Software Review: onOne Genuine Fractals

Hello all. Thanks for checking out this week's software review of one of best tools available from onOne Software, Genuine Fractals.

So here's the deal. Of all the onOne tools, this one has had the most effect on the output quality of my printed images, and that is exciting. This is one of those tools that is extremely specific to accomplishing a certain task - namely, big high-detail enlargements. If you don't print things big, you probably don't need to mess with it. 

But if you do like to print stuff large, and I can speak from experience - nothing works better at enlarging images for print than Genuine Fractals - you'll just have to trust me, try it out, and see for yourself. 

With that said, I could end the review, but I would like to mention the other nice thing about GF, it's incredibly easy to use. If you're familiar with resizing images in photoshop, using the basic functions in GF is as easy if not easier.

Like everything else in the Plug-In Suite, you can find Genuine Fractals under the onOne menu in Photoshop. For this discussion, we'll look at the interface for regular and express mode. GF also has a powerful batch processing component, but we'll save that for another day.

Here we see the full version of the tool. For simplicity, I've minimized most of the menus on the right sidebar of the screen. I've left open the screen and print size controls so you can see just how similar they are to what you'll find in Photoshop. On top of these simple controls, when you start to play with things like textures, sharpening, film grain, etc. the folks at onOne have built an extremely efficient WYSIWYG display which updates with a preview of your tweaks in almost real-time.

So you just want to resize without messing with all the other stuff? Fire up the "express" version of GF and you get a very familiar control box (straight from the full version, and much like photoshop's native tool).

I really provided my summary at the beginning of this post. Until I tried Genuine Fractals, I had always thought that photoshop's bicubic smoother did just fine. But I suggest you do the same experiment I did. If you're willing, download the free trial of GF, and print a 12MP image at say, 20x30, upsized with GF. You WILL see a difference in sharpness, and you won't go back to what your were using before.

Make sure you check back next Wednesday when we review, PhotoFrame 4 Professional Edition.

If this, or any of onOne's software interests you, the folks at onOne have generously provided a 20% discount to all of my readers. Simply click on the link below to go the onOne store, and enter coupon code "TJP10" at checkout to receive your discount.

Software Review: onOne PhotoTune

Last week we reviewed onOne's FocalPoint plug-in. Today, we're going to talk about PhotoTune, onOne's color and skin tone correction plugin. 

ColorTune 

To start off, like all of the Plug-In Suite tools, we go to the onOne menu at the top of Photoshop to launch the plugin. For the first part of this demo, we'll be using ColorTune for general color correction.

The image we're going to start with has a slight color cast. ColorTune works by guiding the user through a series of modified images and simply having the user choose which image looks better. In each stage of the process, a single parameter can be "tweaked" until the desired result is achieved. In this first step, we're adjusting the tone of the image.

In the second step, the brightness of the image.

In the third step, the user is introduced to color temperature and begins to make decisions based on color temperature preferences.

Another color tweak is set in the fourth step.

And yet another in the fifth step.

With the sixth stage, the user makes the last color selection.

At this point, the adjustment stages of the process are complete and the user is sent to a "Fine Tune" control where individual parameters can be tweaked, or the changes can be applied to Photoshop.

SkinTune 

SkinTune (also selected from the onOne menu as shown above) works in a very similar manner to ColorTune, but targets skin tones characterized and corrected for known color ranges found in certain ethnicities. In the first step, I select a skin tone in the image.

At this point, I identify the ethnicity of the subject.

Once the ethnicity of the subject is identified, a color palette (bottom of screen) is displayed for fine tuning the skin tones to get a true and accurate representation of the color. You'll notice in the image to the right that the colors are much richer, without the blue cast seen in the left image.

Final Thoughts

I'll be extremely honest. I love onOne Software's product line and have always been a big supporter of their tools, but this one is my least favorite of all they offer. The reason? For me personally, I've gotten really quick at correcting color for a wide range of different scenarios using the native tools found in Lightroom and Photoshop. PhotoTune, while it works well, takes me much longer to get to the result I'm looking for and the interface feels bulky. However, I will caveat that critique with this statement - If you aren't familiar with color correction and don't already have a detailed process ingrained in your head, you will get excellent results with PhotoTune without having to learn a lot of the intricacies of color correction.

Make sure you check back next Wednesday when we review, Genuine Fractals.

If this, or any of onOne's software interests you, the folks at onOne have generously provided a 20% discount to all of my readers. Simply click on the link below to go the onOne store, and enter coupon code "TJP10" at checkout to receive your discount.

Software Review: onOne FocalPoint

As I mentioned last week, I'm going to be providing a little insight into each of the products included in onOne's Plug-In Suite. We'll kick off these reviews with a look at FocalPoint 1.1 - onOne's selective focus and depth of field control tool.

First, I'd like to mention how simple an interface FocalPoint presents to the user. There was a time in my life where the more buttons and gizmos a product had, the better. I have long since passed that phase, and find a clean and simple interface a top priority.

When you open FocalPoint in Photoshop, it pulls up the current image you're working on in PS, overlayed with FocalPoint's "Bug" control interface. (Shown below)

What's cool about the "bug" is that it puts all of FP's controls in easy access right on top of the image.

Each of the "legs" of adjusts a parameter or two, allowing the user to simply grab one of these control points and move it around until the desired effect is achieved. Also a plus, the changes occur in near real-time, so you can quickly find the effect you're looking for - without necessarily knowing what every slider in the interface is for. I found this interface not only convenient, but fun. For folks that want to stick with a more traditional user experience, everything that can be done with the "bug" is available through slider controls to the right.

Just for kicks, I've provided a couple example photos. These were the result of just a couple minutes playing with the plug-in. In the first example, I've used a "round" blur shape to simulate a change in depth of field on the camera to something much more shallow. (Make sure you click on the image to see the before and after shot full size)

The second example photo is a shot of the San Francisco skyline from the top of Coit Tower. Here I've changed the blur shape from round to planar to simulate the use of a tilt-shift lens. This technique is often used to give the illusion of a model or miniature landscape. (You can see more examples of this, here.)

Overall, I've really enjoyed using this product. What really impressed me was the ability to very quickly come up to speed on the controls of the tool (they're very intuitive) and produce really cool results. If this, or any of onOne's software interests you, the folks at onOne have generously provided a 20% discount to all of my readers. Simply click on the link below to go the onOne store, and enter coupon code "TJP10" at checkout to receive your discount.

That's all for now folks. To see more of the cool tools available from onOne Software, check back next Wednesday when I'll be reviewing PhotoTune 2.2.

Lightroom 2.4 Available

Don't you just love getting that friendly reminder when you start Lightroom that a new version is available!

In any event, Adobe has fixed a couple more bugs and added support for a bunch of new cameras (including Nikon's D5000) - so if you leave your camera in NYC on the way to Italy and have to buy a new camera - or you're just a regular Joe that wants the latest and great from Adobe - make sure to download Lightroom 2.4. You can find it, here.

Photoshop CS4 Down and Dirty Tricks w/ Scott Kelby

Hello all. I had the pleasure of spending the day downtown (Washington, DC) for the kick-off of Kelby Training's "Photoshop CS4 Down and Dirty Tricks Tour" hosted by Scott Kelby. In order to avoid DC's famous morning rush hour, I headed down early (4:30am) and enjoyed some early morning photography around the National Mall with the monuments practically to myself.

Here's one shot from the World War II Memorial, before the main fountains turned on at 6am.

At the Washington Convention Center, the crowd was already 50 deep when I got there at 8am (the conference started at 10) - a sure sign of the ever growing popularity of Photoshop and digital photography in general. As usual, the staff had everything running like a well-oiled machine, which is no small task when managing the logistics of such a large crowd. The only hiccup (which ended up being quite comical) was the convention center's sound system, which did everything in its power not to cooperate. The folks at Kelby Training had it disciplined and behaving properly after the luch break.

You can check out the class schedule, here. The curriculum was developed by Scott and Corey Barker (who will also be hosting the tour as it travels the country) - and as you would expect, it was really fantastic.

As Scott pointed out at the beginning of the seminar, the focus was not on workflow or basic photoshop skills - through step by step tutorials the lessons explored design techniques used in current marketing. The result was truly a day full of new tips and tricks to add to the toolkit.

As you can see from the photo below, Scott played to a sold out house (700+ attendees), and despite a finicky sound-system everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves. 

Also of note, thanks to those of you who said hello and introduced yourselves. It's always a pleasure getting to meet my readers and I hope to see you again sometime soon. Have a great weekend everybody!