Page 44 - Photoshop User February 2017

HOW TO ››
Dynamic Range create painted effects with particleshop
KIRK NELSON
Plug-ins for Photoshop are a fascinating sub-industry to the larger photography/Photoshop arena. Plug-in developers seek to find a capability that’s non-existent or not so strong in the base application and expand on that. One of the most interesting plug-ins available is the ParticleShop plug-in from Corel. In January of 2017, Corel released an updated version of this exciting technology. If you’re familiar with the first installment of the plug-in, you probably already know how the plug-in allows you to “paint with particles” and add vibrant, energetic effects to your images.
This latest installment has upped the ante by not only adding more particle effects, but also increasing the core capabilities of the plug-in with Dynamic Speckles and F-X Effects brushes. These latest brushes work directly with the image pixels in a way that’s reminiscent of the Liquify filter in Photoshop, but with a lot more options and capabilities. This plug-in isn’t just for Photoshop, though;
044 it works with Photoshop Elements and Lightroom, too!
ParticleShop has a solid variety of brush packs available, but the development team is constantly working to release new brush packs. For this tutorial, the following brush packs were used: Core Pack, Expressive, Blend, Wedding, Impression, Grunge, and Creepers. (Keep in mind that the plug-in normally costs $49.99 and comes with a pack of 11 brushes. Each addi- tional brush pack runs $29.99. There are currently 24 different brush packs available, each with 15 brushes.)
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