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Alien
Skin’s Exposure Plug-in: Just
perfect for film lovers who’ve gone digital! by
If you’re a digital convert who really misses the color pallets and look of film, a new plug-in from Alien Skin Software brings you the very best of both worlds. I have not been able to find anywhere a program that does what Exposure does anywhere nearly as professionally or as well as Exposure does it. It simply doesn’t get better than this! To imitate film digitally, Alien Skin measured the differences between digital and film images and created plug-in settings that look like the film stocks. The result is Exposure, a new Photoshop-compatible plug-in that is receiving rave reviews in publications everywhere. Easy to use, Exposure offers film settings for warming/cooling or filter color, saturation for color films or RGB sensitivity for black and white films, a Tone control curve, and grain replication options. Wisely, in the film settings, Alien Skin elected to not use B&W colorization and focus controls since these really apply more to special effects.
What’s that? You don’t like the look of the more recent films? No problem! Alien Skin also included the look of discontinued films including GAF 500 and Kodak EES by measuring archival photos and experimenting with settings until they closely approximated the images. The Grain control tab is
unique. Alien Skin studied the real thing under a microscope and discovered that
real film grain “has subtle color characteristics, often appearing with
different strengths in the highlights, midtones and shadows.” The great part about
Exposure is that you don’t have to
eat the “whole banana” You have a wide array of
control options in Exposure and
don’t have to accept the complete default film look chosen in the initial
plug-in screen. You can use Exposure
“for specific image enhancement tasks rather than full-blown film
simulation,” according to the Alien Skin team, and “look for the settings
that begin with the word Modify.”
These generally allow you to change parameter
subsets. Special effect settings for
creative changes rather than simulation of film are also available. These
control have names that start with Special
and include effects like cross processing, sepia toning, soft focus
“glamour” images, and more. To give you a better idea of
how Exposure works, the Color tab
under the Color Film filter lets you control saturation and cast. (The B&W
Film filter’s Color tab is different.) Filter Color and Filter Density
controls allow you to simulate use of different strength colored filters on the
camera’s lens. To just warm or
cool a scene, simply use the Cooling/Warming slider.
Exposure
just made my current “Best of Breed” Photoshop plug-in list!
Hey, look! I really could go on for pages about Exposure,
but you’ll learn to love Exposure
faster by visiting Alien Skin’s website at www.alienskin.com
, downloading their 30-day demo and using it yourself!
Pricing & Availability: Exposure is available from a good software dealer or direct from Alien Skin Software at www.alienskin.com for $199. Windows System
Requirements Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP Minimum of a 2GHz Pentium 4
GPU and 256MB of RAM Macintosh Systems
Requirements Mac OS X 10.3.8 or later Minimum of a 1GHz PowerPC G4 GPU and 256MB of RAM
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