Plug Ins

Hi all...I'm a bit curious about plug ins that photographers use. I would love to hear from anyone what plug ins they use and their purpose. There are so many out there and I'm never sure which ones to look at. I'm beginning to experiment a bit and would love some input. Many thanks!

Hi Beth, I recently installed the Nik Software collection for Apple's Aperture. They are also available for Photoshop. It's a collection of five programs but the ones I use most are Viveza and Sharpener Pro.

I use the Photomatix as well as the Enfuse plug-ins in Lightroom for exposure blends.

I use Noise Ninja for noise reduction and the free TLR Landscape Sharpener.
You should check out all of the digital darkroom actions freely available from The Light's Right Studio.

Thanks, Scott, Philip and John. I'll check these all out. There's so much stuff out there:):):)

I use Viveza from Nik Software. I also use Noise Ninja.

I use a couple of tne NIK programs and I love them..I am planning on upgrading my Viveza and getting the new Sharpener program soon..

I use the Nik Plugins and Photomatix. I've also tried in the past Noise Ninja and the TLR Landscape Sharpener and some of the On One Plugins, they all work well, some are more intuitive than others. My current favorites are the Nik plugin suite, and like John I'm looking forward to upgrading to Viveza 2 and the new Sharpener.

I use Photomatix for HDR and I like OnOne's masking plug-in. You can get a very precise mask with it. That is useful for "multiplying" skies. Before anyone asks... If you are shooting on the high end of a contrasty scene to get shadow detail it is sometimes hard to pull out sky detail, it tends to flatten the sky. If you select the sky and copy it to a new layer, then set the blend mode of the new sky layer to multiply you will intensify the sky. If it proves to be too much, just reduce the opacity of that layer until it feels right. OnOne's Genuine Fractals is good to have if you want to print LARGE. It does a better job than Photoshop's built in resize tools if you are enlarging the image. Finally I like Fot2Pix buZZ 3 filter set if I'm going to simplify an image. Unfortunately they aren't in business anymore and their filters only work in 8 bit mode. Topaz puts out a plug-in that approximates the simplifier part of buZZ but not some of the other effects. They recently came out with a masking tool as well that is faster/easier than OnOne's Mask Pro though not as precise.

Jim Bullard
West Stockholm
http://jims-ramblings.blogspot.com/

Being that weddings and portraits are our bread and butter, we use Portraiture, Noiseware, and RealGrain from Imaginomics, Topaz Adjust, and for highly stylized gritty things along the line of Dave Hill, we use Lucis Pro (very spendy) in combination with the others. Even though these products (and the others mentioned above) seem to offer a one-click enhancement, nothing could be further from the truth. There is a ton of hand work in producting something that stands out from the crowd. Understanding layers, masking, and blending modes is paramount before you start applying these effects.

Thanks for more ideas everyone. have checked out a few already. Topaz looks to be interesting and useful as well as some TLR.

Ditto to Kelly. I use noiseware all the time!

I find the LR/Mogrify export plugin for Lightroom indispensible. I also use LR export plugins for Flickr, Gallery2 and Photoshelter.

In Photoshop, I use the PhotoKit sharpener scripts from Pixel Genius (technically not a plug in, though... adds functionality through scripting).

Re: noise reduction I also use Noiseware in PS, although there are some others that are more automated in their operation and therefore a bit easier to use (like NeatImage). Some of these can also be used as a pseudo-plugin for Lightroom (actually "External Editors", that require rendering raw files first).

Here's a great review of NR software:
http://www.prophotoshow.net/blog/2009/02/26/noise-reduction-shootout-straight-dope-comparisonreview/

Topaz also makes a NR product (DeNoise) that looks very interesting...