Create Customized Topaz Presets

by Joe Holler

Posted: July 18, 2012

The Topaz Labs suite of plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop are the best plug-ins I have seen, especially if you like to alter your photographs like I do.  In my previous article, An Introduction to Topaz Filters I went over the basics of this useful photo processing software.  My favorite Topaz filter is Adjust 5. I use it on almost every picture that I edit.  It has an extensive library of effects that are organized into categories, each containing many presets. 

One of those collections of presets is Adjust 4 Preset List, which contains the presets included in the previous version of Topaz Adjust. There is also one called My Collection, for your own personalized collection of presets.  Other Topaz filters also have the Save option, but only Adjust has the supplied presets divided into collections. When you click on one of the collections, the list of presets appears and the preset selected is called Last Used Settings, which obviously contains the setting that you used the last time you opened this collection.  This is convenient if you want to edit several pictures using the same effect.

 Collections can be viewed on the left hand side, with each collection's list of presets displayed below.

I start by cycling though these presets, just to get a rough idea of what effect they might have on my picture.  When I find one that I like, I switch to the other side of the screen for some fine-tuning. Under Global Adjustments>Adaptive Exposure, I almost always make some adjustment to the Adaptive Exposure and Regions sliders. Under Global Adjustments>Details, I use the Strength and Detail Boost sliders often. All of the other adjustments I use only sparingly. 

When I'm done with my fine-tuning, if I have made an effect that I especially like, or if I intend to use the same effect on many images, I save that effect in My Collections.

Click on the Save button in the lower left corner to get the Save Preset box.  Giving the preset a name is a must. The other data is optional but not a bad idea for future reference.  If you check the Save in the My Collection box at the bottom, then your preset will appear under My Collection.  If you don’t, it will appear in whatever collection you are currently working in.

If you would like to share you collection of presets, or transport them from one computer to another, there is an export button on the lower left side of the screen.  It will save your collection as a .tpp file (Topaz Preset).  Then you can import it to another computer.

Another way to apply the same effect to multiple pictures in Photoshop is to open another image and click on Filter and select the one listed at the top, which will be the last filter that you used. Ctrl + F does the same thing.  But if you have used other filters in the mean time, or if you have exited Photoshop, then this won’t work, so it would be a good idea to save a collection of your favorite settings.

You could also use Actions and Batch processing to cut down the work load if applying the same processing to multiple images.  Refer to Snapper's Tip of the Month: Using Photoshop’s Actions and Batch Commands to Automate and Apply Functions to Multiple Images.

I have edited many images with Topaz Adjust and slowly am developing a library of my own favorite settings. It saves me a bunch of time. Why don't you give it a try.