Topaz Filters

Topaz comes with a few filter options (You might have 2 or 3 more that are somewhat the same as the ones listed):

• TopazClean
• TopazDeJPG
• TopazDenoise
• TopazEnlarge
• TopazSharpening

I’m going to show you the difference between TopazSharpening and Photoshops default sharpening filter with this wallpaper I found on gamewallpapers:

This wallpaper is rather blurry, so its a good image we can use. First, I’m going to use the default Filter > Sharpen with default settings:

As you can see, some parts look pretty good. Other parts however look kind of messy. Take a look at their pistols for example, they don’t look that great. I’m going to use the topaz filter now:

our result:

It can be a bit hard to compare the two images, however you can see quite a difference on the pistols, they’re a little less edgy. Topaz has some other cool functions to fix an image however:

Topaz Clean Filter

We’re going to go back to the wallpaper we started with, and apply my favourite topaz effect. Our original wallpaper:

We’re going to apply the TopazClean filter to create a smooth dreamy effect (though this image doesn’t quite compliment its effect to be fair):

First, select Filter > Topaz Vivacity > Clean, and play around with the settings. I used the custom settings (You can select these by pressing the reset button):

my result:

If you compare this with the Photoshops own sharpen filter:

If you’re trying to create a dreamy sort of fake vectorized look, this is definitely a good filter to use. I hope you’ve enjoyed this small article, if you have any suggestions or tips about using Topaz, please use the comments below to tell us!

The image we will start with:

First of all, you can use the filter by going to Filter > Distort > Displace. a screen will come up asking you for settings. For the start of the tutorial, I will be using the standard settings, which are horizontal scale: 10, vertical scale: 10, Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels:

After picking these settings, you have to select a PSD file to displace it with.

I’m going to create a pretty soft image with a few randomly drawn lines, after which I will use the Displace filter. This image has little texture and there’s not much going on.

I will apply the Displace filter (Filter > Distort > Displace, standard settings) with this file:

You can clearly see the lines drawn into this file. It already looks kind of twirly, which we can use for some nice textures. To test some more, I drew the following image and smudged it a bit:

My result after displacing our Lara Croft:

Now if you change the standard settings to Tile and Wrap around, the result will not vary much:

Lets add a little bit more detail to the PSD we’re displacing with, I randomly brushed, smudged, sharpened, blurred and so forth to create this image:

Now after displacing with the standard settings:

Not good enough, need more detail! Experiment with settings, this is what I’ve done:

my result:

Now this is something I’m going to work with. You can use this effect to create a background or texture that matches a good looking render, however it does not really remind people of the original image. For example, if you smudge this background, this is what you might get:

With some (admittingly poor) coloring and transforming:

Well, we now used the displace filter and some smudging to create our background. You can continue to do whatever with it, make a signature, a texture, and so forth. A possible example could be this poorly made (sorry, sleepy!) signature: