Topaz continues to kick out awesome plugins, and their newest release ReStyle keeps with the recent pattern. Like most Topaz Plugins, us early adopters get a substantial discount which they offer as soon as the software is released. Read on for my take and a few examples, or if you’re already sold, go here to TopazLabs.com and use the code “restyleit” to get 50% off ($59.99 reg, or $29.99 now through August 31st).
Using a magical tone mapping engine, Topaz ReStyle adjusts your images based on specific tonality. The plugin boasts over 1,000 presets (I only got to play with a couple dozen in the beta version) to give you pre-grouped color combinations which will alter the look of any image instantly. The handy preview window will pop up as you hover over the presets on the left. You can adjust each of the tones in the HSL sliders on the right which allow you to further tweak the tonality/hue, saturation and luminance of each of the mapped tones. You can also apply masks within the program which is awesome for focused adjustments. Of course, not every image will look good with every preset, and here is where the quick previews really come in handy. Once you do find a suitable preset, you can tweak it to your hearts content. While I’ve found that ReStyle doesn’t immediately seem right for every image when cycling through the presets, if I apply one of the filters and dial down the opacity on it’s own layer in Photoshop, the results can still be very pleasing.
Plugins like ReStyle, and the recently released Topaz Clarity have been amazingly impressive, and remarkably useful for me. I really do appreciate a good plugin, especially a one click look plugin like this because it allows me to quickly replicate a very complicated look for my images. This is especially useful when wanting to replicate a look for a series. While each preset will look differently depending on the source image, if you do shoot a series in the same conditions, same lighting, same white balance, etc, they’ll be tonally consistent which plays nicely with ReStyle when wanting a look to carry over from one image to the next.
Original image
Cream and Blue
invisible sunset
a hybrid of various presets
Topaz ReStyle will work as a plugin with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Aperture and iPhoto! Available for $59.99 HERE directly through TopazLabs.com at a 50% discount ($29.99 using code “restyleit“) until the end of the month! Like always, I suggest trying it out with a trial by downloading it through the above link to Topaz Labs. Honestly, for the money, I think that the recent Topaz plugin releases have been the very best bangs for the buck I’ve ever used, they’re offering a very good value at really competitive prices.
Thanks for the read, and enjoy!
Happy shooting,
Tyson
Tyson Robichaud Photo-blography 
Now thats a damn good Price Tyson! I did a bit of research regarding this software and it looks good. Damn Good! So, i Clicked on your link above and paid for it. Can’t wait to get home and have a play with it. Cheers for the heads up! The fact it plugs in to Lightroom is awesome!
Cheers, Have a good weekend
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Thanks Chris,
I’m looking forward to actually playing with the whole plugin myself! Enjoy it, it’s a lot of fun.
t
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Setup in progress now, very excited. Thanks again for the tip on this. Gonna add a nice extra level of editing and a good way in with topaz for me to see how well it works for me. Got a nice shot of London’s Natural History Museum tk experiment on. I have a feeling I’m going to want more topazlabs stuff!
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I think, going through LR directly, the masks will be particularly useful for you. Many of the presets are a little over the top for an entire image and being able to selectively choose which areas are best served by the adjustments while getting to decrease the effect on the areas that are not, will be really handy when not using photoshop for instance to handle the masking workload.
Enjoy man! Looking forward to seeing how it goes for you.
t
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Thanks man!
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I downloaded this last night and it is huge. I find it a little intimidating…I found it so easy to mess up my images…I just need more time to play with it….and as for Topaz Clarity…it is my favorite plug-in…I used to use Topaz Adjust all the time but with Clarity the images are so much cleaner . Their plug-ins are good and introductory prices are fantastic . Plus on their site they offer tutorials and sometimes even a live webinar
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I think 1000 presets are a bit much perhaps, but even with the limited beta list, I found myself finding certain presets that suited certain lighting/colors, etc and fave’d them for easy finding later and I found that maybe 5 or 6 presets were boiled down out of about 25 or 30.
I can’t think of any software company that offers so much for so little, other than perhaps the folks at GIMP 🙂
Thanks SLF!
t
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well managed to install it all and plug in ready for LR4 but then it goes all RUNTIME ERROR C+++ when i try to apply the effect. Have uninstalled and reinstalled and followed the instructions for this issue online but to no avail. I have emailed Topaz for a solution and will see what they come with. Anybody have this error before? The styles look most amazing though and cant wait for it to work. Not giving up on it yet, Topaz looks to cool to quit on!
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Hey Chris,
I have an email out to my Topaz contact, I’ll let you know if I find anything out and will post it here just in case anyone else is having a similar issue. Sorry to hear about this dude. That kind of stuff drives me nuts.
All the best, talk soon.
t
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You’re nothing short of a gent Tyson, thanks. Drives me a Lil nuts too but they seem very helpful from the stuff I’ve seen on the net. And once its sorted ill be having non stop topaz fun! Cheers again
Catch you later man
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Chris, email Darcy at help@topazlabs.com and hopefully she can get you sorted. They’re really good folks that work hard to make sure everyone is happy. Let me know how it goes.
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Thanks man, much appreciated, will let you know
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Hey Tyson,
I had a reply which was to search your comp for %temp% and go into the file Marked Boost Interprocessor and delete anything saying Boost_ in there. However I didnt have that file on my PC and its still not working. Ive got a horrible feeling i’m going to have to uninstall and reinstall Lightroom 4 for it to work. That feels like a friday night job to me! I’ll just make sure my favourite presets are saved and just dive right in! It’ll be worth it in the end i’m sure though! I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Chris,
I have the exact same problem using PS CS6 with the runtime error. I was told to do the same thing to search for Boost interprocessor but like you the file folder does not exist. One thing I experimented with was to reduce the size of my image and then put it into Restyle. Although, this is far from an elogent solution it does seem to be a work a round. Please keep me informed if you come up with a better mousetrap…
Jack
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Hey jack,
Back and fourthing with topaz. They took control of my computer using remote access, they in the US me in the UK oh the wonders of the internet. Anywho, had a play, couldn’t fix and said it was my ram. I have 3gb and he said wasn’t enough so going to upgrade (due an upgrade anyway) and try then, he offered me a refund but i want to get it to work if possible. Looks good. Yeh resizing mine worked once when he tried it but as you said far from elegant, i shoot in raw because i like the freedom to work with the biggeat image i can so if i have to resize i feel a bit cheated. We’ll see, maybe itll work. Let us know on here if you find anything new out.
Thanks
Chris
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Maybe i’m a masochist but this is how i got restyle to work.
Firstly backed all files up on hard drive, then, heres the long winded part, upgraded my operating system from Win8 32 to Win8 64 (this was only possible because I happend to own both discs 64 and 32), Once done, ran an update, then another (for some reason the first 50 updates were not enough). Reinstalled lightroom 4, updated to 4.4, redownloaded restyle (the 64 version this time) and ran it. It works, it processes, it saves the file!
Its slower but i’m going to upgrade my ram soon anyway but hey, its working and i’ll soon have same images to show for it.
Not exactly a qucik solve but did it for me and I was due an upgrad and tidy of win8 anyway.
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Dayum. Well, nothing like a system problem to force a tear down and rebuild. I would have been pulling my hair out, but I am glad to hear you’ve got it more or less sorted.
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Yeah. it was a bit annoying, but having used Vista for years i got used to things not working, this time I had a fix i could use. Now and then i like to get geeky with the comp and just start again and it was probably time to clean and back up my work anyway.
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