Akvis Chameleon

www.akvis.com

Reviewed by Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

 Chameleon is another Photoshop compatible plug-in from Akvis. This one lets you create your own photo collages. What sets it apart from doing this manually is that it smoothes and blends the edges in perfectly. No more hard edges or bad blends from trying to smooth out an edge and make it a seamless and transparent addition to another image.  If you are familiar with how many steps it can take to make a good collage manually, you really appreciate how easily Chameleon can do it for you.  

The examples above show two images combined to make a collage. In the image to the left, the inserted selection has a distinct edge and does not blend into the background frame. In the image to right after using Chameleon, the hard edges have disappeared and the added image blends into its new background.  (A portion of the black and white image was trimmed off because is wasn’t needed for the final effect.)

There are a couple ways of adding and combining the images together. You will find a complete set of tutorials and images available on the Akvis web site (www.akvis.com) plus a manual in pdf format.

One way is to select the part of the image you want to add to another and it to a new layer on the second image. Then select the Chameleon plug-in from the Filters or Effects list and activate Chameleon. It will process the selection added and then blend it into the background. In this example, a cat’s head has been selected and then pasted into a new layer on the background of the flowers. It was then resized to fit into it’s new surroundings. The way of creating the collage is called the Standard Mode.

The first image shows the flower garden and the second the cat. In the final image, the cat has been added seamlessly to the background and looks as though he has always been part of the original photo.

Another method of adding the selection to a background is by choosing the use Take Snapshot from the Chameleon menu and then use the Use Snapshot to finish the collage.

In this example a sunset background has been combined with a black and white photo of a bird.

For the sake of brevity,  I am not going to take you through each step involved in creating this collage. If you want to view the tutorial, it is on the Akvis web site, in the Chameleon section. The tutorial name is “Bird in the Sky”.

When the bird is added using the Use Snapshot method, it is not only added into the background smoothly but the colors are adjusted and the object becomes semi-transparent so that the background colors (original image) and texture are visible in the object. The final effect is beautiful with the bird taking on the shades of the sunset colors.

Chameleon is available from the AKVIS web site for $69. If you like creating this type of effect (collages) with your images, this is a product you will want to look into. You can find tutorials and a trial version available for download on their site.  www.akvis.com