Review - Exposure
Exposure is one of those awe-inspiring Photoshop-compatible plug-ins that makes digital images look like they were shot on film. With Exposure, you can imitate the look of a film stock, apply special effects like selenium/sepia toning, or do some basic image enhancement.
Exposure takes the form of two entries in the Photoshop Filter menu, one for colour film and one for black and white film. The Colour Film filter works on RGB images, while the Black and White Film filter can be used on RGB images or greyscale images. Both filters work with 8, 16, or 32 bits/channel images and can be used in Photoshop actions, making it easy to apply them to batches of images.
The product comes with a Help menu that leads to local documentation and online Web pages. Clicking Help>Filter Help accesses filter-specific documentation. The same assistance can be reached by pressing F1 (Windows) or Help (Macintosh). To access a Table of Contents for the online Help file, you can click Help>Contents.
Command menus are accessible when you launch any filter. Macintosh users will see the menus in place of their usual menu bar. Windows users will see the menus at the top of the filter preview window. The Edit menu provides an unlimited number of undos and redos. If you experiment with the sliders and find that you prefer a previous group of settings, you can simply select the Undo command from the Edit menu, or click Command+Z (Control+Z on Windows machines) to back up as many times as necessary. Handily, the Edit menu also lets you copy, cut, paste and delete values from parameter fields.
The Filter menu lets you switch between Exposure filters without leaving the user interface. The View menu lets you zoom the preview in and out. To display the preview at 100% magnification, just select Actual Pixels.
Colour Selection Tools
Using the Colour Picker, you can select colours based on several colour models (RGB, CMYK, etc.), and you can also specify colours by hexadecimal values or use Web safe colours. To launch the Colour Picker, just click the colour swatch next to any colour control. To the right of the colour swatch, you’ll notice a colour selection tool, which offers the following options: Eyedropper: Select the eyedropper to sample a colour from anywhere in the preview window.
Foreground or Background Colour: Choose either of the two.
Black or White: Choose either of these timeless colours.
Six Previous Colours: You can choose any of the six most recently chosen colours.
The Preview Window
Tabs with sliders, colour swatches, check boxes, and radio buttons appear along the left side of this window. These controls perform most functions in the filters and you can click on a tab name to switch to that subset of controls. Click and drag the movable red box to move the
preview to any spot in the selected layer. The Move (hand), Zoom (magnifying glass) and
Show Original buttons are found above the preview window. Double-clicking the magnifying glass at any time resets the preview window to 100% magnification.
The Show Original button toggles the preview between filtered and unfiltered versions of your image. You can click and hold the button to view the unaffected image and release the button to preview your effect. Also, above the preview area is a menu of options for split screen previewing. When enabled, this feature shows the original image in half of the preview. Clicking and dragging any corner or edge of the filter window resizes the preview area.
The Settings tab in each filter window lets you create, manage, download, share and back up your favorite filter recipes. To apply a setting, click the Settings tab and select the desired setting in the list. To save a setting just adjust sliders to your taste, click the Settings tab, click Save and then type a name for your new setting into the Save Setting window. Then, just click OK. You can also save a setting by pressing Command + S (Macintosh) or Control + S (Windows) any time while previewing an effect. The Save Setting dialog box will appear automatically. When you export a setting, Exposure packages the recipe in a tiny file that you can share with friends or coworkers. You can also use the export feature to back up settings that you cannot live without.
Applying a filter with the Create Output in a New Layer above Current option enabled renders your image in a new layer above the working layer in Photoshop and Elements. This checkbox is located on the Colour tab for both the Colour Film and Black and White Film filters. Note that switching filters within Exposure disables the output in new layer feature, so if you want to apply a filter in a new layer, make sure you start with the filter you plan to apply. Also, Create Output In New Layer Above Current is unavailable when recording actions in Photoshop. You just need to clear this checkbox when recording actions.
The most important settings are named after film stocks and begin with the word “Film.” Selecting one of these settings sets many parameters throughout the tabs. Each of these settings encompasses many effects that add up to a certain look. To imitate film stocks that were available during creation of Exposure, the manufacturer did test shoots with the film and with a Canon 20D digital camera. They shot a special chart, as well as scenes including flesh tones and colourful natural objects, and then measured differences between the film and digital images using custom software they created. This enabled them to create settings that mimic the look of these film stocks. Most of the film settings control warming/cooling (or sometimes filter colour), saturation (for colour films), RGB sensitivity (for black and white films), a curve in the Tone tab, and grain parameters.
The Grain tab is the most unique part of Exposure. The manufacturer put film grain under a
microscope, literally. There, they found that real grain can be larger than one pixel, has subtle colour characteristics, and often appears with different strengths in the highlights, midtones, and shadows.
If you want to use Exposure for specific image enhancement tasks rather than full-blown film simulation, then look for the settings that begin with “Modify.” These settings usually control a subset of parameters, making them much easier to understand than the film settings.
Special Effect settings are for creative work rather than accurate simulation of film stocks. These effects names begin with “Special.” This category encompasses a wide range of effects such as cross processing, selenium/sepia toning, and glamour shots soft focus.
Use the Filter Colour and Filter Density controls to simulate adding a coloured filter to the lens of the camera. This alters the hue of the scene. The farther the Filter Colour is from white, the stronger the effect will be. Increasing Filter Density also increases the filtering effect. Use these controls for odd colour casts, or if you simply want to warm or cool the scene then use the slider below. Changing the light temperature of a scene is the most commonly needed type
of colour filtering. Warm scenes appear more yellow, cool scenes more blue. Move the Warm/Cool slider to the right to warm the photo or to the left to cool it.
Enable the Preserve Luminosity option to ensure sure that the filtering operations do not darken your photo. When this option is off, colour filtering is more physically accurate. Preserve Luminosity affects both the Filter Colour and Warming/Cooling features. The Master Saturation slider simply increases or decreases the intensity of all colours in the photo. The Red, Green, and Blue sliders modify subsets of colour. The most common use of these controls is increasing saturation in nature scenes. However, you can also desaturate two colours to make an object of the third colour stand out.
The Color tab of the Black and White Film filter controls the conversion of colour images to black and white, as well as colourisation. The Red, Green, and Blue sliders control how much each colour channel affects the final black and white photo. In a portrait, the blue channel can be downplayed to de-emphasize wrinkles and blemishes. You can use these sliders to simulate a colour filter over the lens of the camera. For instance, a deep red filter will make skies darker. If your photo is in greyscale mode then these controls will be disabled. Both the Colour Film and Black and White Film filters have a Tone tab. The Tone tab includes a curve editor along with some sliders to make common tasks quick and easy. Use the Tone tab to address issues like contrast, brightness, shadows, and highlights.
The functional curve editor displays how input brightness is converted to output brightness. The horizontal axis represents input brightness, and the vertical axis represents output brightness. By default, black is in the bottom left corner and white in the upper right corner. The Colour Film curve editor has separate curves for the red, green, blue, and RGB channels. Changes made to the curve editor or the sliders below it affect only the selected channel. The RGB curve affects all channels and is applied after the individual channel curves. Switch between these curves using the Channel pop-up menu at the top of the Tone tab. The Black and White Film curve editor has just a single grey curve and does not include a pop-up menu.
The closest thing to film since film, Exposure brings the look and feel of film to digital photography. You can now digitally simulate the vivid colors of Velvia®, the rich blacks of Kodachrome®, or the sensitivity of Ektachrome®, as well as the warmth and softness of dozens of other film stocks, both colour and black and white. In summary, Exposure simplifies your workflow, collecting colour, dynamic range, softness, and grain controls in one plug-in. Correct a colourcast, soften a digital portrait, and tweak contrast with one, easy-to-use tool. Or define your signature look and save it as a one-click effect.
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