Software/Hardware Reviews

This will be my first review for DMAG, so go easy on me! In this article I will be reviewing the demo of Digital Anarchy’s plug-in for Photoshop, Beauty Box Photo.  I use Photoshop CS5 with Windows 7 most of the time these days, though Beauty Box Photo should work fine on any version of Photoshop 7.0 or newer.

As a digital artist working with photographers, I am often having to do basic touch up work on peoples’ faces. Beauty Box Photo has great potential to save me a lot of time and layers so that I may spend less effort on retouching and more on being creative.

3D Invigorator is a 3d rendering plug-in that leaves Photoshop's 3d features in the dust. It also works with older versions of Photoshop, back to CS2 I believe. CS2 & CS3 did not include any 3d features of their own, so this is a plus if you are a user of an older version of Adobe Photoshop. Reguardless of you version number, this is a handy plug-in if you are someone who likes to work with 3d.

The software is easy enough to get started with. Before opening the plug-in, it would be wise to turn your layer into a smart object. That way, it will be possible to go back into the plug-in and make tweaks and changes easily. Below is the general interface:

I almost titled this post "How ArtBeats & Adobe Saved the Day!" - because, really, that's what they did. The company I work for needed to create a YouTube video for part of our upcoming web marketing initiative. This wasn't just any old YouTube video. It wasn't just cute & cuddly kittens put to music. No, it wasn't even a "Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero" clip.

It was a teaser trailer to launch our current contest promoting our upcoming video series.

I was really impressed during the online demo Joe gave on this. It seemed easy to follow, as most of these demos do when you are just watching. But like most demos, when I personally try to put them into practice, it's like I've never turned on a computer before. So this has taken me a while to get to the result you see below. It's far from what I know that this plug-in can do, but I suppose it is only limited by who is doing the plugging, thus you get my take on Primatte Chromakey. Lucky you.

I first found this little kitty on a solid background.

Where, oh where, have you been all my life Image Doctor? I was really impressed with this plugin. It was easy to use, did not slow my system down and worked like a charm. I am an amateur photographer and as such, I enjoy photographing friends and family and capturing special occasions. One problem I seem to encounter frequently is too much shine from a slightly oily complexion. I was very interested to try it out for myself and see if Image Doctor could live up to its promises.

(photo 1) Here is photo I took of my friend and her husband. They wanted an outdoor portrait session but it was hot that day and by the end of the session we were all a little shiny and sweaty and unfortunately, it showed in the photographs.

Knoll Light Factory for Photoshop v3.2, from Red Giant Software, is a highly specialized plug-in. This program allows for the creation of incredibly intricate and detailed lens flares, along with a few other lighting effects. Now I know that photoshop has a "lens flare" filter, but honestly, if you find yourself wishing for more options, you owe it to yourself to look into Knoll Light Factory.

Knoll Light Factory is very easy to start using. It features over 100 preset lens effects to suit most occassions. The real power of this software comes from the ability to tweak each preset, changing every aspect of your lens flare. You can even create your own lens flare from scratch. You may click on any image in this review to view it full size.

Magic Bullet PhotoLooks 1.5 allows you to easily experiment with different lighting effects without damaging photographic  detail. It comes with over 100 presets which you can quickly click through to see how each would affect the photograph you're working with. Sometimes the presets are just what you're looking for, but if not, PhotoLooks gives you the option to adjust each individual element and/or add/delete elements to get the exact look you're going for.

Color Efex Pro 3.0 is a quick and easy way to enhance or make creative adjustments to your digital photographs. I used the Adobe Photoshop version. The interface is very user friendly, allowing you to change the size of the window, and switch from having the image and filter list to the image only. Also, the tabs alongside the filter list help you keep the filters organized and quickly find what you're looking for. You can choose to see all filters, traditional, stylizing, landscape, portrait, or you have the option to save filters to a favorite tab for easy access to those you use often.

I found this program to be very easy to use, and I'm sure it will be useful and a big time saver in many projects. Below is a print screen using the plug in. It's pretty self explanitory how to use it. You can either curl or fold the page, and easily change how much of a curl/fold there is. You can define content for the front and back of the image, change the opacity, lighting, and 3D transform. Unfortunatly I've only had time to touch the surface of this plug in, I was reading the manual and there is much more you can do with it than what my examples show. Once I've had more time to play with it I will post some more.

This is the original file I started with.