Topaz ReStyle | Software Review | Hotel del Coronado

Important Update:

• The offer in this post has expired, but you can use coupon code “angandrieux” to get 15% off all Topaz Labs software anytime!

Last week I received an invitation to demo ReStyle – the newest offering from Topaz Labs. It launches August 8, 2013 so I wanted to get some info in your hands quickly – it’ll be 50% off its retail price through August 31, 2013 using the coupon code “restyleit”.

I finally had some time to play with it today and its a fun tool! In some ways I can compare it to the filters I put on photos in my iPhone, but its a heck of a lot more powerful. I’ll walk you through what I did with one of my photos.

I’m working with an image I captured a couple of weeks ago of the Hotel del Coronado at night – and by night, I mean late…the time stamp on the image is 10:13pm!! You’d think the place would be dead at that time, but no. Its summer and while it wasn’t crowded at 10pm this lovely historic hotel was still bustling.

Back to the photo – this 30 second exposure was captured with my Induro AKB1 Tripod mounted Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens at f/6.3, ISO 100.

I started out in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 where I made a couple of minor lens correction adjustments:

• Applied lens profile correction
• Removed chromatic abberations

I then moved into Topaz ReStyle. One of the options in this program is to view the various presets in a grid mode – that way you can get a preview of what each preset will do for your image all on one screen. Pretty cool – and fairly important because ReStyle has over 1000 presets!! For this image I chose the “Night” group of presets. Here is a screenshot of my options:

I chose the EldridgePhotoshop preset for this image. (I liked Hot Pink Drama, too, but EldridgePhotoshop worked a bit better for the scene in my opinion). Once I applied the preset it opened up the photo (with the preset applied) in the main work space:

You might notice that each preset (on the left) has a distinct color profile that it applies to the image. Once you apply a preset you can modify how that preset is applied in the right side of the screen. Personally, I like the preset – and if its not broken there is no need to fix it. The only modification I did was to increase the texture, which added a bit of clarity to the image details:

I then hit “OK” and saved my image back into my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 library. From there I made the following adjustments:

• Removed chromatic abberations
• Noise Reduction
• Sharpening

That’s it! What do you think? Topaz Restyle has a ton of creative possibilities! Like I mentioned earlier it launches August 8, 2013! Retail price will be $59.99 but if you use the coupon code “restyleit” through August 31, 2013 you can get this fun photographic tool for just $29.99 – half off retail!