Keith,

I don't think the president portraits on US currency are woodcuts. My guess would be they are steel engravings. I don't know that Cutline is the best for president's engravings. You can get something very much like that with Series 3 Screens <http://www.andromeda.com/info/series3.html>.

A lot of people like the style of the portraits in the Wall Street Journal. Actually, I think those were done by hand by an artist who was good at it, rather than by a Photoshop plug-in. But with practice using the directional tools in Cutline <http://www.andromeda.com/info/cutline.html> I think you could come close to the Wall Street Journal style with Cutline. You don't have that directional control in Screens, as Andromeda shows is a comparison of Cutline and Screens <http://www.andromeda.com/info/cutscreen.html>. The example shown on the Series 3 Screens <http://www.andromeda.com/info/series3.html> page was done by successively applying the filter to various selections, with different settings for each selection.

You might also want to take a look at the EtchTone Filter <http://www.andromeda.com/info/etch.html>, which is similar but different from Screens and Cutline. Andromeda is bundling all three: Series 3 Screens, Cutline, and Etch Tone for $225, a "savings" of $56. In my opinion Andromeda stuff is a bit over-priced and Cutline should be at version 2 or 3 by now. But you can get good results with their filters.

Andromeda offers free demo downloads of all of their products. You might want to take them up on it. As I recall, the demos prevent you from actually applying the effect to your Photoshop image, but let you preview what you would get if you owned the filter. By playing with the demos you could get a better idea what results you might get with Screens versus Cutline versus EtchTone.

I think there might be a competitive product out there, but right offhand, I can't recall its name or vendor. Perhaps another participant will supply that information.

-- Burton -- (not associated with Andromeda)

Keith_H.

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Andromeda Cutline and Screens filters