When it comes to a digital camera and Adobe Photoshop CS3 the creative possibilities are impressive. However, add in some nifty plug-in packages for Adobe Photoshop and the creative possibilities quite literally become limitless. If you want to start growing your creative abilities in Photoshop then onOne Software's PhotoTools Professional is a great plug-in package to start with.
It features 250 photographic effects that you can not only apply to your images separately, but also through the very user friendly interface Screen Shot stack effects combining them to create totally new and unique effects.
The type of effects included in the package is extensive and impressive and ranges from the basic to the extreme. The effects are broken down in to categories. Categories include:
- Image Optimize
- Landscape Enhance
- Portrait Enhance
- Color Treatments
- Black and White Treatments
- Tinting Treatments
- Photo Filters
- Camera Tricks
- Film and Darkroom
- Stylized Effects
- One-Click Art
- Type-Graphic Effects
- Overlay Effects
- Edge Treatments
- Frame Treatments
With in each of these categories you have often a dozen or more options to choose from and as I said you can stack the effects creating totally unique effects. Most of the effects also have options. You gain access to the effects options through a dialog box that pops up when you select that effect and apply it.
PhotoTools Pro is not your standard Photoshop plug-in. You don't access it from the filter menu in Adobe Photoshop. It is instead an "automate" plug-in and is accessed from the File > Automate menu. Because of this it will only work with certain versions of Photoshop namely Adobe Photoshop CS2 or Adobe Photoshop CS3 (including the Extended version).
The interface as I said is quite user friendly. You have a menu bar at the top of the screen, you have your before and after preview to the middle left of the screen, your navigator palette at the top right of the screen (it works like the navigator in Photoshop), below that is the stack list of effects you have applied to your image, here you can show or hide effects in the stack and control the effects opacity (great for blending effects in to each other). Below that is the effects categories. At the very bottom of the screen is the tool bar that includes check boxes for Layer Mask and Fill with Black as well as turning the preview on and off and changing the before and after preview layout and finally a button for an information palette that gives you descriptions of the effects, a hand tool for panning your image around in the preview window and a magnifying glass for zooming in and out.
The Layer Mask and Fill with Black options are really nifty and they give you a lot more control over the effect(s) on your image after you have applied them. If you have the layer mask check box turned on PhotoTools will allow you to use a layer mask to control how the effect is applied to your image. Basically it allows you to use Photoshop brushes to paint on the effects to just the areas of the image you want. You can even use opacity for further control. For more information on Layer Masks see the Photoshop online help. Because a layer mask works with black, white and shades of gray the Fill with Black check box will cause the layer mask to be filled with black which means you will not see the effect on your image until you go in to the layer mask and paint with white or shades of gray. Again for more information on layer masks see the Photoshop online help. What I like about being able to use layer masks here is that because PhotoTools Pro isn't a standard Photoshop plug-in you can't use them in Photoshop CS3 as Smart Filters (always editable for non-destructive editing). However, this layer mask option allows for always editable and non-destructive editing. This means you will always be able to go back in and adjust the application of the effect or effects on your image. You won't be able to change effects, but the ones you apply you can at least tweak or remove completely always being able to get back to your original image.
It is also nice that once you create a stack of effects that you like that you can save them for later use. You can also use these saved stacks of effects for use with the batch processing tool Screen Shot that comes in the package so that you can apply a stack of effects to dozens or hundreds of images without any user input beyond setting up the batch dialog box. onOne was also nice enough to allow the use of the batch processing tool without any stacks, this is a nice thing because it is actually a better designed batch processor than the one that comes with Photoshop. The batch processing tool allows you to choose a saved stack or use no stack, select your source images including folders or images loaded in to Photoshop. For folders you can have it use subfolders as well. You can choose your destination options like outputting the batched images to another folder or if you are using images opened in Photoshop to save and close the images after the effect is applied, you can also have it match the source folder structure when you use the folder option for the destination. You also have control over file naming, file type and watermarking as well as resizing, converting profiles, and more. All of this in a 6 tab interface that is far more friendly than the batch processor that comes with Photoshop. You can even save and load batch processing setups for easy recall later.
I am quite impressed with PhotoTools Pro, the interface is clean and easy to use. It comes with a very wide range of useful effects, the ability to stack effects to create totally new custom effects is really nice. The batch processing capability is great for not only batch applying a stack of effects but for batch processing without applying effects. My only complaint is that the stacking feature doesn't allow access to the layer blending modes that Photoshop has. Even if they just had a few basic ones like Multiply, Screen and Overlay that would boost the creative possibilities especially coupled with the control over the transparency of each effect.
If you own a digital camera or a film or flatbed scanner and you have Adobe Photoshop CS2 or CS3 this is a must have plug-in package. The effects are very nice and most importantly they are practical and useful. To get an idea of what's possible take a look at our sample gallery below.
Needs
- Windows XP SP2, Vista or higher
- Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework or higher
- Photoshop CS2 (9.0.2) or CS3
- 512MB RAM (1GB recommended)
- OpenGL capable video card with 128MB VRAM (256 recommended) at 1024x768 or higher
- 50 MB disk space
- Adobe Flash Player 9
- Internet Connection for auto-updates
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