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By Colin Smith -

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Alien skin’s Snap Art 2 Review

By Darren Winder (AKA DAZ)

Alien skin’s Snap Art 2 is an Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in, which includes 10 cool filters for photographers and designer’s to turn photos into Sketches and / or Paintings.

The graphical user interface (GUI) is very easy to use with tabs, sliders and text field input boxes, making adjustment of the different settings simple and easy. I achieved some great results from the various filters on my photos.
The added feature of saving your own unique filter settings is one of the major successes of Alien Skin’s software. Not only do you have hundreds of pre-defined filter settings available to you; you can create your own library of extra settings, making Snap Art 2 a powerful compatible plug-in for Adobe Photoshop.

There are several settings within each filter which will make your image unique, as well as creating the realistic effect that you want.

The filters

• Color Pencil
• Comics
• Impasto
• Oil Paint
• Pastel
• Pen and Ink
• Pencil Sketch
• Pointillism
• Stylize
• Watercolor

To open Alien skin’s Snap Art 2 interface; first open a photo in Adobe Photoshop, then go to Filter > Alien Skin Snap Art 2 and choose one of the 10 filters.
Alien skin’s Snap Art 2 interface is made up of tabs, sliders, and text field boxes. If you have trouble adjusting the sliders to a specific amount, the text field not only allows you to enter an exact amount, it also has up and down arrows which adjusts the amount in one unit increments. As well as the 10 filter effects there are many factory presets that alter various parameters for you, making it easier to experiment.

Figure01 – The Interface.

Let’s take a closer look at the interface. The Interface is divided into 5 tabbed sections, each providing control over different parameters of a filter.

Figure02 – The Settings Tab.

The SETTINGS tab contains a list of factory presets for each filter and also allows you to save your own filter settings. To save your own preset apply your filter settings to your image, press the save button at the bottom (give your settings an appropriate name), Once saved your settings can be seen in the User Settings Section, which is right under the Factory Settings Section.

Figure03 – The Basic Tab.

The BASIC tab allows adjustment of brush style, brush size, photorealism amount, stroke curvature, paint stroke length, and paint thickness. It also give’s you the option to output your new filter effects on a new layer above the original background layer in Photoshop.

Figure04 – The Tone Tab.

The TONE tab, replaces the COLORS tab when using the Pencil Sketch filter, allowing for the adjustment of brightness, contrast, and color conversion.

Figure05 – The Colors Tab.

The COLORS tab provides sliders as well as text field boxes to enter your amount, that allows you to tweak saturation, contrast and brightness, color temperature, as well as control random color variations.

Figure06 – The Canvas Tab.

The CANVAS tab provides tools to adjust canvas texture, thickness, zoom and color.
Plus if you are using a vignette you can change the opacity, size, feather and distortion amount in here too.

Figure07 – The Lightning Tab.

The LIGHTING tab allows you to control the direction, inclination, highlight brightness, size, and color. This is for the light hitting your artwork. Impasto styles are especially affected by the lighting settings as the edges of paint seem to reflect light as if it were real paint on a canvas.

Focus Region

You will notice at the top of all the tabs, you have the Focus Control settings. This will add a focus point on your image. Focus Region, you can use this if you want the Focus Region of your image to be without an effect. Focus Region is circular or oval in shape and can be moved by dragging them in the preview window. Focus Regions are especially used on facial features in portraits.
To move the Focus Region you need to click in the center for the Focus Region and hold down your left move button and drag to your location.

Figure08 – Focus Region.

Figure09 – Preview Buttons.

The right portion of the interface is dedicated to previewing the results of a filter and automatically updates every time it’s applied. There are several buttons above the preview.
These are…From left to right.

The original preview button:

Hold down this button to view the original photo in the preview window.

The hand, Move Tool (M):

Moves the image in the preview window, it works just like Adobe Photoshop’s Hand Tool.

The Zoom Tool (Z):

Zoom’s in and out of the image in the preview window,

The Adjustment Tool (A):

Controls the shape and position of the focus regain.

The 1:1 button:

Zoom to view the actual pixels.

The Fit button:

Fits the entire photo in the preview window.

Preview Slit:

This specifies various split views for the preview window, so you can view half the filter effect and half the original image. It also allows you to split the screen vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

Some of the major key features are below…

Realistic natural media effect creates uniquely styled artwork.

Canvas, paper, and other media textures further enhance realism.

Lighting controls simulate the direction, intensity, and color of a light source.

Hundreds of one-click settings offer instant results.

Detailed controls allow unlimited customization.

Extra Cool for Adobe Photoshop CS4 people.

Check out the Photoshop CS4 panel!
Alien Skin have created (2) Two free Photoshop panel’s that makes Snap Art 2 easier to use in Adobe Photoshop CS4.
The panel’s act just like any of Adobe Photoshop CS4’s panels, such as the Layers panel. It can be docked with other panels and hidden or displayed through the Window menu.
To access these cool panels go to Window > Extensions menu > Snap Art 2.

Figure10 – Snap Art 2 panel.

The first panel Snap Art 2 panel allows you start any of the Snap Art filters with a single click rather than navigating the Filter menu. The panel has a button that creates a gallery of all 10 Snap Art filters applied to copies of your image. Finally, the panel has a button that links to the Alien Skin’s website for video tutorials for Snap Art 2

Figure11 – Snap Art Sketch panel.

The second panel Snap Art Sketch panel can be used to quickly create artistic portrait sketches from your photos. The panel uses Photoshop’s “Screen” blending mode to combine the Pencil Sketch filter with the original image; the result is brighter and more photorealistic than using the Pencil Sketch filter alone. There is a grayscale and colorized version of the effect. There is also a button to adjust the brightness and contrast this will open Photoshop’s brightness and contrast dialog box. Also an option of either retains the layers for further editing or merging them into a single layer, which I thought was pretty cool.

Note: The panels only work with Photoshop CS4.
Snap Art 2 should be installed before you try to use the panel.
The Snap Art panel is not installed with Snap Art and is not found on the Snap Art CD. You need to download it from Alien skins website.
www.alienskin.com

Conclusion:

I spent way too much time playing with different photos and applying different filter effect settings.

Alien Skin’s Snap Art 2 does have some very nice artistic filters that do a very good job of mimicking their artistic styles, very realistic. Far better than Adobe Photoshop’s Sketch and Artistic filters which in my opinion are not very realistic?
I really like Alien Skin's software because it’s easy to use and you can save as many of your own unique settings as you like and use them later on different images.
I was very pleased especially with Impasto, Pencil Sketch and Oil Painting filters.
This plug-in should be useful for Photographer’s & Designer’s who don’t have time or are not very good at creating a digitally painted image.
I’d like to have more control over the Focus Region. I’d like to be able to make irregular shaped selections e.g. a shape of a car, so that the whole car is in focus and the background is not.
MARKS 5 / 5
www.alienskin.com

Snap Art 2.
Suggested Retail $199.00

Discounted upgrade pricing is available for registered owners of: Snap Art.
You need to enter a license code from one of Snap Art.
Snap Art 2 Upgrade - $99.00
Alien skin offers a free 30-day evaluation that you can download today from their website.