AKVIS has announced AKVIS AirBrush 3.0 ($49 – $89), its powerful applications for transforming digital photos into airbrushed works of art.

Unlike many similar tools, the program preserves a lot of detail from the original photos, while still giving it a very stylised look.

We’ve covered the company’s AKVIS OilPaint (64-bit here) before, and AirBrush has the same easy-to-use controls.

Open an image, drag a few sliders to tweak key aspects of the image – or choose from one of a host of presets – then stop when you find something you like, or share it directly on Twitter, Flickr, Google+ or Dropbox.

New features include the ability to add text or image watermarks with custom position, font, opacity and style.

The AirBrush technique preserves much more detail than the usual “Painting” or “Sketch” filters

Smudge and History brushes enable users to refine the AirBrush effect, adjust or fade it, to produce the results you need.

The Print tool now has a “Poster” option, printing high resolution across multiple pages to create spectacular posters.

There’s now support for importing even more RAW formats, and of course you get the regular scattering of bug fixes and minor tweaks.

AKVIS AirBrush 3.0 isn’t cheap, but if you’re interested in the idea then the trial may still be worth a look. It’s fully functional and – apart from being “not for commercial use” – unrestricted, so you’ll be able to create at least some images at no cost at all.