1. Akvis Artwork 9 1 – Transform Photos Into Paintings Framed
2. Akvis Artwork 9 1 – Transform Photos Into Paintings For Beginners

Turn your digital photos into works of art! SoftOrbits Photo to Sketch Converter converts pictures to sketches in just a few button clicks and a few slider tweaks. Photo to Sketch Converter produces a colorful hand-made drawing out of an ordinary photograph, laying accurate pencil strokes even if you can't hold a pencil. AKVIS Sketch converts photos into pencil sketches. It makes your pictures look like real drawings. Now you do not need to handle a pencil to feel like an artist. All you need to create your original work of art is good taste and AKVIS Sketch!

Introduction

AKVIS ArtWork 9 is an Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in and also a standalone application that provides seven painting styles (Oil Painting, Watercolor, Gouache, Comics, Pen & Ink, Linocut, Pastel) for your photos. With these painting styles, you can convert your photograph into a piece of art. It also offers a wide choice of canvases and text options. AKVIS ArtWork 9 is an upgraded version of AKVIS ArtWork 7which brings new decoration effects and frames, improved innovative interface, adds support for ultra HD resolution screens, and other significantchanges.

AKVIS ArtWork is from AKVIS, a company based in Russia that specializes in graphic programs. Apart from ArtWork, AKVIS alsocreates other Photoshop plug-ins like Pastel,OilPoint, AirBrush,Sketch, Neon,Refocus, Retoucher,Chameleon, MultiBrush,Enhancer, Decorator,Coloriage, etc.
You can download a free 10 days trial version ofArtWork 9 from the AKVIS site.

Akvis Artwork 9 1 – Transform Photos Into Paintings Framed

Watts 1 3 3 – recalibration tool for laptop batteries. My contact at AKVIS for this review was Lidiya Azanova, thank you Lidiya.

Akvis Artwork 9 1 – Transform Photos Into Paintings For Beginners

How To Use

Once ArtWork 9 is installed, follow these steps -- or just read along to do a quick walkthrough of ArtWork 9.

1. Launch an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop (where you installed the ArtWork 9 plug-in) and open any picture.
2. Choose Filter | AKVIS | ArtWork, as shown in Figure 1.
   Figure 1: ArtWork plug-in within the Filter menu
3. This opens the image within the AKVIS ArtWork 9 interface, as you can see in Figure 2.
   Figure 2: AKVIS ArtWork 9 interface
   The AKVIS ArtWork 9 interface is explained below -- each area corresponds to an area marked in Figure 2above:
   
   1. Buttons: This section provides options to undo/redo, share, import/export presets, start processing the image, and toapply the results to the image. There are also buttons to launch the information dialog, help files, open the AKVIS ArtWork web page, and thePreferences dialog box.
   
   
   2. Tools: Here you can access the following selection tools:
      
      • Preview Window tool enables you to show/hide the preview window. This is the same preview that you can see within theAfter window (see point C). Only in this case you see the After Preview in a square frameoutlined with a dotted line (marching ants). The size of this frame is 500x500 pixels and can be changed within thePreferences dialog box.
      
      
      • Stroke Direction is for drawing guiding lines (in Oil and Pastel styles). Note that this tool only works in Home Deluxe/Businesslicenses of ArtWork -- an explanation of these licenses can be found on the AKVIS site.
      
      
      • Eraser is used to erase the guiding lines, either partially or completely.
      
      
      • Smudge Tool is a post-processing tool (works within the After tab, under Home Deluxe/Business licenses only). Select this tool tomanually refine images by removing paint irregularities (in Oil, Watercolor, Gouache and Pastel styles).
      
      
      • Select Blur Tool (works only for Watercolor and Gouache styles) to reduces image sharpness by decreasing colorcontrast.
      
      
      • Hand to pan the picture within the preview section, especially if it’s zoomed.
      
      
      • Zoom is used to zoom in the picture. You can also press the Alt key along with the same option to zoomout.
      
      
   3. Preview has two tabs -- Before and After, to show the previews of both the original andchanged images.
   
   
   4. On the top right, you'll find the Navigator. This also lets you chose the area of the image to be shown in thePreview pane.
   
   
   5. Style: Click this selection box to bring up a drop-down list, as shown in Figure 3 below. Here you'll find all the seven painting styles -- choose any of them.
      Figure 3: Style drop-down list
   
   
   6. Settings Panel has two tabs: Painting and Decoration
      Within the Painting tab you can adjust the settings for photo-to-paint conversion (refer to Figure 2, above).
      The Decoration tab has three sub-tabs: Text, Canvas, and Frame
      Text tab (see Figure 4, below) allows you to add an inscription to your painting.
      Figure 4: Text tab
      In the Canvas tab (see Figure 5, below) you can adjust the settings for the canvas, towhich the resulting image is applied.
      Figure 5: Canvas tab
      In the Frame tab (see Figure 6, below) you add a frame to your artwork.
      Figure 6: Frame tab
   
   There's also Presets field which enables you to save the current settings as a preset to use them in the future. EachStyle includes a number of ready-to-use presets.
4. Play with the parameters, or choose from any of the available presets. When you get the results you want, apply the changes to the previewby clicking the Run button that you can see below.
   
5. This applies the effect and creates a preview of the changed image in the After tab, as shown inFigure 7.
   Figure 7: Preview the changes
6. Once you’re happy with the preview, apply the result to the image by clicking the Apply button, shown below to return tothe image editor.
   

Specifications