COREL PARTICLESHOP
Apply brush effects with a difference, using this expansive plug-in from Corel
SRP: £45 / $63 (approx) OS: Windows 7+, Mac OS X 10.9+, Photoshop CS5 +
Brushes are thought to be a weapon primarily of digital artists. They’re often employed for creating painted effects, flourishes and embellishments rather than injecting reality into your work, and it’s rarely considered they may actually be useful tools for photographers as well as painters.
Corel ParticleShop promises though to be more versatile than your average painting program. Including a core pack of brushes, it’s available as a plug-in for Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as Corel programs PaintShop Pro and AfterShot Pro, but delivers photorealistic brushes, rather than your average paint splatter effects. Though ParticleShop only revolves around one specific nuance of image-editing, it’s so indepth that there’s plenty to explore.
ParticleShop is really easy to use for the most part too. The brush previews are clear enough for you to actually see the effect that you would be applying to your photo, and the brushes are really high quality. ParticleShop enables you to get so much more detailed than just varying whether you have a softer or harder edge to your brush, as you can choose blendy, billowing or even grungy effects.
While just about any photographer looking to add quirky or realistic effects to their photos can use ParticleShop, it really thrives when you can apply the strokes via a graphics tablet, as you can get the best out of the brushes when they’re applied with subtlety. ParticleShop might only seem like a few added brush packs to use in Photoshop, but the plug-in itself is smoother and easier to use in places than Photoshop’s own Brush tool.
This is a plug-in that you can really explore for hours, experimenting with all the brushes and downloading new ones. It’s a software package that has almost limitless possibilities for your pictures.