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Analog efex pro photoshop1/18/2024 ![]() Those circles haven't gone away with DxO's Control Points but the sliders have moved into a panel. Still, we can remember sitting in a little Photokina office in 2006 watching Nils Kokemohr demonstrate his new non-masking local adjustment tool by converting a daylight shot into a night image. We see contiguous and non-continguous areas. But we don't look at our image areas in terms of circles with large soft edges. But the original U Point was a circle of influence around a point in the image with sliders to adjust the effect. The other plug-ins have three panel windows that lay out all the options. The general improvement to the Nik Collection interface is really about the Control Point interface. We were most impressed with the new Control Point interface, adding ClearView and the film emulsions. If the app name is the same and the app version bumps from 5.0.3 to 5.0.4, it's essentially the same app wrapped up for the new Collection. Version numbers vary between the Collection, individual app names and individual app version numbers. Improved workflow with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.Enhanced U Point technology for Control Points. ![]() The Alien Skin Exposure 5 rendition is very flattering, to say the least, the Color Efex Pro rendition is (again) a pantomime version that’s just plain wrong, while the DxO FilmPack 4.5 version is probably closest to the results I got from the real thing.We attended a briefing a few weeks ago and have been working with the new suite since them. I’ll admit I used Kodachrome 20o only twice, and found it grainy, contrasty and with such a strong magenta cast I vowed never to use it again… The generic DxO FilmPack 4.5 version is OK but, again, looks just like the original with some tiny tweaks, but the non-generic DxO version (why are there two?) is flat, magenta and, to my eyes, just plain wrong. Of the rest, the Color Efex Pro version is just a pantomime effect –too much contrast, too much saturation. Of all of these, I think the Alien Skin Exposure 5 version is best, though to me it just looks like the original digital version with a tad more saturation. My Kodachrome 64 transparencies have neutral, subtle tones and a particular ‘steely-grey’ rendition in skies that I really like.īut this is where you get the biggest variations in the digital versions. Some say its colours are super-saturated and unreal (I think this is an unjustified Kodachrome reputation in general), others say K64 images have a magenta cast. This was my favourite colour film, and I can’t really understand the (bad) reputation this film seems to have. I’ve scanned plenty of Kodachrome 25 transparencies, so I know what to expect, and if I’d shot this scene on K25, I’d expect a much richer, more saturated outcome than either of these. I’m not particularly convinced by either, to be honest. The Alien Skin rendition looks the best to me, while the DxO version doesn’t have the saturation I would expect. Only two of these plug-ins offers a Kodachrome 25 simulation – Alien Skin Exposure 5 and DxO FilmPack 4.5 Slow as heck, true, but I thought it had really nice colour rendition, good saturation and not too much contrast. I’ll start with the colour films, then move on to the black and white… 01 Kodachrome 25 ![]() ![]() There are plenty more, but I’ve chosen the ones I know best from my own film photography days. On their own, each of these plug-ins makes a good case, but it’s when you put them up against each other that you realise they can’t all be right… ![]() I don’t have test results for all of them with every film because they don’t all support the same range of emulsions – but the results are interesting nonetheless. So I’ve taken the same shot (above) and processed it using Alien Skin Exposure 5, Color Efex Pro, DxO FilmPack 4.5 and Silver Efex Pro, all of which promise to replicate the look of traditional film. One problem is that they don’t always look like the films I used to use another is that they don’t even agree with each other. But I’m also a bit sceptical, because many of the film simulations I see from plug-ins look quite suspect to me. So I’m especially interested in any film simulation software which promises to replicate the look and feel of traditional silver-based films. I love its richness, depth, unpredictability and character. It’s what I grew up with, and it’s what I made most of my photographic discoveries – and mistakes – with. ![]()
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