Feature: There are some very Artful Plugins available for Adobe, Corel, etc.
Motivation: Here are the best plugins for adding an exotic painterly look to your images

There are two situations which almost cry out for the use of one of the many artful plugins. By artful we mean those plugins that allow a user to transform or alter selected parts or an entire scene with painterly-like or multimedia-type styling or look. The first situation is a great shot which is all too familiar. Say an image of sandy beach in the tropics or a bundle of pink roses or a baseball batter taking a swat at the ball. These are high quality shots but they are also quite familiar, even dare we say it, common. To make the familiar a bit exotic and strangely fascinating one should consider applying an artful plugin.

The other situation where a photo finisher would want to use an artful plugin is on a near miss shot. This is a shot where the basic composition and color are right but something has gone awry - part of the foreground is out of focus or there is a piece of obnoxious material running right across the frame (you can clone it out but only with great effort). Apply some artful effect and you will literally be able to paint out the offending irregularity - and hence transform a good image to a winning image. So here, in alphabetical are our "artful dodgers".

Artmaster from Fo2pix

Artmaster works on the whole image and applies art-wizard stencils to succeeding layers of the original image. On the bottom row there are three Adjusters which can be applied to the image. The first is Adjust which allows users to change the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation for the classic color and tonal controls. In addition, one can transform the image with operations such as mirror, flip, crop, invert, plus rotate right or left. In sum one can get the image ready for the Studio step.

The Studio comes with 8 stencils or art wizards. Each wizard renders the image in a distinctive way shown in preview form. But users get to selectively apply the 6 to 10 steps contained in each art wizard. And in fact one can mix and match - choosing the the Highlight step from the Chalk Gray wizard and then the Blurred color from the Basic Form wizard. In effective users get to know what and how each step modifies the image - and then select the combination of steps that best suits your needs.

Now the stencil steps perform a galaxy of operations - simplification, smart smoothing, selective smearing etc. In applying each step there are three basic tuners that allow users to further modify the effect for brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, and amount of tinting and replacement that will be applied for this particular step or effect. Finally each step supplies the user with a choice of 7 to 20 variations. In short, Artmaster is very rich in options and those are highly changeable.

However, unlike in Corel PhotoPaint or Adobe Photoshop - there is no layer control that allows the user to comeback later and alter the nature of the effect applied. When the Finish key is clicked the effect is applied and there is no undo available other than restarting.

But within a step, users can paint on the effect to only a part of the image - or one can Fill the complete image. And Undo that operation with the Clear button at the top of the screen. So before Finish there are unlimited Clear and Undos possible; but once Finish or Continue is pressed the changes to that point are locked in.

What makes Artmaster so useful is its ability in its stencil steps to isolate key features of the image in novel ways. In addition, Fo2pix sells additional Art Wizards so one can apply quite a variety of effects or stylings to your image.

Although Artmaster is not a plugin, there is a Buzz2 version that is, which means that Artmaster effects can be applied to selected regions of an image. However Buzz2 does not have the same range of Art Wizards available. In sum, I find Artmaster easy to use - it has a series of pull away help advisories. But most important of all, the stencil operations are quite impressive - really helping to add drama and form to your images.At $89 for Buzz2 plugin or $199 for Artmaster, both are Highly Recommended.

Deep Paint from Right Hemisphere

DeepPaint from Right Hemisphere is a Painter with Brush skills on the order of Corel's highly touted Painter. This version does not have the breadth of options available in Corel Painter (watercolor, artistic oils, and new Art calligraphy brushes plus amazing Wacom tablet and pen connections take Painter to the next level); but DeepPaint certainly has speed, ease of use and a bundle of brushes that put it past the energized Brush collection from Adobe Photoshop CS and successors (which are no slouches themselves).

However DeepPaint's ability to quickly clone and take tonal information/bumping from handy popups of texture plus its ability to use either pressure or mouse wheel to modify strokes puts its a couple steps ahead of Photoshop's brush collection. And in fact that is the second strength of DeepPaint - it has a brush palette ranging from acrylic and airbrush through chalk and charcoal to calligraphy and colored pencils - and I have not got past the "C"s. In addition one can control opacity, scale, smudge, smear, clone, change the brush shape and at least half a dozen extra factors. But DeepPaint makes it easy to save your own brush variant - so once a brush is setup you are in business.

The third advantage of DeepPaint is that its plugin interface mimics Photoshop very closely - the same toolbar with brush, masking, clone, dropper, pan , magnifier, rotate,magic wand, eraser and even masking mode toggle(every tool becomes a mask creation tool in mask mode - turn it off and they revert to their original function). For Photoshop users this is a boon - many of the familiar tools and keystroke shortcuts are available in DeepPaint.

There are two draw backs to DeepPaint. First, the plugin exchange between DeepPaint and your Paint program involves a two step send and receive operation. Users don't just close the plugin and get the image back automatically; rather you File | Export the completed image and then switch back to your Paint program - leave DeepPaint open if you intend to use it again. Second problem ? You have to buy DeepPaint on eBay under Computers and Networks category selling for about $150-200. You can get the full version as an entertainment bundle for $595 at the Right Hemisphere site; but this product goes well beyond the currently reviewed program. In any case, if you are evenly slightly painterly inclined, the opacity, cloning, masking plus brush tools of Deep Paint are a pleasure to work with.

Paint Alchemy 2 from Xaos Tools

Paint Alchemy from Xaos Tools is one of the earliest plugins that did the following- use the underlying image and its hues, brightness ranges, and tones to guide the application brushstrokes by the plugin. Paint Alchemy paints over the image (or the selected masked region)using the styling selected by the user.

These styling can include modifications for Coverage (number and density of brushstrokes), Color of the stokes (allowing for hue , saturation, and brighteners variations again controlled by the user) , the Angle of the stroke (again subject to user selected ranges), the Size of the stroke and its Opacity (both subject user modification). As seen in the screenshot, Paint Alchemy offers any one of eight brushes for each Brush Styles (and there are over 100 Brush Styles to choose from in the dropdown menu).

Like all of the Artful Dodgers, Paint Alchemy has a hefty learning curve. But interestingly, it is one of the plugins that is most robust - it is hard to really botch a session with Paint Alchemy - the results are almost always interesting at the least and often enough downright smashing. At $199 Paint Alchemy's only drawback is that the software appears frozen, no development seems to have been done on the plugin for 4-5 years.

Photo Artist from BenVista

Photo Artist from BenVista is conceptually very simple. Start with an image and spill it onto screen. Then choose one of over 22 brushes to selectively paint over the image with one of 7 embroidery inspired patterns . Or switch to Aquarel and add just a tiny bit of that in the upper left corner. Then use any of the other 22 brushes selectively to paint on your finishing touches.

Yes this is very much like the Studio in ArtMaster with two important differences. The paintbrush in PhotoArtist interacts with the previous effects just like in Artmaster but users can control how much with the Opacity and Blend Mode controls which are lacking in Artmaster. This means that I can control the interaction of the new brushstroke with the underlying image better than in Artmaster. But PhotoArtist's styles do not have the smarts to adjust to each image as do the Artmaster stencils.

For photofinishers, the questions will be are the basic 22 filters/styles ranging from Aquarel and Bleed through Embroidery and Impressionism to Charcoal and Texturize enough to meet their needs. Also there are no brightness/contrast or hue/saturation/lightness tuners as in Artmaster. Nor can one paint on a selected tint or color like in Artmaster. But for $49, Photoartist certainly does give photofinishers a surprisingly rich array effects to apply to their images.

Super Blade Pro from Flaming Pear

Super Blade Pro is one of those plugins that strikes fear into ones heart for the busi-ness and apparent complexity of its interface. But in fact, once users learn 2-3 secrets , the power of the plugin to add texture and tone to an image is nothing short of brilliant.

The first key is to turn off the beveling that this plugin is capable of. Just make the Radius value less than 3. Next is to change the blend mode (in the screenshot above it is in the middle and set to superlay) to anything but normal. Just click the lying down "s" icon (just above superlay) until you find the blend mode that works for you - there are over 50, so be judicious.

Finally, adjust the Texture and Embossing sliders such that they are not both above 80 (or below -80). If they are the texture will be overpowering and off-putting. Another way to control this results is to use the Scale slider, just between the two texture thumbnails at the top of the dialog. Slide it to the left to make the scale of the texture smaller and to the right to make the texture larger. Like spice- adjust to taste.

As one can see by these instructions, Super Blade Pro is not for the faint of heart; but its rewards can be most valuable indeed. And at $30 the price is super for so much finishing power.

Virtual Painter 4 from P & A Software

Virtual Painter from P & A Software is very much like PhotoArtist in that it offers 16 basic painting styles which photofinishers can select to modify their image. However, unlike PhotoArtist (or Artmaster for that matter), users cannot paint the style onto the image - rather they can designate areas where the styling will be reduced but not eliminates - say a reduced to 25-40% opacity. Then Virtual painter transform the underlying image according to the style chosen.

But with simple sliders for Material, Rendering, Coloration, Focus, and Deformation - photofinishers have a remarkable amount of control over the final image. Also, Virtual Painter respects existing masks/selections. This is one of my favorite ways to selectively modify an image - use Virtual Painter on a view or window in the image. At $55, this may be your ticket to more innovative image finishing.

Summary

This is just a cursory look at some of the better painterly plugins that are available for use with Adobe Photoshop, Corel PaintShop Pro and PhotoPaint, Ulead Photo Impact and dozens of other photo editors. Of course their are literally hundreds of plugins for dozens of tasks, so don't limit your thinking to just painterly plugins. In fact, we are covering plugins for increasing sharpness and adding whimsy to your images on our site. Vist our plugins references for more resources and links. And many site offer free 30 day downloads(all of the above do)- so try a plugin before you buy to see if it meets your needs. Go here also: Plugin Links