As promised I would write a review of the latest TechnicalArt 3 Photoshop action. I have used version 1 for a while now and I am still very happy with the results. I mainly use the action to create a rough sketch I use in my digital paintings made with Adobe Photoshop cc.
Recently I purchased and installed the version 3 of the TechnicalArt Photoshop action to see if it would give me even better results then the previous owned version which is version 1. I skipped version 2 so I can’t compare to the second version.
Installation was very simple. Just download and unzip the file after purchasing and go into the folder that reflects your Photoshop version. As I am using the latest cc version (22.3) I opened the corresponding folder which contains a pattern file, a brush and the action itself. Installing the pattern and brush is as easy as double clicking them and also the action is just a double click away from nesting itself in your action panel.
Because the sketch effect works great with architecture and skylines which is a large portion of the artwork I create I of course loaded a cityscape into Photoshop. I made sure that the image mode was set to 8 bit colours and the file had only a background layer containing the original photograph. I created a new layer above the background layer and called this layer ‘brush’. Now I selected all the buildings in my photograph which was probably the most time-consuming part of all. On the brush layer I filled the selection with any foreground color set to 100% opacity and I started the action.
As I skipped a version I was expecting the action to take a lot of time to complete on my laptop but to my surprise the action was still very quick taking approximately 1,20 minutes to complete and create a layer stack full of layers to adjust to your liking.
The results of the sketch were amazing having a lot more detail and depth then the first version. The only thing missing compared to the original version is the painting effect. Since I hardly use the painting effect I don’t care about nog having it in the third version of the TechnicalArt Photoshop action.
I tried a couple of different cityscapes all with very pleasing results. I will not deinstall the original version since the sketch effect the original version outputs is different and a little bit rougher I think using a combination of both action gives an even greater sketch.
I highly recommend the TechnicalArt 3 photoshop action. Try it out yourself and let me know what you think of it.