Software: I Bought a Bunch of Photoshop Plugins

For those who have followed this blog, off and on, for the last couple of years, it is known that I have had a goal of moving from Corel's PhotoImpact, which I still recommend to amateurs, to Photoshop. I am finally moving right along with the help of LIGHT Photographic Workshops, National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), Photography-on-the.net (POTN), Kelby Online Training and general professional pressure. I thank and recommend each of the above.

While I still use PhotoImpact X3 (the current version) for my extant workflows such as concerts, boxing and poker tournaments, all new areas such as portrait and glamor are carefully guided into Photoshop. As a consequence, given the amount of time it takes to retouch skin, I finally gave in and bought some plugins: Imagenomic bundle that included Portraiture for skin smoothing. While it doesn't do exactly what I'd like all the time and now that I have used it a bit I need to go back and redo the tutorials, it does well that it saves me from getting overwhelmed. Anyway, I can see the value of plugins, both as time savers and to unleash the minuscule amount of talent I have.

So, yesterday I bought HDRSoft's Photomatix Pro, OnOne's suite and TopazLabs bundle. I know what each does. I don't know how to operate them, yet. Fortunately I am not a purist. In fact, I don't mind copying things that I see others do. To me, saying, "I did this without any Photoshop Plugins!" as a matter of pride is pretty silly! If you could say, "This is straight from the camera!" then I might be impressed. But once you're in Photoshop, all is fair and only the end result is of interest, even if it was done by an unlimited number of monkeys sitting in front of an unlimited number of keyboards.

I have an architectural project for which I wanted Photomatix. I am hoping to get into using textures and wanted OnOne Mask Pro to extract some models. And I like the effects I've seen with TopazLabs Adjust. I also like several of NIKs plugins so I'll likely snatch them up, too.

Anyway, my plan is to explore these different plugins with respect to my projects and share the results here. Sharing will help keep me more organized. As Marcie likes others to take point and start off on a project, I need help keeping organized. Besides, if I come up with something good I have place where I can sell prints! :-)

Travel safely,

Dwight