The Influence Project

Joe, and everyone,consider clicking the link and creating one for D-MAG.

The process of converting a color image to black-and-white seems at first blush to have very little complexity; just turn saturation to zero, right? However, one look at Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro and you begin to realize how many considerations can go into the conversion process and how dramatically those considerations can affect the final image. Thankfully, Nik has put clear thought into making those choices available while not overwhelming.

My investigation of Silver Efex Pro was with the Lightroom version. The plugin runs as a standalone application, but works seamlessly with Lightroom, conveniently creating a duplicate of the image (if you so choose) and stacking it with the original. From there you are taken to the main Silver Efex interface.

Beauty Box by Digital Anarchy - A Lovely Package

There are many tutorials that teach you how to retouch photos to tone down or eliminate facial blemishes. A picture is supposed to last a lifetime and most blemishes are temporary, so cleaning up the rough spots on your subject’s face is fair.  Any good portrait photographer does it, and they always have; that or they soften the shot by putting petroleum jelly or a woman’s nylon stocking on the lens.

The only complaint that I have is my procrastion. I was unable to finish my review before the 15 days expired, therefore I used the demo version which adds a watermark over the screen shots and dotted lines across the final image. Being fairly new to plug-ins, I am under the impression that I could still acquire the same effects using just Photoshop. Ozone made it easier and the final result looks much better then, images I have tried to do the same thing with, just using Photoshop.

I started with an image from Stock.XCHNG in Photoshop CS4 (64 bit)

Using the image as a whole did not give me the effects I wanted because the roses drop shadow was changed, which was not the effect I was looking for. The solution was to us the pen tool and create a mask around the rose.

Sparks... Fireflies... Smoke... Rain... Snow... Star fields. Hundreds of  sparkles dancing across the screen. Exactly the kind of visual effects that would cause After Effects SFX artists to contemplate running head first into an oncoming locomotive.   "I hear that train acomin', it's comin' 'round the bend..."-- Johnny Cash

What took Disney animators untold hours to do by hand for Tinkerbell's sparkling trails can now be done with a few Mickey Mouse clicks thanks to Trapcode Particular... and you don't have to the Sorcerer's Apprentice to make it happen! (OK,OK!!  That's the last Disney reference. I promise.)

I’ll repeat: I love Alien Skin products. I’ve never had or used a bad one. Someone somewhere has, so please raise your hand …  okay, no hands, so I stand on my statement. Hey, you’ve got to love a company whose mascot’s head looks like a watermelon with eyes. (Well, it is an alien, y’know.)

Bokeh – pronounced “bo-kuh,” not "bo-kay" – is derived from a Japanese word meaning “blur” or “haze”; it also means mental haze or senility and also happens to be the name of a town in Iran, but I digress.

The first thing I learned when I set out to try AKVIS Alchemy is that it is not a plugin. Alchemy is a bundle of of 13 plugins, (also available as standalone software tools) encompassing AKVIS Software's entire product offering.