Every once in a while you will have the need and desire to convert a digital photograph into a painting or sketching using Photoshop. If you have tried to conventional methods and filters within Photoshop, you find that it is very time consuming and frustrating. It becomes quite a messy task to say the least, and I for one have a full plate everyday and am looking to simply my life, not make it more complex. Here is where Alien Skin Software can step in and make your life a little easier with Snap Art, an application which has taken the work out of creative digital paintings.

I would encourage you to take a look at their website regarding this application, as it really can save you a lot of time and effort. The Snap Art application requires that you have Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or Lightroom. I do have Photoshop Elements, but I loaded my Snap Art application into Photoshop where I do most of my editing. However, it would be interesting to load it into one of the other required Adobe products and see the differences.

The application itself, is accessed through the Photoshop filter menu. It supports a varied media and styles like oil paint, watercolor, pencil sketching, and crayon just to name a few. You can also choose from a multitude of styles like impasto, pointillism, comic, etc.... It really does as intended, and takes out the time and frustration when working using normal channels.

I took this digital picture of a butterfly at the Butterfly Pavilion located in Westminster, Colorado. I like the way it portrayed the black and white against the red flowers. -nice contrast

I ran the image through the watercolor default filter and produced the following within seconds with very little effort.

Badaboom, Badabing!