to help you get your artistic groove on. The nice people at Topaz have way more details and tutorials and examples on their website…HERE. The launch price has it on sale for $74.99 and of course there is a free 30 day trial. If the introductory price is over you can use code JEFF15 and get 15% off the price. What are you waiting for go paint!
I feel like I should say that I was on the beta test program for Impression and did receive my copy of the program from Topaz.
