On Fri, 01 Dec 2006 21:55:32 GMT, OceanView wrote:
No response, so asking again:
Are of the commerical add-ons/add-ins worth the money? Specifically, those involved with photograph retouching. The healling/patch/clone approach works pretty well, but is there anything better? Any recommendations?
Yes, there are tons of excellent plugins out there. The ROC filter does a great job of correcting the fading/turning red problems of old photographs. The NIK filters help by allowing you to change/correct skylines, as well as sharpening your image to yield a better print. The Snap filter helps to select areas in an image. The whole thing with plugins, is in how to use them to do what you want to do. For example, you can use the Snap filter to select a person in an image, then copy that selection into a layer so that you can work on sections of it. You can then use the NIK filters to add a blue sky to an overcast sky in the original, place the person that the Snap filter selected into the layer above the background layer, and work on each layer separately.
I can never have enough plugins. I guess I have approximately 200 of them so far, and although I may not use some of them for years, when I need one, I’m glad I have it.
I will add this though, Photoshop will do what most plugins will do, if you know the correct steps to do it. What the plugins do is to save you time. When you use a plugin, you see the end result instantly, and if you don’t like the result, you just undo it. If you had to do it step by step using Photoshop alone, you would have wasted a lot of time, only to find that you didn’t like the result. There are specialty plugins that will give you unusual results, like adding a picture frame to the image, adding unusual lighting to the image, make the image look like it’s underwater, etc., and these can really spice up an image, but they don’t do anything to restore an old image, but can be helpful in retouching.
I find that sometimes I’ll snap a photo, and the subject wasn’t smiling, but otherwise, the photo was good. I’ll use a separate program to add a smile to their face, then use Photoshop to make the other adjustments.
Anyway, I highly recommend plugins, but you need to know exactly what you want to do to a picture to know what plugins would be the most beneficial to your workflow.
Talker
