Expanding the capabilities of Topaz Studio

Improving your image editing

Topaz Studio is a free image editing package from Topaz labs (initial review)

In the past, Keith has reviewed all of the Topaz image editing plugins, using them inside Adobe Photoshop to produce a wide variety of edits/fixes/enhancements to images.

Plugins are still available on their own, if the functionality has not been included in Studio – for the full collection, see details at Topaz

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

Topaz Studio and expanding what it can do

With the launch of Studio, the functionality of a growing selection of plugins can be added to Studio, as upgrades. This gives the flexibility of using just what’s of interest for your editing requirements. Some aspects of the original plugins are also available in the paid-for Pro version of Studio.

See what you get in the free version of Studio.

If you own one of the existing plugins and it can work with Studio, you can get the update for free and it will appear in your filter menu.

Topaz have an article covering integration issues with Photoshop

As you can see – all my existing plugins are there as well.

Topaz Clarity, Impression and Detail

The functionality of these plugins has been expanded with more preset options, but the fundamental adjustments and effects are the same

Clarity

Latest plugin review from Keith – Clarity from Topaz

Impression

Latest plugin review from Keith – Impression from Topaz

An example (click to enlarge) showing how a layer from Photoshop is being adjusted (it could just as easily be an image opened up in the Studio application.

Topaz description:

“The Impression Adjustment features four sections which all contain options to create personalised artistic visions easily. Create drawings, paintings, and custom art creations from digital images, photographs, and scanned media.
A painting can have thousands of brushstrokes with various colour and weight variations. Impression makes photos more striking by genuinely making them art just like a painter would. While following your artistic direction, Impression paints over 10,000 individual brushstrokes in less than a second.”

Detail

Latest plugin review from Keith – Detail from Topaz

Topaz description:

“ABOUT DETAIL: Designed to give you crystal-clear sharpness from real image details.
Sharpness is the first thing you experience in a photo. And when you see an image where it’s done really right… it’s shockingly beautiful. It’s almost surreal. Because that’s something that we don’t see everyday: a photo where every single detail jumps out at you, grabs your attention, and never lets go. Most image sharpeners apply global sharpening to the entire image, causing undesirable halos and other side effects. Topaz Detail is different. Detail identifies small, medium and large structures in the image, and allows you to manipulate their sharpness separately, with no halos or artifacts. The result? Naturally sharp images other photo editors can’t reproduce, and the ability to completely change the style of your image. “

Do have a look at all the Topaz plugin reviews I’ve done – there’s an awful lot of useful functionality I’ve discovered over the years.

Even as someone who dislikes obviously over-processed images I’ve found useful features that can be far more subtle than many of the demos you might see on the Topaz web site (remember that they need to be ‘obvious’ for marketing purposes.