Breaking news… Photoshop CS5 support just released..

OnOne Software’s PhotoTools 2.5 (PT) is a plug-in extension product for Adobe Photoshop.  Where other plug-ins are often more focussed on solving specific problems (such as noise, color and exposure); PT offers a huge range of stackable treatments.

PT comes with a base set of effects and enhancements; you can extend these by creating your own or downloading new ones.  One thing you’ll notice with PT is how fast operations are, this enables you to not only check effects in the small review window but also apply them to your image directly.  I find that this “what if” approach is the best way to gauge how an effect will look on the photo.  Simply undo it if the results are not quite what you expected.

Effects can be either applied across the who image (and then blended-out with the fade slider) or painted onto the surface for maximum control.  Inside Photoshop you can either use layers to apply and mask a series of effects or do it all within the PT user interface.    This is where the real power comes from; the ability to stack and adjust a number of effects without leaving PT.  In my case I find that I apply 2 or 3 effects in this manner.  For example, color adjustment and then a simple border applied.

Some of my favourite, “go to” effects include the holga black and white or color.  Using these can really add some LOMO type punch to the image.  Again, fading will give that added control over the final result.

As you can imagine, finding an effect could be a real chore, given the size of the library.  PT makes this easy by allowing to search, browse by category or through keyword sets.

Originally I tried the free version of PT but then had to get all of those extra effects that come with the full version.  If you need to get your toe in the water, then the free version is a great way to do that.

Here’s an example of the before and after on an image.  On this one I used “tootsie pop” and some vignette.

Give PhotoTools 2.5 a try today!

I only review products and services if own and use them.

OmniDiskSweeper is another great product from the team over at Omni Group.  This time it’s a simple utility for uncovering disk waste on your Mac.

Have you ever wondered where your disk space has gone to?  That massive hard drive on your laptop; you know the one that you thought would never be too small.  After a truck-load of RAW images have been downloaded, you can find that your down to the free space “danger level”.

Typical the space-hog culprits are media files, temporary files or cached content.  More to the point – they can be anywhere!  Here’s a blurred-out image from the UI; you can see where all my space is!

OmniDiskSweeper

OmniDiskSweeper helps by performing a complete sort of all files on your disk drive; largest to smallest.  Pick the drive and hit “Sweep”. OmniDiskSweeper is a good CPU citizen, too.  It can run happily in the background while you continue working.

In my case I find that my personal folder is often where the unwanted files reside; so I navigate to that folder first, speeding-up the process.  As of version 1.7 the application is free and you can also delete unwanted files directly from the interface.

Download this little application and give it a go- you’ll be surprised what it shows-up!

Conclusion

A must for any Apple Mac user.

I was talking the other day to a friend about this great product that helped to reduce noise in my photos; he had no idea what I was on about.  Helpfully I explained that “its that fuzzy stuff you see on photos sometime, often on night shots”.

Noiseware is the best noise reducing application I’ve found for tackling the problem of noisy images.  Typically, noise (either color or luminance) is an issue for photographs taken at high ISO settings.  Depending on your camera “high” can mean anything from 400 ISO upwards.  On my Canon 7D, I’ll happily shoot at 3200 ISO with no major noise issues but even then excessive post-processing can bring in some noise back into the photo.   I’m often getting excessive!

I’ve opened an image into Noiseware.  See the two images below for the full-size versions.

Most photo management tools (such as Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture) have built-in noise reduction that you can apply to these troublesome images.  I use Aperture and I find the noise reduction is pretty good but fairly limited (as compared to a full-fledged noise reducing tool).   There are three things that really impress me about Noiseware: the ease of use, the speed and the price.  The price of Noiseware is a real breakthrough and at under $50 there’s no excuse for not applying top quality noise reduction to your images.

On the speed side, Noiseware is so fast that when I first ran it, I was seriously wondering if it had done anything at all!  The other great thing about having a speedy noise reducer is that you can quickly apply various presets to check on their results, without dragging the national grid to its knees!

Speed is all well and good but what about the results?  Noiseware can effectively reduce noise in the image without altering the underlying photo.   (Free tip: You can apply excessive noise reduction on purpose to get a cool effect; then blend back in the original using Photoshop).

In most cases, I launch Noiseware from Photoshop after I’ve finished HDR work on an image.  Also, applying some pseudo effects like Topaz Adjust can introduce some noise, too. Noiseware to the rescue… And if you’re wondering, it is 64-bit Windows and with an update for Mac coming-out soon.

Normally, I find that the default presets work fine for most images; you can always adjust them and save as your own presets if you want.

You can try every noise reduction tool on the market (Adobe CS5 is pretty good these days, too) or just jump right in and get Noiseware.  I figured that if its good enough for Trey Ratcliff, then its good enough for me.

By the way the image is a night shot of a New Zealand rugby player called Ma’a Nonu.

The raw image:

The noise reduced one:

I only review products and services if own and use them.

FocalPoint 2

FocalPoint 2 from OnOne Software is plug-in that allows you to selectively control and enhance focus on your image.  You can achieve with FocalPoint in 2 minutes that would take a whole lot of fiddling about (technical term) in Photoshop.

As photographers we aware that each lens (through a combination of length, optics and aperture) have different characteristics.   Unless your pockets are pretty deep, you’ll find it hard to stock a library of lens that meets every requirement.  Lens rentals can help with this.

Another alternative is to post-process the image; there is where FocalPoint comes in.   You can either launch FocalPoint from within your digital asset management tool (Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom) or within Photoshop.

In my example below, I’ve opened-up a photo in Photoshop and then started to refine the focus.

FocalPoint presents the image in a preview mode with default settings applied.  Here I selected a Canon 50 mm 1.2 prime lens and then reduced the blur to a more reasonable level.  There’s two features that really make the process work; the ability to selectively control focus of an area with a “focus bug” and the use of the paint tool.   In my example I dropped a focus bug onto the boy’s face (my son by the way) and then used the paint tool to blend in the surrounding area; this combined with the level of feathering can accurately simulate the behavior of an actual lens.

Of course, you can also use the plug-in to extend the focus into interesting areas; for example to emulate the popular tilt-shift lens behavior.

I used it on this photo to create a more subtle effect, adding a little Vignette to also help bring focus into the face.

Of course this plug-in is not meant to be a replacement for the “real thing” but it does open the access to a huge range of effects with focus.   Once you get a look you like, you can save it as a preset.  FocalPoint comes with a number of built in presets to get you started and these can be access directly without starting the full window.

This plug-in is a definitely work a look and a free trial is available from OnOne Software.

Remember to use the code “stewartbaird” at the checkout to get 15% of Topaz Labs plugins!

Topaz Labs make some of greatest tools out there I own and use these ones:

I’ve got a review here on how Adjust, Simplify and Clean compare.