Yesterday, I finally found some time to play with some other programs offered by Topaz Labs. Have you heard of Topaz Clean? It is a $30 plug-in that really helps clean up a photo. There are 2 presets I find pretty awesome with Topaz Clean, “SkinEven” and “FlatStyle”. The SkinEven preset works wonders on cleaning up skin in portrait photos. The FlatStyle preset makes the image completely clean looking very much like a cartoon.
I really like the cartoon look, but found it a bit abrasive as it literally obliterates the details in order to make the image clean and smooth. However, after a bit of experimentation, I came up with a pretty cool technique to get the smoothness of the preset but retain some detail in the image to obtain the best of both worlds.
If you are someone who owns Topaz Clean (or will after reading this post), you can download the Action I used to make these images below. Just double click the .atn file in the zip folder to install it into Photoshop.
Click the link below, follow it to the new page then click the topaz presets link again. Kind of a pain, almost like a circus act, but hey it is a free Action after all!
Tip For The Week:
I know these plug-ins made by Topaz Labs really rock the house. However, don’t think they are the end game once you have used them. Continue processing the images further after running them through these Topaz beautifiers. The results of these photos came from experimentation after I found something I liked in Topaz Clean, but I still continued to push some pixels to get them perfect!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Blake, Super good job on this and your recent overview of Photomatix 4.2; I am very very impressed with your shot of the A-10 Thunderbolt II “Warthog”, I stumble across your tutorials from the Topaz Labs blog. I am very impressed with your skills, thank so much for the Topaz Presets, and your very good overview of the Highpass in HDR! – Chris
Thank you Chris! I love that machine, so brilliantly constructed and quite honestly one of the most awkward looking planes in the Air Force inventory! I am glad you like my little spot on the web, thank you for the compliments and be sure to stop back by often!
Could you share how you processed the old car ? Looks awesome.
Sure thing Denis. I processed 5 Raw exposures in Photomatix, very mildly, I tend to be more conservative in my approach with Photomatix as not to disturb the integrity of the original image. I typically use it as a means to extract enough Dynamic Range to produce fine detail without exaggerating the features and colors too much. That is often times much harder than you think!!
I then brought the tone mapped image in Photoshop. There I did the usual, Noise reduction using Topaz DeNoise with the Jpeg Preset (i believe the third one down “Strong”). I also did a breakdown of the Highlights, Shadows, and Midtones and adjusted their Curves value to bring each one out individually. From there I did some casual Dodging and Burning to bring the lights and darks out more. After I was satisfied, I ran the above action on the flattened complete image.
I hope that gives you some idea as to how I went about the process. Thanks for your interest. Take care!