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Eye Candy’s Snap 2 is in and we are currently running it through its paces ... be watching for the review! So far it’s Awesome!
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 AlienSkin’s Blow Up 2 ... a sure hit!
By Melody Brunsting
We reviewed Blow Up in the first version, and liked what it could do. However, that version didn’t enlarge as well as their Image Doctor JPEG Repair, in our opinion anyway. But the new version of Blow Up is awesome, and quite honestly, takes a smaller image into a large one with BETTER QUALITY THAN THE ORIGINAL! At least that is what we have found to be the case. The photo of the small boy was blown up from a 4x5 to an 11x14 in one easy step ... and the really cool thing about Blow Up is that it also gives the cropping when you choose one of the presets. You can move the crop to your taste, but the program seems to know the best spot from the tests we put it through. Blow Up can even clean up JPEG compression artifacts when a client insists on using a low quality source image from the Web.
Check out the photo above. The 4x5 is on the left, the 11x14 on the right. The detail in the eye, hair and even the sleeve is even better than the original. Wow!
Blow Up comes complete with 100 presets for the most common output sizes that make cropping and resizing very easy to do in one step. The Auto Rotate feature adapts the preset to match your photo’s orientation. Blow Up even applies the proper amount of output sharpening based on the paper type you choose, with glossy, luster, matte and a screen sharpened mode. You choose the finish and Blow Up gives the correct sharpening and jpeg repair. Really cool.
The Batch Blow Up also makes fixing a group of photos with the same parameters easy as well. What a timesaver.
If you aren’t an AlienSkin fanatic yet ... you will be as Blow Up 2 is truly one of the indespensible tools in your arsenal.
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Alien Skin’s Exposure II
Many digital photographers have never touched film, I can’t imagine that, but they say it is true. But for us oldtimers who grew up on sheet film, morphed into 120 and grudgingly into 35mm, we all had our favorite films, both color and black and white. Exposure II has done some impressive tweaking with the new version, making it easier and more accurately depicting the films of our recent past.
Old photos aren’t the only things to be processed with Exposure. New digital photos can be filtered to take on the appearance of old films, whatever the film may be. Controls for Grain, Focus, Tone and Color enable you to tweak that photo exactly as you want it to be. Other presets under the Settings tab include calotype, daguerrotype, infrafred, orthochromatic and cross-processing settings, all with adjustments too. They have included nearly every type of film made throughout photography’s history The effects you can achieve with filters on camera are great, but once accomplished that photo cannot be converted to much of anything else. That is why we photograph most everything in color, then utilize AlienSkin’s Exposure 2 to alter the photographs, saving the original and giving us multiple variations of the same photograph. I really like the myriad of variations you can achieve with the infrared filters. What fun!
I went totally digital in 2003, and quite honestly have never looked back. I hated darkroom work for the most part, especially production for clients. Doing the art darkroom work was fun, but frustrating. Utilizing Photoshop’s awesome features as well as Alien Skin’s filters has made what was once tedious into an absolute pleasure. While digital photography has made many of us who shot tons of film wonder how we ever did it, there are special times and uses when we really want a shot to look like it was created on film. Alien Skin has got it all down very well, and It is all very quick, precise and infinitely adjustable. Give it a try, you’ll love it.
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 Alien Skin’s Image Doctor 2
is a terrific tool to have in your toolbox. We use the JPEG repair more than anything else. It enables you to pull a photo or graphic off of the web and resample it to make it printable in higher resolution and quality. Any digital image that you want to blow up to a larger size and maintain its quality can benefit from Image Doc’s JPEG Repair tool. You can even add grain to it to give a new effect. Works great. It does not work on CMYK images, just RGB and greyscale. The other filters work with all images, CMYK, RGB and greyscale.
The Scratch Remover is now called Dust and Scratches and works pretty good, as long as you don’t combine textures and colors. In solid areas and backgrounds, it works super.
The Smart Fill will fill a selected area with texture from another part of the image. While I usually will use Photoshop’s stamp tool and spot healing brush, there are times when the Smart Fill comes in handy. Spot Lifter is excellent in blending spots and scratches.
Image Doctor 2 is an essential tool for photographers and graphic artists. And, as usual, Alien Skin makes some of the best plug ins available for Photoshop.
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Eye Candy 6 is in ... give us a bit of time to check it out!
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The Eye Candy Effects collection 
is a must for anyone who works with Photoshop, or the other photo editing programs such as Adobe Elements, Corel Painter, and Adobe Fireworks. For compatibility with your photo editing program if you aren’t using Photoshop (we ask why not?) see www.alienskin.com.
The Collection is a compilation of what was in Eye Candy 4 with many improvements and additions, however the collection has broken down those features in to different collections.
Eye Candy Impact has the chrome, brushed metal, glass, bevels, shadows, backlight, and brushed metal to which Alien Skin users are accustomed, however they have been rewritten and updated to function with many more built-in options, presets and endless alterations. They have also added extrude, gradient glow, motion trail and super star
Eye Candy Nature features a host of natural effects including fire, smoke, rust, snow drift, icicles, corona, drip, ripples, squint and water drops. Each filter comes equipped with a bunch of presets, all of which are adjustable to suite your needs.
Eye Candy Textures is truly awesome, as it contains texture effects such as reptile skin (being true to their name), animal fur, brick wall, stone wall, wood, diamond plate, marble, swirl, texture noise, and weave. I love it for the reptile skin filter alone, as it adds a lot of fun to text, boxes and other shapes.
Xenofex 2 - we have been using this ever since it came out originally, and our favorites have always been flag, lightning and puzzle, but it also includes filters called baked earth, constellation, crumple, distress, electrify, little fluffy clouds, origami, rounded rectangle, shatter, shower door, stain, stamper and television, and we have used them all.
SnapArt ... This has got to be our all time favorite and Alien Skin has really done their homework with this filter. With it, you can take a fine photograph and using the filters, create an abstract painting or a plethora of other effects including color pencil, comic, impasto, pastel, pen and ink, pencil sketch, pointillism, stylized and watercolor. When applied to a photograph, you get a simulated painting that is truly awesome. When printed on canvas, it is tough to tell that you didn’t paint it. Impasto is my favorite, as its effect gives a good photograph the texture of a painting. The others work equally as well, and when compared to the work of Corel’s PaintShop, AlienSkin’s filters are much easier to use and the effects are just as good.
Work smarter, not harder.
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Kubota Actions .... WOW!
While Kubota Actions are not really a plug in as they reside in your actions palette, they are a vital tool for any photographer. One of the best things about the actions is that while an action may be designed for black and white or only color, using them in a manner not designed can give delightful results. For example, we photographed a portrait using extreme high contrast, giving it an unreal, harsh look. Using the black and white action for creamy skin tones while still in an RGB mode, softened the contrast and delivered a very saleable portrait. One of the best things about actions of course, is the ability to take our your favorite actions and put them in a separate folder, so you don’t have to go through the entire collection. When you purchase Kubota’s Actions, go throught them all with a variety of different photographic types, take notes, then put your favorites in their own folder.
Kevin Kubota is considered one of the top wedding photographers in the world. In his business he has developed various actions for Photoshop that speed up his production with tested series of steps, and then saved as an action. He has four action groups currently available for retouching photoshop images. Artistic Tools Volume 1 includes a selection of black and white adjustments, including grain, the Skin Cream we mentioned above, lighting adjustments, simulations of red filters, glows, warming filters, and three sepia filters, plus others. The color effects include sunglow, cross processing, VPS simulation, too blue tungsten and too warm daylight corrections..
Artistic Tools Volume 2 includes black and white antique effects, blue tones, green tones, split tones of warm and blue, and many others. For creative effects, Kubota has included quick actions for adding layers, moving layers, sponge, posterize, make a path and more. It also includes a starburst vignette that is really cool, edge burner, edge blurs and add canvas textures. In the image correction category you find digital fill flash, smokeless burn, an amazing detail finder, smoother and make up artist. They have also included some borders including “Sloppy Borders”. These Sloppy Borders are limited, for more of them he has a special action pack called Sloppy Borders with a ton of options and alterations. They put a huge amount of effort into creating this package by actually going into the dark room with his colleagues and painstakingly recreating each of the different film and sloppy borders by hand. He then digitized them so they can be added to any image and any size.
Artistic Tools Volume 3 has four black satin actions, three Bronzed God actions, and a few others. In the color effects they came up with unique names such as Fashion Passion, Hi Fidelity, Hollywood Glow, Kyoko Punch, Moulin Rouge and about ten others. There are also creative effects like Glow Baby, Deep Forest and Soft Wash. Under the image correction category he included Dark Line Eraser, Doll Face, Skin Powder Genie and others.
Artistic Tools Volume 4 follows the same pattern as the previous three volumes, with a good selection of black and white actions that warm and other effects. In the Image correction category they have included a contrast brush, highlight rescue, highlight enhancer, dark darkener, luminizer, and an interactive color luminizer that only works with CS3 and above.
The Creative Effects category has some fun effects, including icing, popsickle, “dragon” effects, and a ton of others. There are also a few vignettes and other edges for finishing your photographs that are quick and easy to apply.
We also tested Kubota Sloppy Borders. Templates, combined with actions, make these a fun, casual finish to your photographs and are very easy to apply. While I use OnOne’s PhotoTools PhotoFrame more often and their variety is wider than Kubota, they don’t really have the type of frame edges that Kubota offers. They are different, and very casual in nature.
The bottom line is, all of the Kubota Actions have entirely practical uses in photographic production. However, don’t try to use one while on a deadline; experiment , make notes and organize by putting your favorites in a separate folder. When you know how they will react with your type of photographic subjects, they can be a huge timesaver.
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