Art Photo in Topaz Studio

Messing about with photos in Topaz Studio

I couldn’t resist working with some of the photos I took while away in France in Topaz Studio. The last time I was using Topaz I spent most of the time just working with Topaz impression because I am used to the effects I can get from it. I thought I should spend some time with Topaz Studio to try and get used to it. I found a lot of functionality I didn’t know was there. I’m quite impressed with the masking possibilities available. I can mask each effect separately and it can get quite complicated. There are spot masks, gradient masks and I can also use a brush to get down to the dirty details. On my nice new iMac, Topaz is working fast and the images are working extremely well. I definitely need to spend more time with the application to see what I can come up with. I’d like to send some of the images back to the iPad and work with them in Procreate, Metabrush and iColorama. I wouldn’t mind getting some of the images printed onto canvas and put up around the house. I also have half a thought that I’d like to get some acrylic paints and go analogue painting some of the images onto canvas.

It’s not just about adding filters

Due to there being a range of controls I can delve into the pre-made filter artistic creations. Some of the filters are subtle and some are completely wild. It’s possible to create images based upon a HDR style and get really gnarly detail along with highly saturated colour. There are filters which remove all of the colour and turn into a line drawing. Other filters completely change all of the colours and go more into with artistic creation with a combination of settings and how the filters are applied. It’s like when you have layers and you can choose whether to use normal, multiply, colour Burn, lighten, glow, subtract and various other filter settings. It’s not just a bunch of boring filters you can’t do anything with. You can combine a huge variety of settings to come up with something totally unique. When you have something you like you can save the settings and use it again on other images. Every image is different and it’s safe to say that you’re more likely to use a saved or premade filter as a starting point rather than throwing it as whatever picture you come across next.


What is creativity?

Creativity is all about making choices and decisions. You don’t have to be stuck with whatever application gives you. Use one application to give a certain sort of effect, move into a different application in which you could manipulate by painting and drawing on the iPad with Apple Pencil. Then there’s no reason at all why you could move it into a completely different application to do some finishing off. During the last couple days I have been working with Affinity Photo, Procreate, iColorama, Metabrush and Topaz Studio moving images in between them to get my artwork just the way I want it.

Steel Etching

Black and White Drawing Style

Art in Topaz Studio

Hazy Dream World

Get the iPad Art Book on Amazon

Get the iPad Art Book on Apple Book Store