They're great at quickly taking your image places you can't otherwise easily go. Then, if you want to apply a certain style or look to the image or set of images, perhaps for some event or a publication or just a brochure, these tools are where you go. Crop (especially if you intend to use the frame or border tools), optimize the tone and adjust the color in your image editor first. So these tools aren't about optimizing an image. They're more for tweaking the look you develop. And while Exposure and FilmPack have image editing tools, you don't really want to make your initial tone and color adjustments in these tools. While all of these products emulate films, what they're really about is creating a style. Exposure and FilmPack are closer to the traditional photographic experience, adding print borders, scratches and light leaks to the effects. Of the three, we find Film Stocks to be less interested in film grain emulation than the other two, preferring a cleaner digital look. It does have T-Max 1 with over- and under-exposed treatments, as well as a Holga 120 preset. It doesn't, though, have T-Max 400 and the others do. It has push processing, but not the others. Exposure 5 had Panatomic-X (a favorite film of ours) but not the others. In fact, it's a little hard to compare them. Effects extend into a variety of photographic processes as well, like cyanotypes and push processing, although not every product offers them all. This isn’t me being a Luddite digital is more convenient, more practical for transmitting and news telling purposes, and is far easier to edit film offers several stops of latitude when it comes to exposure, and (I personally believe) can offer a more dramatic image if you know how to handle it.All three products provide hundreds of straight film emulations, both currently available emulsions and historical ones from a variety of manufacturers. Click to enlargeĭon’t get me wrong: I still believe that film is still superior to digital in many ways. Alien Skin is available for $149, while DxO FilmPack is available for free for the next few days. Personally, I like the layout and menu options with Alien Skin a bit more, but FilmPack also gives you some pretty solid choices. There are also menu options allowing you to manage image tone, vignette, borders and color.ĭxO recently offered a similar plugin, the DxO FilmPack which offers many of the same film stock options. Both allow you to manage grain levels (a very, very slight amount can sometimes work, and can hide high-ISO noise) though I typically leave grain out entirely. Even with Exposure, I tend to ignore the B&W stock options and stick with the color. Either way, the conversion becomes distracting and takes the viewers attention away from the subject and makes it more about the technique. It either looks too sharp and lacks grain, or the grain looks artificial. One of the reasons I don’t like converting to black and white is that it very rarely looks like an image taken from film, which is the whole point of the conversion. Want to make all of your colors pop? Try any of the Kodachrome stock options. Want to add some contrast while cooling the color temperature? Try the Fuji Pro 160C option. Instead of playing around with your settings until you find something you like, you have dozens of options laid out for you in an extremely easy to use menu. In this regard, it’s an outstanding tool. When I voiced my objection to converting to black and white, he explained that he rarely uses it for that, but rather that he uses it as a tool to explore different contrast, hue and saturation options quickly and easily in ways that mimic commercially available film (as well as some film stocks that are no longer available.) Click to enlarge Sure, I’ve toyed with them, but never with any enthusiasm.Ī few weeks ago, a friend of mine suggested checking out Alien Skin’s Exposure 5 plugin for Photoshop. So with that in mind, I never really took any interest in any of the film-emulating programs and plugins that have popped up over the years. I’m not saying it can’t be done effectively, but I believe that if you want to tell a story in black and white, then you should start spooling up some rolls of T-Max. Generally speaking, I’m not a huge fan of converting digital images to black and white. A graduate of the Defense Information School, he enlisted in the United States Air Force in 2002 and is currently a photographer with the New York Air National Guard. As a freelancer, he’s covered such subjects as the BP Oil Spill, the fight for same-sex civil rights, the takeover of the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin and Occupy Wall Street. Muncy is a freelance photojournalist based out of New York City with a client list that includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The New York Daily News and The Village Voice.
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