Photoshop/Lightroom Plug-Ins

This is a post for photographers, about plugins.  Plugins are basically a third party software program that you can add into Photoshop or Lightroom that can give you additional photo effect.

I am going to briefly talk about the ones I use (or don’t use):

1.  Imagenomic – Noiseware.  The first, and most-often used, the noiseware I run quite often.  If you shoot with a camera that is good at handling noise (or if you are going for a grainy-look), then you might not use this as often as myself.  Shooting with a Sony, I tend to see noise (grain) at a pretty low ISO.  Once I run my noiseware on the image, it looks crystal clear again.  NOTE:  I ALWAYS run this on a duplicate layer and erase back some of the details that I might have lost in running the program (hair, textures like brick, etc).

2.  NIK Software – HDR Efex Pro.  Now, I haven’t purchased this software yet, since I am still playing with the trial version.  However, from what I have worked with, everything seems to be pretty easy.  An “HDR” image means “High Dynamic Range”, basically merging several images to showcase a range between the lightest and darkest points of an image.  So, in the past, there are some scenes where I expose for my sky and then expose for the subject…when I merge the two together it is creating an HDR image.  There are some photographers who have MASTERED the HDR effect and they can get some pretty spectacular images.  I think this is very powerful software, IF this is your type of thang.

3.  Perfect Photo Suite 6 – On One Software (Perfect Mask, Perfect Effect, Perfect Resize, Focal Point 2, etc).  This is my newest purchase and I am excited to delve right in.  This is several plugins in one.  If you want to read about what each plugin does, just click on their website.  The reason for buying this was mainly for the “Perfect Portrait”, which will automatically color correct and fix skin tones and for the Perfect Mask, which helps replace backgrounds.  I am sure there is MUCH, MUCH more to all of these plugins (which work in both LR and PS), but I just haven’t had enough time to play.

Hopefully, this will give you something to think about when researching plugins.  And, because a post is boring without pictures, here is a quick preview of Easton’s 3 year old pictures, which will be posted a little closer to his birthday.