Being Creative With Your Toy Photos

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Being Creative With Your

Toy Photos

  Being a photographer, and having taught pro photography, I always wanted to keep up with the latest software and technology. When I retired,I was very ambitious,and decided to create 3 blogs! That was way too much work,and not enough return, in terms of readership. My other 2 blogs were Prophotolearning and  Photoshopmadesimple. The 2 blogs are on blogger, so you can find them if you want to. People still visit the 2 posts,but I haven't added many posts in the last 2 years.

  On  the Prophotolearning blog, I would download 30-day trial software and write about that,as well as techniques for taking better photos. The trail downloads are a great idea because if you don't like them, you're not obligated to purchase, and the trial period expires. In some cases you simply can't use the software.

   I came across the Topaz Labs suite one day when I was looking on the Internet. Here is a software that  is a "plugin" to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. A "plugin" is a software that embeds itself within another software. That differs from what are called "standalone" softwares, that are by themselves, and open up alone. I must advise you that with Photoshop, and Topaz Labs running, you need a fast computer, and lots of RAM (Memory).

Used from from Naturevisions.org

Please click here to visit the Topaz Labs website

I downloaded several trial plugins,and today I'm presenting 2 of them.

 What I like most about the software are several things:

1. It's fast

2. It's very intuitive 

(It's very easy to understand and learn without lengthy lessons or books!)

I've loaded extra-large files for this post. 
It's best to see the image as a slide show (slide show mode) after you read that I wrote.

 The above screen capture illustrates how you access Topaz Labs

I downloaded 5 Topaz Labs plugins

I'm using the Topaz Simplify Plugin with the Line and Ink menu 

Menus and submenus that you use are highlighted in black. In the above example, I'm using the 
"underpainting menu".

Here's the enlargement

I'm using the sub-menu titled "Sketch Hardpencil"

This menu is "buzsim"

The plugin below is called Topaz Restyle

This plugin is more artistic and will change your photo into paintings

The above photo is a small-sized pressed steel Wyandotte airplane.

The red arrow is pointing to the plugin at the bottom of the iMac's Dock. Each plugin has a different colour. If you compare the first plugin (Simplify) to this one, you'll see that the basic screen and menu access are quite similar. This makes it easy to move between one plugin and the next.

The red arrow is pointing to the selection that I chose for the image above. If you look at the coloured bar underneath the name of the setting, you will see5 colours. If you then look to the right side of the window, you will see similar colours or tones with the titles "primary, secondary", and so forth. These correspond to the specific colours and tones and can decrease or increase their intensity. All quite simple, fast to show what the command does, and easy to return to the previous function.

In this case, I decided to select the function where the red arrows are pointing.

If you look at the sliders on the right side of the window, you'll see how I have moved the 5 (primary, secondary, etc) to boost the 5 different colours. The photo is not to my taste, but I used it to illustrate how easy it is to use the Topaz Labs plugins.

If you like to alter your own photos, you might want to think about trying out Topaz Labs plugins. They're actually fun to play with, and you don;t need to take only toy photos. Everything works well with it!

Thanks for dropping by,

and have a great part of the day or night 

wherever you may be.

Stacey

Please feel free to write to me anytime at:

toysearcher@gmail.com