Jasc Virtual Painter 4

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Whether it's giving a timeless feel to a wedding snap, adding a little class to that dull shot of head office or generating real creative impact for a poster, turning a digital photograph into a work of art is one of the most effective of photo-editing tricks - and hugely satisfying at the same time. What's more, if you do it right, you can produce some spectacular results with almost no artistic skill.

Most photo-editing applications from Paint Shop Pro through to Photoshop offer a batch of artistic filters designed to produce everything from watercolour to oil painting style effects. After the initial excitement though, disillusion tends to set in. To begin with there's usually no real control to these one-off effects and, when a near miss is as good as a mile, the misses far outweigh the hits. More importantly, while the results are undeniably different you couldn't really mistake them for real works of art. Let's be honest - there's a huge gap between a filtered photo and the labour of love built up by an artist over time.