The Bottom Line
Virtual Painter is extremely easy to use and inexpensive, but provides little user control over the results. It is a well-rounded collection of artistic effects although individual effects tend to appear distinctly computer-generated and lacking in variety.
Pros
- very easy to use
- inexpensive
Cons
- effects appear distinctly computer-generated
- preview doesn't accurately portray full-sized effect
- 14-page User Guide is specific to Paint Shop Pro
Description
- Twelve plug-in filters turn photos into painting and stylized art work.
- Filters are collage, color pencil, drawing, gouache, impasto, oil painting, pastel, pointillism...
- Filters (continued): rectangles, silk screen, triangles, and watercolor.
- Background materials can be selected to simulate paper, canvas, washi, stucco, wood, and cork.
- Detects focal points and processes them more finely than other parts of a photo.
- Fine-tune processing according to image size, material, rendering, colors, deformation, and focus.
- The adjust dialog box allows you to preview thumbnail representations of different settings.
- Switching from standard to fine mode allows more precise adjustments.
- Virtual Painter will work inside most Photoshop plugin-compatible host appliaction.
- For Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP.
Guide Review - Jasc Virtual Painter Art Effects Plug-in
Virtual Painter is extremely easy to install and use. As with most filter collections, the effects are a mixed bag. My favorite effects were the more traditional art styles like oil paint, watercolor, impasto, pastels, and color pencil. The non-traditional effects such as rectangles and triangles were my least favorite. Many of the others including silk screen, drawing, and collage worked well for high resolution images, but were disappointing on low resolution images. The background material option helps to vary the results of each effect, but I would have liked more user control. Unfortunately, the tiny preview is only accurate when working with very small images. See the full review for screen shots and examples.
