Mike,
I tried demos of the original buZZ Pro plug-in for Photoshop and the standalone PhotoArt Master (they hadn’t started numbering them yet) and I thought they were great way back then. The current versions are much better and I plan to buy them both, because I don’t know of anything that is more inherently artistic.
The demo versions I tried were designed to quit working after a ridiculously small number of usages, though, and I really wasn’t learning all they could do before they quit working and I was kind of miffed about that. The current demos also will quit working after too few usages, in my opinion. I think they should give you 30 days of unlimited use, because these things do have some learning curve to climb in order to get the most out of them. Believe me, they can help you turn out some great artwork from your photos.
But you can do some great artwork using just Photoshop’s rich toolset. It is just a matter of learning the right Photoshop techniques. Check out this site for an example of really great art produced in Photoshop:
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http://www.reallyusefulpage.com/techniques/pen-ink.htm>
In addition to Photoshop and the FO2PIX stuff, Corel’s Painter 8.1 has a fantastic set of tools to help you convert your photos to art, using many different classic art media as well as fantastic cyberart. And if you really want to go all out, you can combine the capabilities of all of these tools by moving your in-progress work from one application to another. But you should remain in control of the art and use these things as your tools. I strongly recommend that you download the manuals from the Support section of FO2PIX, because they have some great insight into the artistic aspect of guiding these tools to help you produce the kind of art that you like. I feel that I have a lot to learn about this, and I look forward to the journey.
— Burton —