Recommend Photoshop Plugins

donkeymusic

donkeymusic

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Carlo
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Hi,

some one on here the other day mentioned a plugin called Portraiture, looked into and seemed a great tool and just wondered what other plugins TP users could recommend.

thanks
 
Topaz Vivacity is worth... er... sailing the high seas for.

Other than that, I just keep it simple, without using plugins.
 
If you are into B/W photography, then I'd say something like Nik Silver Efex or significantly cheaper BW Styler are quite good to have.

Some noise reduction plugins like Noiseware, Noise Ninja or Neat Image are also very useful to have.

I also use Contrast Master for some wacky effects.
 
Not sure if they count as Add-ons, plug ins, or actions but I use a couple of the free ones from another forum occasionally. There's a "one click wow", "Lab Sharpening" and "Vignetting" set that sometimes come in handy - You can find them (plus some nice looking premium ones) HERE

I found then useful starting points and have "tweaked" them a bit to better suit my needs.
 
B/W photography doesn't really need a plugin though, all you need is a B/W gradient map set to Color 100%, then a couple more set to Luminosity.

Just a little tip to save you money on plugins that aren't really needed.
 
It's very expensive but I cannot recommend all the Nik Software plugins enough. I guess about 80-90% of my photos have something done on them with a Nik Software plugin. Check out their website for some videos on what they do.

Andy S
 
The Magik said:
B/W photography doesn't really need a plugin though, all you need is a B/W gradient map set to Color 100%, then a couple more set to Luminosity.

Just a little tip to save you money on plugins that aren't really needed.
Click to expand...

If only it would be that simple. There are numerous ways of doing that even in PS alone without plugins and people even written books about that. The plugins though add a bit more convenience to this though plus some are able to do a lot more than just merging the channels or blend a few layers with gradient. Of course anything could be done without plugins in PS but that is hardly the point of not using them...
 
yoby said:
can find them (plus some nice looking premium ones) HERE
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link Yoby. I've just downloaded an action from there that adds snowflakes to an image but it is an 'atn' file. What do I do with this type of file to get it to work in CS3?
 
dalex_257 said:
If only it would be that simple. There are numerous ways of doing that even in PS alone without plugins and people even written books about that. The plugins though add a bit more convenience to this though plus some are able to do a lot more than just merging the channels or blend a few layers with gradient. Of course anything could be done without plugins in PS but that is hardly the point of not using them...
Click to expand...

Of course, you are right, but that was just my view. Personally I don't use plugins, apart from Topaz when I'm very desperate.
 
-Rob- said:
Thanks for the link Yoby. I've just downloaded an action from there that adds snowflakes to an image but it is an 'atn' file. What do I do with this type of file to get it to work in CS3?
Click to expand...

I had a few problems wth this as well - It kind of depends whether you're running Mac or Windows, basically, you need to copy the atn file into your program data folders, and then add it to the actions panel - Hang on a sec and I'll dig out the link I used - Found it, see below (and it's not my link on there, I just left it in in case it's useful)

Place the *.atn files into:
Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop X\Presets\Photoshop Actions where X is the version number for your version of Photoshop. To load an action set, go to the Actions palette, then click the small arrow in the top right corner and navigate to the location where you saved the action. Select the file you'd like to load and it will be added to the actions palette. Learn more about creating and using actions from my links to Photoshop Action Tips.
 
I use them all the time and love them :)

Why would you want to go through 17 step processes manually each time when you can automate them?

The other really useful features are reproducability and the ability to batch. When I want 32 black and whites for a bride I want them all to look very similar in tonality image to image and actions and presets help with that. One of my black and white conversions is literally 17 steps and I can run those on 32 images while a make a cup of coffee :)

The ones I have installed include Nik Silver FX, Nik Colour FX Pro, On one software, Kubota Actions, Ascough Actions as well as some Mark Cleghorn presets.
 
It depends what you want to do, for enlarging/sharpening for print I use Genuine Fractals.
 
Alien skin plugins are excellent, the bokeh one and the xenofex for making clouds is great. Exposure is an awesome black and White plugin and makes really nice contrasty pics based on film, you specify which film type and it creates it based on that

imagenomic noiseware is great and portraiture as mentioned in the first post
 
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