Howard Millard

Snap Art 3 from Alien Skin Software (www.alienskin.com) can quickly take your photographic images into the realm of hand drawn, professional level traditional art media, from Classical to Pop (#1). Whether you want to fulfill your own dreams of artistic expression or expand the services you offer to clients, Snap Art 3 (SA3) makes it strikingly fast and easy, and does not require drawing by your own hand. Rather than in the wrist, it’s all in the software. Hundreds of preset effects are only a click or two away. You do, however, still have a vast array of options to control via sliders—variables such as brush size, color saturation, contrast, tone, light direction and more.

Since Snap Art 3 is a plug-in, in order to use it you must have Photoshop, Lightroom, or Elements to run it (see the list at the end of this article). Whether you work on Windows or Mac, SA3 couldn’t be more straightforward. In Photoshop, open a photo and choose Filter>Alien Skin>Snap Art 3. You’ll be presented with 11 art media styles to choose from: Color Pencil, Comics, Crayon (new), Impasto (thick textured paint), Oil Paint, Pastel, Pen and Ink, Pencil Sketch, Pointillism (inspired by Impressionist painting), Stylize (this creates a posterized or silkscreen look) and Watercolor. Chose one of these and a large preview opens as SA3 applies the effect. If you like it, click OK. If not, delve into the tabs and submenus to tweak and vary the look until you have completed your masterpiece.

Are you shooting digital now, but sometimes long for the gritty look of pushed Tri-X, or the impressionistic color characteristics of a faded Polaroid? To add the organic look of specific film types to your photos, or transform them with a wide range of processing and darkroom effects, try one of the 300 presets available in the second generation of Alien Skin's...

Are you someone who appreciates the richtones, colors and textures of 19th and 20th century alternative photo processes? With onOne Software’s Perfect B&W (www.ononesoftware.com), you can imbue your own images with these classic looks, and you won’t have to spend days in the darkroom to do it. Options include Platinum and Palladium, the warm beige tones and mottled surface of Calotype, the blue hues of Cyanotype, the buff tones of an Albumen print, the velvety reds of a warm Carbon print, even the look of a Tintype and many more.

HDR, as most photographers know, stands for High Dynamic Range, allowing you to capture a wider range of highlight and shadow detail than you could in a single frame. You create an HDR image by shooting several identically framed shots of the same scene at different exposures, often with three brackets such as -2, 0, and +2 EV. The newest kid on the HDR block is Aurora HDR Pro from Macphun, currently for Mac only, but with a Windows version in the works.