Turn Photos into Art with Snap Art 3

Theresa Stone

Alien Skin‘s Snap Art is a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Photoshop Elements that lets you apply art effects (including watercolor, oil paint, charcoal, pencil, and the new crayon) to photographs. Version 3 is now available, and it has several significant changes.
First, Alien Skin has revamped Snap Art’s interface so that you access all of it in one filter. That means no more repeat trips to Photoshop’s Filter menu when you want to change styles.
Version 3 also adds a detail mask so you can more carefully control where effects are applied. And speaking of control, Snap Art 3 is more precise overall; for example, improved stroke placement keeps edges sharp. The end result is greater realism, particularly when you’re working on photos of people.

One of my favorite things about Snap Art is that it doesn’t destroy any pixels of the original image. Instead, all of its effects are on a separate layer.
Snap Art 3 costs $199; upgrades from versions 1 and 2 are $99. You can buy it here.