Exposure 2 Review
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.
SMOG, iPhoto, and Backup
I'm sure you don't remember me, but I was the one who sat in front of you at the SMOG meeting. I was the one who made the comment about many of the SMOG members having a screw loose.
I noted from your blog that you are new with iPhoto, so I wanted to mention a special application you might find interesting. It is iPhoto Library Manager. You can download it -
along with every conceivable Mac utility - at www.versiontracker.com. Version Tracker is sort of a Google for Mac applications and utilities. If you want to find a Mac utility that can help you raise llamas, look there.iPhoto Library Manager (ILM) allows you to have multiple iPhoto libraries. Many small libraries open more quickly than one large library. That's the advantage. The disadvantage is that you sometimes might not remember in which library you put your pictures. Having to open multiple libraries can be a hassle. In your line of work, you might have a library for each project.
I've used ILM to create two libraries, which is a small enough number so I know where I put things. One library has 10,000 pictures in it, and the other has 30,000 pictures.
I was impressed by your web site (I'm the web master for the SMOG group). I'm guessing by the fact that iPhoto was new to you that you also are new to the Mac. I wanted to say a word about backup. I owned a financial newsletter business for 18 years, so I thought a lot about safeguarding my records. The problem with working for a large organization like the L.A. Times is that backup is someone else's j
ob. You might not even think about it. But with a personal computer, make sure you think about it. What if your home burns down tonight, or someone breaks into your home while you are at work, and steals your computer? Will it be a minor nuisance, or a major disaster? I use two external hard drives. One is in the bank safety deposit vault, and I use the other one for a week. Each has a complete copy of the Mac operating system.
I plug in my backup hard drive once a day (I use a laptop) and an application called ChronoSync automatically backs up all changes I have made. Chronosync also automatically backs up my laptop files onto my laptop drive three times a day. So if my laptop drive fails, I can boot from my external hard drive and in five minutes I can continue working.
Every Monday, I go to the bank and exchange the hard drive I've used all week with one that has sat in the bank vault all week. So if my home burns down, at worse I will lose a week's work. I can live with that.
Martin Scorsese is a semi-famous TV writer. He recently had his house burglarized. The burglar stole his computer - and the external backup hard drive that was attached. Martin had no other backup. 20 years of writing - gone.
If you're already backing up, then I apologize for wasting your time. But most people don't think about what bad things can happen to them until it's too late. I was an Infantry point man in Vietnam. I was the first person to walk down the jungle path to find the mines, booby traps, snipers, machine gunners and ambushes. The experience taught me the advantages of planning ahead.
Thanks, Bob. Very important stuff, especially about backing up. -- RL
I plan make it to the next meeting, the topic will be Pages08, Apple’s iWork ’08 suite’s word-processing application, this Saturday day morning. I’m sure I will learn something new. Everyone always seem to know another cool trick with each application. For more information, check out their website at: www.ocmug.org.
Where's 2.0. Finally I'm going to have Tap-and-Tilt
I want 2.0. I want the privilege of paying Apple $9.95 for the 2.0 software upd
ate for my iPod Touch so I can spend more money buying video games, mail programs, twitter clients, photo editors and scads of miscellaneous new software. I need to be playing Super Monkey Ball where the action moves with the built in accelerometer. I don't know even know what an accelerometer is, but I want it. According to Apple, I'm finally going to have a mobile game console that responds to my movements. Now I'm going to have tap-and-tilt games like Super Monkey Ball. I need more coffee.To put a positive spin on the Apple debacle of bait and switch or should I say bait and crash? I'm able to do a little drawing on my pics with Skitch for this post. I just love using it. Skitch
software is the best for making little notes on your photos. Check out their website. It used to be beta-by-invitation-only, but now it's open-beta so check it out. On Saturday I'm going to my first Mac Users Group meeting. I'm looking forward to learning a few new things and meeting some people who are Mac focus geeks just like me. Hope to have some pics on an upcoming post.
iPhone 3G Bonus Burp Included
By Robert Lachman
Since I write about Photography and the Mac, it seems like I should be at the Apple store when the first 3G iPhones go on sale at 8:00 am Friday morning. It's a camera and it's a Mac. I work tonight so it might be tough. Sleep in or check out the new 3G iPhone, that is the question.
You know you're important when Apple sends you
the phone early to review. It's a very short list. David Pogue from the New York Times is an Apple V.I.P. Check out Pogue's funny video about the 3G iPhone. He pokes fun at the new 3G iPhone's lack of new features and actually higher cost in the long run.
He didn't mention anything about iBeer, a new application from Hottrix available from the iTunes store which lets you drink a pixel beer. Talk about light beer.
The application description from Hottrix software:
Brew and drink beer on your iPhone and iPod touch. This hilarious sight-gag is fully interactive and behaves like a real grass of beer thanks to the iPho
nes sensors and our spare time.
FEATURES
Brew
Drink
Shake
Burp
Tilt to sip, shake for foam, even pour iBeer from iPhone to iPhone.
Now it can be yours!
Bonus Burp included
Get it today and stop those hangovers forever!
Not to mention video tutorials and 24/7 support.
I can't imagine how many of these will be sold?
Looking to get that iPhone updated to 2.0 one day, early check out the Mac Rumors site. They have the links to get it done. Many on my Twitter list have done it, but proceed at your own risk. You can be the first to have Super Monkey Ball or MsPAC-Man up and running. I'm getting caught up in this but I can wait until tomorrow. It will be much simpler then.
What's the big difference between my site and Scott Kelby's Photoshop insider website. Ok, besides about 8 million hits. Scott's giving away a $1000 Westcott TD-5 Spiderlite “Scott Kelby Studio Kit” to some lucky winner who answers a trivia question he poses on the Photoshop User TV. I give away a dusty old $5 Brownie. I guess you appreciate things when you start from the bottom and work your way up.
It's amazing what drives comments on a photo website, the Strobist had 61 comments so far about the Canon G9. I had to chime in. I still have a 4MP Canon G3, one of the forerunner in the series. Kelby had some of the longest comments I've ever read on a blog from a post by his Wednesday guest, nature photographer Stephen Johnson. It was just a bunch of esoteric BS over people spending too much time on Photoshop versus shooting.
3G iPhone Friday coming soon!