Exposure 2
Exposure 2 Review
August 16, 2008 10:19 PM
By Robert Lachman
This week I am going to review Alien Skin’s software, Exposure 2, the Photoshop and Photoshop Elements’ plug-in to give your photographs the look of film.
It’s a one-click way to give photographs that edgy, arty, cross-processed film look. It also can be used to add a soft focus glamour look, change your color photographs to black and white
Why would anyone pay money to make their photos more grainy, or maybe have a color shift like in the cross-processing or have the highlights blown out in the high contrast mode? It’s the million dollar question or should I say, it’s more like the $249 question because this software ain’t cheap.
Only one answer I can think of: ART.
Now these are things you could do on your own if you had the time to figure them out, but it would be difficult for most, especially with such a quick-click and choose method.
This is definitely make your new school work look old school
The Exposure 2 software will work on both Photoshop Elements version 4 or newer and Photo
shop CS2 or later. It definitely makes your new school photographs look old school.
First I tried the Exposure 2 software plug-in on a portrait of my daughter and of course, I used TRI-400 setting. Wow, I mean I’m using Tri-X 400 again. It seems like old times. My photos have grain instead of digital noise. That’s very cool. But now I’m getting confused. Back in the olden days, we tried our best to get rid of grain and worked to make it as fine as possible. There were special developers like Accufine which was designed to make the grain small. Now I have really digressed.
The interface is easy to use. Once you have the photo up on the screen, just pick the menu item filter, then Alien Skin Exposure 2 which will give you the choice of menu color or black and white.
It’s very easy to use and has a very nice split screen preview feature. The software plug-in gives you a choice of the split going horizontal, diagonal, or vertical. You can decide which side of the screen is the affected side.
Also, in the preview window there’s an option to enlarge and move the image for a close look at the detail. This is one of the best preview windows I have used.
There are so many settings: saturation increased warm, overcast, golden hour orange, faded sun, saturated-slide-film, high and low contrast and cross-process featuring every imaginable film that was once available.
The choices of film styles are endless: Tri-X, Kodachome, Polaroid, Fuji’s Velvia and Reala. That’s just a start, how about GAF or Agfa Scala.
Other effects include: softening, push processing, contrast and curves, toning, infrared, dynamic rage, color temperature, saturation, softness, grain and sharpness with slider controls.
The only downside to this Alien Skin software is the $249 price tag making it more of a professional photographer’s product who have a specific need for a quick one-click arty look to make their photos look different and to to speed up their work flow.
It’s just too expensive for the average consumer to add to their repertoire. They do offer a 30-day trial to check it out.
I would give it four out of five stars, with the price as the main detraction.
Check out the audio version of the review on The Mac ReviewCast podcast.
|