Photo from Thursday, June 24, 2010, of Carhenge near Alliance, Nebraska. Topaz Simplify used.

My wife has the green thumb. I just stay out of the way, empty the trash and take pics of her masterpieces. This morning it rained in Newbury Park, so I shot these images of pink roses. On top is just a straight photo. Second, below, is after I played with Topaz Simplify. Third was just basic photoshop trick, flatten the image contrast and saturation, then reverse course and write some very steep contrast curves. The pink rose became very deep red.

Enjoy. Scott

Tonight's walk was over to the Ronald Reagan State Office building in downtown Los Angeles. Sure enough, a boring photo of the entrance sign made a good candidate for the new Topaz Simplify version 2.0 upgrade. Wood Carving is one of two new presets in the upgrade and was applied to this image.



Topaz Simplify is a free upgrade for existing users. It's faster, automatically makes previews of all presets and includes two new presets: wood carving and underpainting. Check out their web site Topaz Simplify.


The new Topaz Simplify includes previews on left of all presets.

Recently this joke was sent to me:

The Tomato Garden

An old Italian woman lived alone in New Jersey. She wanted to plant her annual tomato garden,
but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard.

Her only son, Vincent, who used to help her, was in prison. The old woman wrote a letter to her
son and described her predicament:

Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year.
I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.
I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love, MaMa

A few days later she received a letter from her son:

Dear Mom,
Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.
Love, Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area
without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old woman and left.

That same day the old woman received another letter from his son:

Dear Mom,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do
under the circumstances.
Love you, Vinnie

While the original joke was about an old man, I changed it to a good Mothers Day joke.

My wife loves gardening and we always have flowers growing - and in the spring Tomato plants. So today we spent a couple hours getting the garden ready for planting. I am also posting some recent photos of her flowers run through Topaz Simplify. Enjoy.

As I process photos through Lightroom 2, I am always looking for candidates for using alternative interpretations of the image. Followers of my blog know that in recent months I have been putting Topaz Simplify through its paces. These two examples are from the last week.

Above is from last Tuesday in San Diego, another photo of the "Unconditional Surrender" statue. Below is a photo shot last night in downtown Los Angeles.

The photo below is a good example of the workflow I am currently using. After import into Lightroom, I go into the Develop module, crop and do basic enhancements. This hotel photo was a candidate for a grayscale gritty look. I used a Lightroom preset to remove color, over-sharpen and tone down edges. A simple Lightroom command E on the keyboard moves a copy of the image into Photoshop. In the bottom version, I first went into grayscale mode and used the saturation sponge tool to add contrast around the sign. Then I went back to RGB and used Topaz Simplify BuzzSim preset to make the top version.

I liked both versions enough to post both.


Sign on 4th Street building in downtown Los Angeles advertising rooms for one dollar. After given a gritty look, the above version was run through Topaz simplify.


The version before use of Topaz Simplify.

PS: Sorry about the headline. Try saying "Two Topaz Simplify Pics" five times.

Boring images, like this Denny's photo, left, can often make great source material for running through Topaz Simplify, I came up with the above image in just ten minutes of playing around. I export the image from Lightroom, into Photoshop, apply Topaz Simplify, and save as a copy back into Lightroom. My original image stays untouched.




Robert Lachman over at www.photographyandthemac.com recently put me on to Topaz Simplify. I downloaded the 30-day trial and after two weeks, call me Simplify Fanboy.

Topaz Simplify is a photoshop filter plugin that applies cool artistic effects to images. The problem with Topaz Simplify is its ease of use - install and bam, you are spending hours playing with effects.

Topaz Simplify appears to use two basic algorithms, one for removing detail from images, and a second to find edges. It's the combination of the two, with all the additional possible variables, that makes this software so much fun.

The learning curve is easy. Go to the Topaz Simplify website and watch the video. Additional great sources of information is the Flickr Topaz Simplify Group and the review at www.photographyandthemac.com. I put all the links at the bottom of this blog. Have fun! After a 30-day free trial, Topaz Simplify is $39.99.

But first, a few more images run through Topaz Simplify.










Links: Topaz Simplify; Topaz Simplify video; Flickr Topaz Simplify group; Review at www.photographyandthemac.com