Caricature Software Makes Anyone A Digital Artist

A favorite pastime at fairs and theme parks is watching with fascination as caricature artists create quick hand-drawn cartoon renditions of delighted visitors. Rare are those gifted with such keen artistic talents. A California software developer is changing that with the release of Caricature Studio 5.0 Novelty Photo Suite, the 5th incarnation of a popular caricature software utility that creates caricature and novelty art from ordinary photos. Originally released in 2006, version 5.0 has grown into an impressive suite of tools that now features caricature software wizards, head-on-body, face swap, animation, web-cam capture, green screen, and more.

Caricature Studio 5.0 was designed for ease of use with a familiar Windows interface. Many of the tools such as resize, zoom, paint brush and others will be familiar to Windows users. In addition to the great caricature software effects, there is a library of clip art and templates included for creating projects. Old-west style "wanted" posters and parody magazine covers can be conjured up in a matter of minutes, ready to print. The filters packaged with Caricature Studio include comic style rendering and colorization effects to give caricatures a "hand drawn" look. The software also supports the popular Photoshop plugin format which provides endless possibilities for image manipulation. Besides caricature art, you can also insert talk bubbles and text boxes anywhere on the image to produce comic-style panels and photo to cartoon effects. The head-on-body and face swap tools means that you no longer have to be a Photoshop expert to create great celebrity fakes.

Version 5.0 it not just great caricature software. It has also transitioned into the professional arena with new utilities geared for live event novelty photo vending. These include live capture support for Canon SLR cameras, and a display mode that produces an image slideshow designed to showcase the product and attract customers. The developer, Novelty Photo Software, LLC offers business packages for those wishing to use Caricature Studio in commercial and retail applications. What's more, a new function for photo overlays offers over 100 templates for parody magazine covers, wanted posters and photo frames.

So how well does it work? Surprisingly good. Even for the artistically challenged, it is quite easy to produce comical images quickly from regular photos.

Adults and kids alike will find Caricature Studio entertaining and useful. It can be used to create a variety of personalized art for greeting cards, wedding announcements, birthday invitations and sales fliers. The included help file details how to embellish T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters and mouse pads with your caricatures for truly personalized gifts. Webmasters will enjoy creating custom avatars and web graphics. The original version released in 2006 received wide acclaim from shareware site editors. Returning users will find version 5.0 far surpasses its predecessor in terms of features, functionality and image quality.