Review of Topaz Impression V1.0

Create artistic interpretations from photos

Keith Cooper has been looking at the latest image editing plugin from Topaz.

Impression allows you to apply a wide range of ‘artistic’ effects (painting/drawing) to an image.

Nov. 2014 – Version 1.1.1 released – adds new adjustments and features. We have an update review with more examples, but it’s probably best to read this review first if you are new to the software.

Article Index

• Topaz Impression
• Conclusions
• Summary
• More info and resources

What do you get with Topaz Impression V1.0

The plugin installs as an ‘add-on’ for other software and also works as a standalone application.

It’s rather processor intensive, so needs Mac OS X 10.8+ or Windows 7+ x64, OpenGL 3.2

The simplest way of showing what it does is with this image of a view in the Rockies, in Colorado.

Move your mouse over the image to see an example ‘painting’ effect.

There are many many more ways you could change it, but this gives a good example of the way brush strokes are rendered.

There is a fully functional 30 day demo version of the software available.

The software is a brand new plugin – so this is V1.0 I’m looking at…

We’ve reviews of all Topaz software. See the Topaz Category in the dropdown menu at the top of the right column.

Features (from Topaz Labs)

• Impression helps make your photos more expressive by authentically turning them into art, the way a real painter would.
• Rigidly realistic photos sometimes leave less room for emotion, personal feeling, and story. Instead of just showing reality, take your viewers on a story by using Impression to capture emotion and feeling rather than details. This can make your work both more powerful and more personal.

This review is based on my using Photoshop CS6, but the software works perfectly well in conjunction with other packages.

Impression can be accessed as a plugin via:

• Photoshop CS4+
• Photoshop Creative Cloud
• Photoshop Elements 6+
• Paintshop Pro X
• Lightroom, via external editor
• Aperture, via external editor

The installer will locate all suitable packages on your computer that it can work with.

It’s easily installed, but you do need to run the program once in standalone mode before using it as a plugin.

Using the Plugin

There is a useful introduction available when using the software. Topaz labs also have numerous useful resources on their web site.

In its basic mode, there are minimal numbers of controls, just a collection of preset options along the right side.

The presets are grouped in broad styles.

A few examples of preset styles at work on the landscape image at the top of the article.

‘Chiaroscuro’

Coloured Pencil

‘daVinci sketch’

Note how in this and the previous example, the ground (background paper/canvas/whatever) is showing through.

You can also see how different parts of the image are transformed into brush or pen strokes. As I’ll show in a bit, these features can be very widely varied to change the look of resulting images quite considerably.

Paint can have texture (‘Impasto’ preset), and you can even change the lighting angle to show paint or media textures.

A more detailed view, showing brush strokes, but no surface texture.

Surface texture really does look like thick paint here.

You can have the painting on a brick wall… (70+ textures to choose from)

Some of the presets give the name of an artist.

Consider these very much as ‘a bit in a style somewhat after…’ if you have any decent knowledge of the artist ;-)

‘Cezanne I’

A more general ‘Oil Painting’ preset.

There are a range of sketch/drawing examples too.

Fine tuning settings

Click on any preset in use and the adjustment options will appear, such as these for brush size/type/effect

or these further ones that cover lighting and media

Here’s an example of changing canvas texture (mouse over image to see).

The colour filtering gives an indication of where effects are to be applied (yellows in this case).

Two adjustments are available that apply to the completed image when processed.

It’s possible to only partly apply the filter’s effect (mouse over image to see).

It’s also possible to alter the way that the image is blended with your original (mouse over to see an example)

Both these options are what I’d normally perform with a layer in Photoshop, which, so long as I remember to duplicate my image layer before running Impression, is where I’d choose to do them. Other host applications may not have this ability though.

Conclusions

The plugin works very effectively and with the degree of adjustment and control, has a vast number of ways of altering your images.

There are few V1.0 issues that I expect to see ironed out over time, such as the limited size and display areas, for textures and brushes.

There are over 70 textures for example, so experimentation will take a while, however it’s well worth going about it methodically to get a feel for what all the different sliders do.

I can see that there is a lot of image dependent processing going on and expect that we’ll be seeing this further extend the range of styles over time.

One distinct annoyance was the lack of a good undo function (or history) so that I lost one particularly nice set of adjustments, because I forgot to save them as a preset of my own.

Having enjoyed landscape painting with oil paints in the past and having a keen interest in many styles of art, I was all to prepared to be disappointed by the results, but was pleasantly surprised by the subtlety and variation that you could get, after taking time to get the feel for the multitude of adjustments.

Here’s a sunset from when I recently stayed in Saundersfoot, in Wales. See a much bigger version on my G+ page.

Not one for the arts purists, but who cares…

Great fun to play around with, even if such levels of processing are not really part of my photographic work – certainly beats a lot of the click to enhance ‘instant creativity’ I see around these days.

There is a fully functional 30 day demo version of the software available.

• Nov. 2014 – Version 1.1.1 released – adds new adjustments and features. We have an update review with more examples.

Summary

Software plugin that can apply a wide range of painting/drawing style to your images

Many preset image styles, and adjustments based on real media and tools

We’ve reviews of all Topaz software. See the Topaz Category in the dropdown menu at the top of the right column.

System Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.8+

Windows 7+ x64, OpenGL 3.2

There is more information at Topaz Labs