Alien Skin releases Exposure

Have you ever wanted an easy way to correct or modify your photos so that they look like the kind of photos produced using different kinds of film. Have you ever wanted to recreate the look of Kodachrome®, the range of Ektachrome® or even the Rich colours of Velvia®. Alien Skins latest release, Exposure, does that and a whole lot more besides. With exposure you can apply the look and feel of many real world photographic effects and characteristics found using specific film types.

In their own words "Foremost a film simulator, Exposure is based on the detailed analysis of real world film stocks. A photographer can now quickly and easily evoke the vivid colors of Velvia®, the rich blacks of Kodachrome®, or the sensitivity of Ektachrome®. Exposure includes presets that emulate the warmth, softness, and realistic grain of dozens of real world film stocks, both color and black and white. Plus, any preset can be the starting point for a signature look, adjusted to suit a particular subject, or applied to a batch of images using Photoshop Actions. Exposure adds realistic grain separately to the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights of an image. Unlike other digital products, Exposure does not add simple, harsh noise to an image. Instead, Exposure models the size, shape, and color of real world grain. Exposure can even mimic the pronounced grain of films such as Ilford® 3200 Delta, as well as the discontinued Ektachrome EES and GAF® 500."

"Collecting color, dynamic range, softness, and grain controls in one plug-in, Exposure simplifies workflow. Photographers can now master one easy-to-use tool. Streamlined color and saturation controls warm/cool with a single slider while preserving skin tones or preventing oversaturated reds. Exposure makes gamma correction and contrast changes less intimidating by adding high level contrast, highlight and shadow controls to curves editing."

"Exposure includes several, additional features that address the needs of photographers. Exposure reproduces key studio and darkroom effects such as cross processing, push processing, and glamour portrait softening. Exposure encourages non-destructive editing, allowing users to render an adjusted image as a new layer in Photoshop. Exposure's advanced preview system includes an optional, split screen preview in addition to a before/after button. Exposure pairs unlimited undo/redo with fast rendering and lets photographers zoom and pan using Photoshop style keyboard shortcuts."

This looks to be a great addition to the toolkit of many a digital photographer and I'm going to get my hands on this to try it out, I'll be interested in seeing how it compares to Nik Multimedia's Color Efex Pro and DFT's 55mm ... I'll report back on the results. Visit Exposure at Alien Skin for more information.