Impressions of Doelan

Topaz Labs are about to give digital photographers an even worse reputation than we already have. Their latest program 'Topaz Impressions' makes turning your photographs into watercolour masterpieces (questionably of course) as easy as painting a wall, and it seems to have become the latest craze in post-processing. I have always admitted that the artistic direction is always where I have wanted to take my photography. Not the upside-down-ice-cream-on-a-road photograph that sells for £500,000 kind of art (I hate that), but the visual creation of something more than just being a photograph. My normal outlay has been through HDR photography, the blending of multiple exposures into one exposure fits all imaging. This will probably always be my favourite type of photography, and it still gives photography a modern and unique look. However, looking through my blog archives you can see times when I have tried to something a bit different with my pictures.

Up until now though, there has not really been any enormous leap forward with creating art pieces out of photographs and the results have just been 'alright'. Topaz Impressions changes all that. I used a photo from my recent trip to Brittany, a river shot taken in the village of Doelan. This is a quintessential tourist snap. But I think this just might be the target for Topaz Impressions. As you may be able to guess from the original photo below, I did not do any pre-processing before Topaz accept for some cropping. Impressions gives you many presets to choose from when you load your photo up and I have not nearly enough time to explore them all yet but for this picture I went for Monet, an artist who's work I have often been compared to. I then used the sliders to adjust the picture to my preferences and brought the picture back into Lightroom. The picture looked good when you turned the saturation down a bit, but as this was a sunny day, I wanted to keep the bright feeling. There wasn't much else I did apart from turn the highlights down a bit (I did a bit of layer masking in photoshop to help with this as well) and then a bit of sharpening, though it's not as essential as a normal photograph.

They say that Photoshop can't make a bad photograph good, but I think Topaz Impressions can definitely give a striking new look to your tourist snaps. I can see me now going through my Venice photos from a few years ago, and giving them an all new look. Artists will of course hate the fact that they were created on a computer, not while sipping absinthe by the riverside, whilst being admired by onlookers for your artistic genius, but times change, and I can't wait to see more examples of impressionist photographs surface on the net.

The original image

Click on the photo and use the arrows to compare them together:

Windsor Train Station

Time is against me today, so here is a quick post of Windsor & Eton Central Station. I had not planned to post this at all (the picture is from about 2 years ago) but I was working on it to experiment with different styles of HDR processing. After a while I decided to see what it would like as a colour-tinted Monochrome, and this was the result. I created the last bit in Lightroom, but the majority of the work was done in Photoshop, using various Topaz plugins. I will blog again tomorrow to make up for my lack of a blog on Thursday. Have a great weekend all!

Mountain Hut in Oil

Today's picture is a little bit of an experiment. I recently took advantage of Topaz Lab's half price offer of Topaz Simplify for half price in February, of which this picture is my early result. As you may know, I am always interested to bring an artistic side to my photography where possible, and the reason I do so many HDR's is because this naturally adds an artistic element. It is not the only type of processing I want to explore though, and I used Topaz Simply (and a lot of photoshop blending modes afterwards) to create this oil painting look for this scene.

I'm not 100% sold yet on Simplify's ability to transform your photographs into paintings, but I feel with a lot of work carried out in Photoshop alongside it, you can perhaps get the image close to what you imagined. I will keep trying of course, and post any other results after my forays into Topaz Simplify.

My wife and I (and dog) are taking a mini break in a Dorset cottage (I've checked, there's no flooding) from Thursday to Sunday, so this will be my last blog until Sunday. Hope you guys have a nice week, I will post some iPhone shots I take in Dorset onto Twitter.

The Magic Kingdom of Krakow

Ok, so I may owe a slight debt to Walt Disney for the title, but I'm sure the Disney Magic Kingdom owes (at least some of) it's design to the magnificent churches of central Europe. All over Europe you can of course find magnificent old and new castles and churches, and Poland is no exception. The church above is St. Joseph's Church in the Podgorze district of Krakow, slightly away from the city centre. It was built at the beginning of the 20th Century, and is well regarded as a magnificent work of architecture. We were only passing by on our way into Krakow when I took this picture, so it was captured during standard daylight (there are some wonderful photos taken of this church at dawn/sunset), but I still could not resist firing off some bracketed shots to create an HDR, no matter if it is a fairly touristy shot.

It was nevertheless a difficult picture to process (as these tall churches often are), as it does feel the building has been compacted a little. I could fix this in Lightroom, but then I lost the pathway leading up to the church, which I had specifically allowed for in the composition at the scene. Sacrifices have to be made occasionally I guess, but the HDR work and a bit of Topaz Adjust has given me a result I was hoping for.

The Bodleian Fortress

Yikes has it really been that long!? I knew I hadn't blogged in a while, but didn't realise it had been nearly a whole month! Well it's a good job I've decided to revert back to an old habit. Oh yes, I will again be blogging 3 times a week, starting today. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday (as opposed to previously Sunday), I will post a new photo or topic for discussion. It is the only way I can keep up my blogging habits on here, at a time when I am enjoying photography more than ever.

So having said that, I will keep it brief tonight. Today's photo was taken at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. It was processed entirely in Lightroom, despite the numerous black and white processing programs available for photographers these days. I am currently trialling Topaz BW effects, and am yet to make a decision whether to make the full purchase. Lightroom 5 (as 4 did previously as well) does a great job of black and white processing, and it's often difficult to judge how a stand alone black and white program can go further. What might win it for me with Topaz's program, is the detail slider they have added, to bring out those extra details in a black and white picture.

Tip: The key to black and white processing is contrast. It's too easy when converting a picture to black and white to overlook how boosting the contrast can really bring the picture too life. They can look quite flat otherwise. See you on Tuesday!