A Highly Decent Exposure

Hearing that Alien Skin has a new version of one of their products has about the same effect on me that ringing a bell had on Pavlov's dogs. Except that I don't literally salivate. I've found that makes rather a large mess of the keyboard. That was the case in mid June when Alien Skin released Exposure version 6. Was the anticipation justified?

Some people appreciate plug-ins and I'm one of those because I like immediate gratification. Others say that plug-ins are the spawn of Satan and that the only way to obtain an outstanding image is by using the old, painful ways. I've seen this unfortunate attitube before: With auto-exposure cameras, with auto-focus lenses, and with digital photography in general. "Real professionals," I was told "always use a light meter that's separate from the camera," or "always focus manually, even in dim light," or "always use film."

Well, nonsense! Always is a dangerous word and real professionals do what they need to do to obtain the image that they (or their customers) want. Sometimes that means depending on motor drives, auto-focus lenses, auto-exposure circuits, and every other tool that can be called into service. Sometimes it might mean using a large-format camera with film or a relatively low-resolution camera in a phone. Or a plug-in such as Exposure 6. Tools need to be appropriate to the job that you're asking them to perform.

Real professionals have the experience to know which tools fit the needs of any given job. And, because they're professionals, they use those tools.

Really it's not an either/or situation with plug-ins. It's not uncommon for photographers to use a workflow management tool such as Adobe Lightroom to start the editing process and then to apply effects from one or more plug-ins, and then finally to perform some pixel-level editing in Adobe Photoshop. Alien Skin makes some of the most clever plug-ins you'll find.

I downloaded Exposure 6 a day or two before it became generally available and started working with it. I use the term "work" here because it sounds a lot more serious. In fact, I was actually having a great deal of fun, but to say that I was playing with it takes away from the hard-working, tough journalistic countenance I try to project. So I was "at work".

Alien Skin has been modifying its applications so that they work with or without Photoshop, with or without Lightroom, with or without any other photo editing applicaion that accepts plug-ins. If you use Lightroom or Photoshop or PhotoPaint or any other program that recognizes the Photoshop plug-in format, Exposure 6 will work as a plug-in. If not, it runs as a standalone application.

Exposure 6 in Action

The user interface is beautiful and the program overall is quite a bit faster than was version 5. For my first test, I used it as a plug-in with Adobe Lightroom.

The left column lists the categories of effects and, when you select one, it shows thumbnail images in the column. The thumbnails can be in 2 columns or 3 and you can pull the divider to the right so that they are larger. This is most helpful when you're tying to pick between several possbilities as your starting point. If you have a photographic memory and don't need the thumbnail images, you can turn them off.

I selected the Lo-Fi Cross-Processed category and picked one that included a lens flare at the top. The lens flare looks quite believable with this image because the sun was behind and at the right the tree and relatively low in the sky.

Then I added an infra-red effect with a lot of light blooming. This not only created the golden lighting effect but also added a dreamy haze that I like.

There's a pretty good chance that I'll use this image on a calendar next year.

Or I could have taken a totally different approach.

This is an example of bokeh (the effect that can be achieved with a lens used with a wide-open aperture and a cut-out shaped like a plus sign in front of the lens).

I didn't care for this effect as much as the previous one for this image, and that's another critical point: You need to match the effect to the image. Or, as I suggested earlier, match the tool to the job. On this image, the bokeh effect simply calls attention to itself.

The final image:

Then I shifted to Photoshop CC, where Exposure 6 appears on the Filter menu. I had a picture of my older daughter and her husband at last winter's delightful "Light" exhibition by Bruce Munro at the Franklin Park Conservatory.

It's a nice enough photo the way it is, but I saw an opportunity to do something more with it.

Black-and-white split toning seemed like a good choice and I selected a blue tint in part because I liked the effect but also in part because this was a winter event at the conservatory. Winter is cold and blue is a cool color.

Not as is "Cool, man, cool!" but as colors go, blue is considered "cool" and red is considered "warm". This is true even though blue has a considerably higher color temperature on the Kelvin scale. And we wonder why so many people think that photographers are crazy wizards who speak in riddles.

After selecting an effect, you can apply it to the entire image, which is what I usually do, and then click the Before button at the bottom of the screen to toggle between the original image and the image with the effect, or you can create a vertical or horizontal split screen. I find switching between two views of the full image more useful, but it's good that Alien Skin also provides the split-screen option.

Those who don't like plug-ins sometimes seem not to undestand that the plug-in, as delivered, doesn't need to be the final destination. It can be a starting point. The right column contains a multitide of sliders that moderate the effect and a variety of additional effects that can be applied and then modified.

For example, here I've added a border. The border can be zoomed, rotated, or flipped either vertically or horizontally. Other borders are available, some for free, and you can make your own.

I had an image that I liked and thought I was done.

But after returning to Photoshop, I noticed the bright light in the background.

Note that Exposure 6 returns modified images to Photoshop as new layers. This is important because you might want to use the original image sometime or you might want to create a final image that uses part of the original with the results of the Exposure 6 modifications.

In this case, I just wanted to get rid of the distracting light in the background, so I added a new layer in Photoshop and used it to clone some of the surrounding darkness over the light.

The distracting light is gone.

The final image:

Exposure 6 sells for $150 (new license) or a user of any previous version of Exposure can upgrade to version 6 for $70. If you want to give it a test drive, download a fully functional copy from the Alien Skin website.

Alien Skin's Exposure 6 Creates Visual Delights

Any photograph can be improved and Exposure 6 manages to combine power and ease of use. Because Alien Skin's plug-ins now work as standalone applications, they are even more versatile than before -- working inside any photo editing program that supports Photoshop plug-ins or directly from the desktop if your photo editor doesn't support plug-ins (or if you simply prefer to work that way).
Additional details are available on the Alien Skin website.

Adobe Adds Mobile Features and Lots of Updates to Creative Cloud

It was clear when Adobe sent out a news release recently that cited the accelerating shift to mobile applications by photographers and designers that the next version of Creative Cloud would lean that direction. It did more than lean that direction. Every single application in Creative Cloud has been updated in ways that, even a few years ago, would have seemed to be nothing more than futuristic wishes.

Characterized as the biggest Adobe software release since CS6, Creative Cloud 2014 includes 4 new mobile apps, some hardware designed for mobile users, updates to Creative Cloud services, and additional options for enterprise users, educational settings, and photographers.

Additionally, Adobe says that there are now more than 2.3 million users of Creative Cloud applications, a number that exceeds the company's expectations when it announced plans to switch to the software rental model 2 years ago.

The research that Adobe released highlights changes that have rocked the industry: The survey said that 75% of creatives believe that the industry has changed more in the past 5 years than the previous 50. Approximately two thirds say their role will change significantly in the next 3 years.

"Creatives" is the term used to describe photographers, illustrators, designers, and others who are involved in making the movies and television programs we watch, the music we listen to, the books and magazines we read, the advertisements that surround us, and photographs we see.

Increasingly, creatives are finding that it's possible to perform certain tasks on mobile devices. Photographers, for example, might scroll through hundreds of images from a photo shoot to cull the dozen or so that will be considered for later use. Instead of sitting at a computer, they can grab a tablet, sit in a comfortable chair, and scroll through the images. With the advent of Windows-based tablets (and particularly the new Microsoft Surface Pro), they can even perform some of the tasks that would previously have been relegated to a desktop system on a hand-held device.

The company has released three free apps for Apple's Ipad: Adobe Sketch, Adobe Line, and Adobe Photoshop Mix. Although these can be used without any additional hardware, Adobe is also making two tools available, Adobe Ink and Adobe Slide.

Ink is a digital pen and Slide is an electronic ruler.

Mobile Apps

Initially, the apps announced this week are only for the Ipad. Adobe is considering whether to create versions for Android devices.

Sketch allows free-form drawing and the resulting images can be pulled in to other Adobe products, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. An artist would be able to sketch out a rough design in a meeting with the client or other members of the creative team and then be ready to continue the development process at a desktop system.

Line is designed for precision drawing, more along the lines of drafting. It creates straight lines, French curves, and standard geometric shapes. The electronic ruler, Slide, is intended to work with Line, but it's not a requirement.

Photoshop Mix makes it possible to use a tablet for compositing and masking, tasks that have never been possible on a tablet before. Photoshop functions such as Upright, Content Aware Fill, and Camera Shake Reduction are available and the changes made in Mix are non-destructive, just as they would be on a desktop system.

Meanwhile, Back at the Desktop

The new Creative Cloud applications were released late in the week, so I haven't had much time to look at them yet, but some of the improvements include:

• For Photoshop Users: Blur Gallery motion effects that create a sense of motion in still pictures have been updated, Focus Mask has been added to create a bokeh (shallow depth of field) effect that's helpful for portraits, more Content-Aware capabilities are available, and Perspective Warp can be used to create perspective changes only in certain parts of an image.
• For Illustrator Users: Live Shapes make it possible to transform rectangles quickly into complex shapes and then return to the original rectangle with just a few clicks. Another plus for designers is the faster rendering of vector graphics on Windows systems when the computer has an Adobe-certified Nvidia graphics card.
• For Video Producers: Creative Cloud's video tools are undoubtedly the most complex applications in the suite and there are a lot of them because creating a professional video involves a lot of steps. Some of the new features include Live Text Templates, high-end masking and tracking, and the ability to use After Effects while still working in Premiere Pro. Many of the changes are intended to make it possible for professionals to work faster. If you're a video professional, you're probably going to want the new features.
• For Website Developers: Dreamweaver hasn't seen a lot of changes in recent versions, possibly because it already did just about everything a website developer might want it to do. The 2014 version provides insight into the HTML document with Element Quick View and there are underlying enhancements in the CSS Designer component that make it possible to apply formatting faster and easier than before.

Those are some of the more visible changes in the most commonly used components of the package. Listing all of the changes would take far more time and space than I have available (or that you would care to read).

Photographers Get a Price Break

It seems to me that the most significant push-back Adobe has received has been from photographers who couldn't justify spending $50 per month for the entire Creative Cloud suite, knowing that they would never use Dreamweaver to design a website, Illustrator to create a logo, InDesign to lay out a magazine, or any of the video products.

Adobe's answer is the Creative Cloud Photography Plan for $10 per month. It includes both Photoshop and Lightroom (and, of course, Bridge). These are the crucial tools that photographers need without the parts that photographers don't want or know how to use.

Lightroom is an outstanding front-end processor for Photoshop because all changes made there are non-destructive. Photographers can modify overall exposure, contrast, color balance, and a lot more in Lightroom, and do it faster than in Photoshop. Then they can export the modified image from Lightroom to Photoshop for final pixel-level editing or for work that requires complex masking.

This is a good value, but I would prefer to see the real price, not the "1-penny-less price because it looks more affordable."

Once I've had a chance to look at some of the updates, I'll share my impressions. Based on the briefest of looks at just a few of the applications, it appears that Adobe has once again given creatives good reasons to spend money on Adobe products.

PS, Elements Users Aren't Being Ignored

If you're a user of Photoshop Elements 12 or Premiere Elements 12, you'll find that those applications have also been updated this week. It's not clear whether the updates are just routine bug fixes or whether additional features are being added. At the very least, the update includes the latest version of Camera Raw.

Short Circuits

A Net Neutrality Plan with No Chance of Success

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Representative Doris Matsui of California have proposed legislation that would make it illegal for broadband providers to charge content providers a fee for making better service available. A fast lane, in other words. Both Leahy and Matsui are Democrats. Neither bill has a Republican co-sponsor.

Netflix has already signed a deal with Comcast to pay for fast-lane service and, coincidentally, has also announced price increases.

The Senate bill might gain a bit of traction, but the House bill is unlikely to advance. That makes it a non-starter, so don't look for protection from Congress.

FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler has announced plans to hold hearings on deals such as the one between Neflix and Comcast because of concerns that allowing such deals would stifle competition, raise Internet service prices, and create substandard service. One might note that Internet speeds in the United States are already substandard when compared to many nations in Europe and Asia.

The FCC is still accepting comments on the issue. Have you expressed yours yet? More than 128,000 people have. That's about 100 times more comments than the FCC typically receives. Add your voice: FCC form to comment on Net Neutrality.

Facebook Launches Slingshot

Slingshot is the Snapchat that Facebook was unable to buy last year. Slingshot allows users to post images that are visible for a few seconds and then disappear. That, also, is what Snapchat does.

Slingshot is available for users of both IOS and Android devices. Unlike Snapchat, Slingshot will enforce a "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" policy. Users can send images and short videos to one or more friends but to see the image, the recipient must share a photo or video with the sender.

Facebook says the policy is designed to ensure that everyone who uses the service is an active participant, not just a spectator.

Once the image is no longer on the recipient's screen, Slingshot won't show it again. Maybe Facebook developers have been testing some of this on the main service. I've heard from several people who have posted images only to have some of them disappear and I've seen this, too. (Actually, I'm being facetious about that, but Facebook's image handling has been a bit wonky lately.)

The Facebook Messenger function already allows users to send images to groups or individuals (although they don't disappear after the recipient has viewed them) and Facebook also owns Instagram (another big image sharing application) and is buying WhatsApp (text messages). Facebook recently killed Poke, apparently because nobody could figure out what to do with it.

Having too many choices can be just as bad as having too few.

It's Not Just the NSA

The National Security Agency seems to think that it should have permission to view any communication sent by any means and you may have concluded, based on media coverage, that this is an American thing. It's not. The British security agency that's equivalent to the NSA, the Government Communications Headquarters, has the same idea.

A group called Privacy International filed suit to obtain documents that describe the British government's policies. The suit was filed last year by several groups that consider themselves to be privacy advocates after Edward Snowden released information about NSA policies and programs.

The documents show that the British government claims contact with anyone or any computer physically located outside Britain is "external" and, as a result, may be intercepted and reviewed even if the government has no suspicion that any participant is performing an illegal act.

Additional court hearings are scheduled for July. The head of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, part of the Government Communications Headquarters, will testify. Previously, British officials had said that they followed "local rules" designed to protect the privacy of British citizens.