Review of Alien Skin Software's Snap Art Natural Media Plug-in Software
Reviewed by Ron Risman, June 2007
Product Synopsis
Alien Skin Software's Snap Art is a photoshop compatible plug-in that converts photographs to look like
natural media artwork by mimicking the way a conventional artist works with paint and brushes. The software includes a
variety of real-world art filter styles including oil paint, impasto, pastel, pencil sketch, pointillism,
watercolor, pen and ink, stylize, color pencil, and comics. The result is probably one of the more
realistic ways of converting a photo to hand-painted (or drawn) art - short of using a pressure sensitive tablet
with a natural media program like PAINTER and having enough artistic ability to create your own masterpiece.
But is Snap Art right for you? Read the review to find out more.
Whenever I read other reviews I always try to "read between the lines" to decide what I think the reviewer is really saying. It
is amazing how many reviewers will delicately try to use the right words or sentences in order to avoid saying what they really
feel about a product. I, myself, am probably guilty of this at one point or another, but I typically do try to write what I'm feeling.
With that said, when I first started to evaluate Snap Art I really wasn't impressed. The user interface, while easy to use, is also
pretty slow and some of the effects are no more artistic (just different) than the ones that are included with Adobe
Photoshop at no extra charge. Though what really concerns me about this package is the $149.00 price tag. Based on the price I am assuming
that Alien Skin truly feels that their product is head and shoulders above other paint-style filters and that professionals will find $149.00 a steal.
My personal opinion is that Snap Art is overpriced, at least if the intended audience is the average consumer. Since price helps determine value
and value is a measure of usefullness or importance to the user - only you can really decide whether Snap Art is priced right - for you!
The good news is that Snap Art does have a few filters that I believe are very realistic - but since I'm not an oil, watercolor or sketch artist
do I really know this for sure? Am I even qualified to do a review on a program that is supposed to make your photos look like works of hand painted
or hand drawn art? Probably not, but I have enlisted the critical eye of my girlfriend who just happens to be an artist. With her help I feel I am
ready to tackle this review.
Image Quality
The most important aspect of an art program like this is the quality of its artistic effects. Regardless of speed, price, or any other criteria - if a
natural-media software program doesn't deliver realistic results then nothing else really matters.
My opinion about the effects are mixed. Comic, Impasto, Pointillism, and the Oil Painting effects seem to offer the most
realism - consistently delivering what I felt were 'realistic' (or 'creative' in the case of the Comic filter) paint styles regardless of
the photo that I threw at it. I really liked the Pencil Sketch effect as well, especially when I selected to use charcoal instead of pencil, but
results varied widely depending on the photograph used. It seemed that images with strong contrast worked best with all of the pen and pencil filters.
Of the ten filters provided my least favorite were the Pastel, Pen and Ink, and Watercolor, though I did find a few images where the watercolor effect
looked pretty good. I'm sure with the right image and settings most of these filters can offer acceptable results, just not always on the image you
were hoping for.
Filters and Sample Images
Since art is subjective and results will vary based on the image selected, I thought it was important to show some samples for each natural-media
filter style.
My girlfriend, an artist, was very impressed with some of the landscape oil paintings that I showed her, such as the farmhouse sunrise and the Nubble lighthouse,
and was equally impressed with the Pencil Sketch after I merged it with a bit of the underlying color original. She also liked the stylize effect on the flower as well as
both the watercolor and pointillism flower shots. She was't crazy about the Pen and Ink effects - at least based on the few samples I created.
For me, I found many of the Impasto and Oil Painting effects looked awesome on screen but lost the sense of realism when I printed them on glossy inkjet paper.
So its important for me to say that if have a desire to create realistic natural-media prints please print the images on fine-art media such as
canvas [Shop],
pearl [Shop],
fiber rag [Shop], or other
fine art [Shop] media.
There are a wide variety of paper/media styles avaialble for inkjet printers.
Here are some sample images for each of the 10 natural-media filters. Each "set" of two can be zoomed and navigated. At the end of the review you will
see a link to a gallery page where you'll be able to view a few more examples and will be able to zoom in and navigate through all of them sequenctially.
Comic Filter Looks best with high contrast images. 29 "one-click" presets are provided for this filter.
Pencil Sketch Best when used on high contrast and
well lit images. I also found that overlaying the rendered layer on
top of the original - by using the opacity control - makes this effect
even better. 26 "one-click" presets are provided for this filter.
Color Pencil Best when used on high contrast and
well lit images. I found that overlaying the rendered layer on top
of the original - by using the opacity control - makes this effect
even better. 29 "one-click" presets are provided for this filter.
Pen and Ink I really didn't like the results I achieved with this filter but I am my own worse critic. 25 "one-click" presets are provided for this filter.
Watercolor Find the right image and setting and you'll like the results. Try starting out with the 'Assorted, full coverage' preset.
I also liked this effect more when I reduced the brush size. 31 "one-click" presets are provided for this filter.
Pointillism This effect started to grow on me. With the right setting it gives very good results on a variety of scenes and subjects.
25 "one-click" presets are provided for this filter.
The Snap Art interface is made up of sliders and tabs to help users control virtually every aspect of each style. For each of the 10 filter styles there are
at least 25 factory presets that alter various parameters for you, making it easier to experiment.
The interface is divided into 5 tabbed sections, each providing control over different parameters of a filter.
The [SETTINGS] tab contains a list of factory presets for each filter and also allows you to save your own changes by saving and naming them.
The [BASIC] tab allows adjustment of brush size, edge preservation, stroke curvature, paint stroke length, and paint coverage.
The [TONE] tab, replaces the COLORS tab when using the Pencil Sketch filter, allows for the adjustment of brightness, contrast, and color conversion.
The [COLORS] tab provides sliders that allow you to tweak saturation, contrast, brightness, color temperature, as well as control random color variations.
The [CANVAS] tab provides tools to adjust canvas texture, thickness, and zoom.
The [LIGHTING] tab allows you to control the angle, brightness, color, and size of the light hitting your artwork. Impasto styles are especially affected
by the lighting settings as the edges of paint seem to reflect light as if it were real paint on a canvas.
Note: The contents of some of the tabbed areas do change a little bit depending on the filter selected.
Performance
Snap Art is slow, sometimes painfully so, and this really limits experimentation, which in turn limits creativity. The problem lies in the
way that Alien Skin has designed the preview interface - and this is the same interface that a lot of their other plug-ins, such as "Exposure," use as well.
Take a look at the screen shot below. This is the full-screen view of the Snap Art interface. Before explaining the speed problem I want to explain what
you are seeing in the screen shot below.
The upper left portion of the screen feature menus, tabs, and additional filter parameters (or a list or preset filter settings) depending on the tab chosen.
The bottom left portion of the screen is the area that would list by name any of your self-created saved presets for a particular filter style.
The right portion of the interface is dedicated to previewing the results of a filter and automatically updates every time a parameter is changed.
It is this preview area that causes the speed problems.
Slow Preview Rendering
Here is the issue I have with using Snap Art. Anytime you change from one filter to another or make any adjustment to a filter setting
Snap Art refreshes the preview window. Instead of giving you a faster 'quick' view, Snap Art internally seems to do a full render, making it very time
consuming to wait and see what affect the change you just made will have on the photo. This refresh happens EVERYTIME and ANYTIME a filter setting
is changed. It would be nice to have a faster 'quick render' option turned on by default with an option for a higher resolution preview if the user so desires.
This would really help to speed up things for people who don't have blazing fast computers.
Another problem worth noting, and one that seems to be present across many, if not all, of the Alien Skin software offerings, is the fact that whenever
you launch the software or change to a different filter, the preview screen defaults or resets to 100% view. Since all multi-megapixel images are larger
at 100% than the preview area you are forced to use the magnifier to zoom out two or three levels before you begin previewing filter effects. This wouldn't
be a big deal if the preview update was quick, but it is not. In the example above, I have the preview zoomed out to 33.33%.
Snap Art does allow you to split the screen vertically, horizontally, or diagonally (as shown below) which shows half of the original image side-by-side with
the filter preview. I was expecting that this split window view would have improved the rendering time since the software would only have to render the
visible portion of the effect, however in testing the speed didn't improve. It seems that the background calculations are done on the entire image area -
despite only 1/2 the image being displayed. If Alien Skin's team can work out a way to render JUST the visible portion of each effect - performance
would most likely improve and the program would allow for more experimentation.
My Final Thoughts
When I first started testing this software I was really disappointed. I loaded a photo into Photoshop and tried all of the filter effects on it.
It was slow, tedious, and the results didn't excite me. Something interesting happened when I started to actually look for photographs that I
thought would look good in a particular style. After spending way too much time playing with different photos, filter styles, and even printing a few
of them, the song "Fooled Around and Fell in love" came to mind. I got so excited about some of "my" transformations that I wanted to print them to
really get a feel for how realistic they would look on a wall, up close, from a distance, etc.
By printing a few of the images I discovered how important it probably is to print on media with the look and feel of the
medium you are hoping to replicate. Real oil paintings are not framed under glass, so if you really love a particular photo that you've converted to an
oil, get some canvas media compatible with your printer - or if you really want to turn it into art, send it out to have it printed on stretched canvas.
Inkjet papers are available in many styles: canvas, cloth, silk, rag fiber, etc. Forget gloss, matte, and semi-gloss. These are great for photographs
but not for "works of art."
The bottom line is that Snap Art does have some very nice artistic filters that do a very good job of mimicking their artistic styles. From the research
I did online, looking at many artists website's, I would say that none of these filters compare to the quality you would get from the hand of a skilled
artist, however without a side-by-side comparison you will most likely be very pleased with some of the filters - especially Impasto, Oil Painting, and
Pointillism. The price of the software is $149 and despite the fact that I liked Snap Art I still feel that it is overpriced as a consumer product.
Maybe Alien Skin should have two versions, a lite version for $49 that leaves out some of the filters or adjustments and a pro version designed for the
graphic artist or professional photographer looking to add another service to their repertoire.
Like I mentioned earlier in this review, price helps determine value and value is a measure of usefullness or importance to the user.
Alien skin offers a free 30-day evaluation that you can download today from their website. If you have read this review you are no doubt interested in
the abilities of a program that can achieve fine-art-like results from a photograph.
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Product Synopsis
The Snap Art interface is made up of sliders and tabs to help users control virtually every aspect of each style. For each of the 10 filter styles there are
at least 25 factory presets that alter various parameters for you, making it easier to experiment.
