requested effects

[Ashley Karyl]

One thing I would really like to see more of in this package are pastel effects or ways of producing soft muted tones (without the grain). It could just be the images I have been working with until now but it strikes me that the cross processing effects work extremely well with the sort of image shown in the user manual but not so great with more flatly lit subjects. I'll keep testing but I'd be curious to know what others think and whether different actions could be created which might offer something more to a wider range of images.

I'd like to see brushes like in Sharpener so that I could paint in more effects on a selective basis with full control. With a fashion portrait for example it would be useful if I could use individual brushes to make skin more pale but then have deeper blue eyes on a selective basis.

A useful utility would also be something which allows the user to deal with colour artifacts when saturation has been increased. For example to avoid having a sky turn nasty after increasing saturation I might duplicate the background layer, increase saturation, add some gausian and median blur then blend for colour. Is there anything that could be offered as a way of making this available to users? I could imagine a sort of colour first aid kit really.

[Mike Skurski]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have added them to our product database.

[Ashley Karyl]

Another possibility which I think would be universally popular would be actions which create certain film looks like Velvia, Provia, Portra or dare I say it even Kodachrome. I know a lot of film users who are reluctant to go digital full-time purely because they think they won't be able to get the same look with their images that they are used to and this could be a point of key interest.

Some people might like to see an action which imitates colour infrared but that would just be a gimmick of little use as far as I am concerned.

[Martin Evening]

Ashley,

The cross processing effects return threee layers in a set. The base color effect layer can be increased to 100% for a stronger colour effect. Ditto the tint layer. The contrast layer is set to 0% for maximum effect, but you can increase this to 100% to restore more of the original opacity. The Lab Color effects are the strongest and weirdest of all. These will pproduce lots of varied results when you experiment with different layer opacity combinations.

The Contact Sheet action links are not active yet - I will try to sort that out later today if possible. The Contact sheet actions will be a great way to learn how to use some of these effects and compare on individual images. Don't forget that you can also apply a layer or vector mask to any layer or layer set and apply your own custom masking.

Re: your other sugestions. Some interesting ideas here, but these will have to wait till a version 2 release at the moment.

Cheers,

Martin

[jsd]

As PKC is accessed via the automate menu...one thing I'd like to see is a drop-down menu when one highlights PKC. Then, one can go direct to where their requested action lays.

This would mean two steps versus the present three to effect a PKC adjustment.

Is this something that might be done?

[Mike Skurski]

Automate plug-ins can not have sub-menu flyouts.