Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” ― Les Misérables
Adobe Systems may have defined the standard for plug-ins but you don’t necessarily need Photoshop to use them. Compatible plug-ins can be used with many other image editing programs and some but not all plug-ins will work with Photoshop Elements.
Some software companies have extended their plug-in’s technology to work with Adobe Lightroom but that program’s architecture is dissimilar to Photoshop. According to Adobe “image processing plug-ins are best utilized through Photoshop.” Adobe differentiates between plug-ins and external editors and Lightroom has the ability to define as many external editors as well as compatible presets. Instead, Lightroom’s presets are image-enhancement filters using a package of settings that can edit your photographs so they look like …whatever. Since I’m not a use or fan of Lightroom, I don’t have much to say about the subject. Although to me, they seem to resemble Photoshop Actions in how they work.
When working with any plug-in it’s important to remember one of Farace’s Laws of digital imaging that all special effects are subject dependent. One effect that you might like may look great when used for portraits while another may only work best with landscapes, so you may need more than one plug-in. One of my favorite image effects plug-ins—Flood by Flaming Pear Software—was used in the photograph of my (now former) Jaguar XJ-6 to give the image the “wet streets” look that’s popular with cinematographers for (mostly) nightime shots involving cars.
How I Made This Photograph: The original image was made with a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Xg point-and-shoot camera. Exposure was 1/110 sec at f/3.6 and ISO 1000. Of all the filters included in Color Efex, the Vignette: Lens is probably the most subtle and I expect to be using it on portraits but I tried it with flowers. The sliders are simple and control the size, shape, brightness as well as amount of vignetting. Like the Vignette: Blur plug-in that I really love, you can place the center of the vignette anywhere giving you total control over the photographs’ final look.