Legacy Topaz Plugins Look-see

Some readers might recognize that image from a few posts ago, where I gave a quick update on Dream AI images (HERE). Then, yesterday, I presented a number of artsified images and mentioned many of them were generated using Topaz Plugins.

I should have mentioned that nearly all of the plugins I used are considered Legacy Plugins and are no longer available for sale. They are also not maintained, so at some point, once Windows changes enough, they might stop working.

A few of the plugins also work as standalone programs (for example, Impression, Glow, Studio 2, and others). For a complete list of the Topaz Legacy Plugins, click on this LINK.

I should also mention that, unlike many other rear orifice software companies, Topaz’s legacy programs and plugins are still available for download and use to anyone who purchased the original licenses. Many other companies not only stop supporting legacy programs, but they also remove their installation files and/or deprecate the licenses users had paid for.

I tend to stop using those companies as a principle—er. . . except for Google, which has a long history of deprecating its offerings. Mark my words: I’ll eventually dump the company, but in the meantime, I already severely limit my exposure to it.

Anyway, back to the plugins . . .

Before I go on, I should also mention that since those plugins were first introduced, many software apps — most notably Lightroom and DxO — incorporated tools that allow one to achieve some, but not all, of the effects I’ll be showing below.

Many also offer presets (free ones and packages one can buy), and some third-party offerings can be added to the list, with some offered free by other users and some offered for a fee by for-profit companies.

Lightroom has an extensive list of presets . . .

Each of those listings has a drop-down menu offering anywhere from four to twelve one-click presets.

On the right-side menu, Lightroom has two panels that allow users to manipulate an image’s color scheme: Color Mixer and Color Grading.

So, for instance, playing with the settings, I can modify the above image to have a different “look” . . .

The Restyle plugin from Topaz has hundreds of presets, and you can see the final result ahead of time in a preview screen that is still one of the better ones I’ve seen.

Here are a few of them (with a different image). You scroll down, click on the one you want, and you’re done.

Anyway, that’s not the image I used for this post, so here’s a sample of the restyled images I created.

I mentioned Simplify, a plugin that offers several presets, some of which eventually evolved into the Impression standalone app.

There’s the Lens Effects plugin that offers various looks relating to diffusion, variable focus, distortion, and prism effects.

Then there’s the B&W Effects plugin, which was one of the earliest I bought and still has some looks that are difficult to reproduce using manual adjustments (it’s not only restricted to B&W, but also some hand-tinted offerings) . . .

I should mention that while these are one-click presets, the right-side menu of these plugins offers the opportunity to tune the presets you pick.

In the case of Restyle, they show you which color settings and overlays they used, and you can modify them at will.

Anyway, there are 34 images in THIS SmugMug gallery, all variations on the original at the top of this post.

For the slideshow, click on the link below.

Slideshow (34 images)

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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