Well Mask Pro, Corel KnockOut and most other masking programs aren’t worth the money. Learn to use the tools in Photoshop including the QuickMask mode and channels. Extract comes in handy, but I find by the time I clean up the messy edges I could have had it done another way faster and better.
Intellihance and other image correction plug-ins aren’t worth the money either. They work for a small percentage of images and often times you will still have to do some correcting on those manually anyways. Again, learn to use the tools in Photoshop.
I don’t know anything about the Kodak programs you mention or what they do so I can’t comment.
NeatImage in my opinion is worth every cent. Recently I have had to scan some very old negatives that were done with high speed film. The images for my taste were way to grainy. NeatImage cleaned them up and made them exactly what I wanted. However, if you don’t have a scanner yet get one that has hardware/software cleanup built-in like digital ice some thing else. Otherwise NeatImage is awesome.
Other plug-ins I love are the AutoFX plug-in packages. These are very powerful and do something that are either impossible to do manually or would take weeks to do. The KPT plug-ins are pretty good for something’s, but I don’t find I use them very much.
Overall, I don’t use plug-ins often. I have spent the time to learn Photoshop and can do most of what I want without one.
Jerry
"No Where Man" wrote in message
I’m looking at several 3rd party plug-ins, and would appreciate any input
as
which ones would be considered "must have":
1. Extensis Mask Pro 3 and/or Intellihance Pro 4
2. Kodak Digital ROC, Digital GEM
3. Neat Image (alternative to Digital GEM for noise reduction)
or…any others?
Thanx!
