The light direction adjustments have gotten more detailed by allowing not only the angle to be adjusted, but the direction and highlight color as well. Offering a variety of mediums from pen and ink to impasto, oil paint to watercolor, you can start with a preset and manipulate and mask to your hearts content. A plugin that impressed me has just gotten better, and that is a really cool thing. I’ve tried other quick stop, one click plugins that have been fun, but never really provided the quality I had hoped for, until I stumbled across Snap Art a few years ago. I’ve attempted to learn Corel’s painter, which is an amazing program but takes about as much time to learn as Photoshop. It hasn’t stopped me from trying various digital variations through photography and software though. I grew up with my mom doing quite a bit of it and for whatever reason, that particular skill set just didn’t seem to genetically find me.
The use of improved masks and even more creative controls, Snap Art 4 builds on what was already a powerful and fun tool. Snap Art 4 provides many jumping off points and the final result can vary between a single click, or as much time as you’d like to throw at a painted rendition of your digital image. With their most recent release, Alien Skin has yet again upped the ante on creative digital photography plugins. As seen above, Alien Skin has released Snap Art 4, featuring an example image from yours truly! I am a big fan of the Alien Skin plugins and with this new release, they’ve continued to refine one of their most unique offerings.