Topaz Simplify Review

Edit:  The newest version of Topaz Simplify, which has come out since I wrote this review, is much much better!  There are a lot more presets to work with and more overall control.  I would definitely recommend trying it out.  

After being introduced to both Topaz Adjust and Topaz DeNoise Photoshop plug-ins, I decided to download the trial version of Topaz Simplify and write a review.  While I do stand to make a commission if you purchase a Topaz product through my blog, I have sworn honesty in my reviews, and must admit that I am overall pretty disappointed with the Simplify plug-in.  While it can be fun to turn a photo into a “painting” I personally wouldn’t have any use for this plug-in beyond the playing factor.  This might not be true for you however, so I would still recommend downloading the trial version of Topaz Simplify.

I tried a handful of images in the software, and was truly only happy with the results from one of the images that I experimented with in Topaz Simplify.

Here is the original photo, prior to being processed in Topaz Simplify:

Topaz Simplify Starting Photo

Like the two other Topaz plug-ins I have tried so far, the user interface is very clean, and closely resembles Lightroom.  There is a collection of presets on the left of the screen, and it is easy to view each preset as a quick preview, so there is no need to waste time processing the image in order to see the results.  On the right hand side are sliders that allow you to tweak various aspects of the image, for custom results.

For the purpose of this review I chose the BuzSim 5 preset, as it created an attractive result with this particular image, and then made some minor adjustments to a few sliders.  Here is the image after being processed in the plug-in.  You can click on the image to view it full-size if you want:

Topaz Simplify Result. So pretty!

Anyway, I hope that my rather brief introductory review of Topaz Simplify has been helpful.  I personally won’t be spending any more time using this plug-in, as far as I know at this point.  However, I can imagine that it could be very useful for some purposes.  Also, it does come as part of the Photoshop Topaz Bundle, which includes all eight of the Topaz plug-ins at a substantial discount.