Digital Lady Syd’s Review of OnOne Perfect Effects
No question about it, this has been the year of the great Photoshop plug-ins! I just decide that one of them has got to be the best and another one comes along that is just as good!!! What to do, what to do! My personal feeling had been that the Perfect Effects plug-in was not going to be as good as my favorite Topaz Black and White Effects or NIK Color Efex Pro, but I was wrong! Very nice plug-in with a very good interface. It can be used alone or as part of the updated OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 6.0 (see my Tidbits Blog sidebar to access site). I had a great time creating the images below with just Perfect Effects and sometimes PhotoFrames (by far my favorite border app and it has not been updated for the Suite package).
Above is an inside view of some of the interesting antique items in the Florida Heritage Museum at the Old Jailhouse in St. Augustine, Florida. This image just kept getting better the more the effects were stacked up. This was a pretty easy image to do – just add and click away on all the different effects and see what you come up with. This image has stacked the following effects (press Add after adding an effect to each layer): Black & White effect Chrome with Blending Option set to Softlight at Strength 84; Vintage effect Honky Tonk set to Screen Blending Mode at Strength 99 – Apply Effect To Flesh Colors and Fuzziness 40; and Vignette effect Grunge Vignette Dark – Texturizer set to 73 strength. At this point I created a preset that was placed in my User Presets group and it was defined as a vintage feel. Very handy and easy to do!
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Just another great example of the interesting results that can be achieved with this plug-in. The image is of one of the beautiful covered walkways at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida. It is an HDR image created from three photos in Photoshop CS5’s HDR Toning program using a preset I had created for dilapidated buildings. (Be sure to keep your HDR presets if you find one you like.) Next the HDR photo was taken into Perfect Effects and once again I did a vintage effect. Started with a Black and White effect Casablanca set to Darken; on the Empty Layer, the Effect Options was opened and Effect Duotone was selected using an Orange Color for Highlights and Blue Color for Shadows – Strength was set to 35, Midpoint 29 and Mode to Color; Movie Looks effect Urban Sickness at Strength 40; Vignette effect Subtle Vignette set to Strength 47; and Textures effect Scratched Film Light at Strength 100. A preset was created for this stack as I really liked the results. Back in Photoshop, an OnOne PhotoFrame (also part of the OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 6) border Dave Cross_14 was added – the beige color in the image was sampled to make the border that color.
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In the Old Town Trolley image the basic issue was a very plain blue sky. Following one of the short videos supplied on the OnOne website, the clouds were added using the Masking Bug. It does not sound like it would work, but the bug did a really good job of adding the sky with a slight gradient to it. They also have this feature in the Focal Point plug-in and Lightroom’s Perfect Layers plug-in (also provided with the OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 6), and I like it in this plug-in. This is a big improvement! The border was also added in Photo Effects and adjusted using the Effect Options that are available once an effect is chosen. I have not completely figured out how to determine how to use all these effects as they change with the effect selected. This was a really fast and great way to swap out the sky.
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This is a statue of Sir William Wallace over the doorway of an old church in the town of Stirling, Scotland. I liked the way the stone color turned out and the way the statue stands our from the wall. This stack incorporated Dirty Bird (Strength 83) applied to just Highlights (Fuzziness 60), Warm Polarizer (Strength 100) , Rice Paper Light (Strength 77) with the Masking Bug down center vertically, Amazing Detail (Strength 100 ), and Subtle Vignette (Strength 100). The nice thing about this image is that the first effect, Dirty Bird, the Apply Effect To drop-down was changed to Highlights – this makes for some great looking effects. The effects can also be applied to just the Shadows, Midtones, RGBCYM colors, Flesh colors, Vivid colors and Neutrals. This is a really nice addition. A OnOne PhotoFrame was added to this image (no update to this plug-in but it does not need it – still the best out there for frames!) and it is included in the OnOne Perfect Photo Suite 6.0.
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The good news is that Perfect Effects is a much improved program over OnOne’s old PhotoTools 2.6 and it is now much easier to use. Download the manuals on how to use Perfect Effects and all the programs in OnOne’s Perfect Photo Suite 6.0. A good keyboard shortcut to use is CTRL+P to toggle between the original image and the current image. Go to the Help menu item for a complete list of shortcut keys.
Pros:
1. The interface is much easier to use. There are many different ways to add interest to the basic effects. Many of them are shown in the preset views across the bottom but there are more variations if you use open up the Effects Options button that is available with each effect. The Blending Options are very versatile and as discussed above, the Apply Effect To drop-down creates some very interesting images – I do not believe this is in any other plug-in I have seen.
2. The Texturize Effect section and Landscape Effect section have some very different presets that can be applied including many weather effects. This could turn out to be a lot of fun. Adding the Clouds to an image is really easy using some of these choices. This is also something I have not seen in any other plug-in. And if you choose, say Dark Clouds in the Textures Section and go to the Effect Options drop-down box on the right, there are five choices for clouds besides many other textures to choose from. Blend mode and strength and scale of the effect can be set also. Very versatile and unique!
3. The Masking Bug that was made famous in the OnOne’s original Focal Point plug-in is a great addition that works very fast and creates some very nice results. It works very good in coordination with the Masking Brush.
4. The speed of the plug-in is much faster than the original PhotoTools plug-in. This had been one of my biggest complaints. It works much faster and you have much better control over the brush when masking.
5. Can Invert the effect and by selecting the Masking Brush, the effect can be brushed in just where you want it at whatever opacity you like.
Cons:
1. It still bothers me that I cannot access this program like my other filters by going to Filters -> OnOne; instead, to get to the program you must go to File -> Automate -> Photo Effects. I am not sure why this is. This is also true for PhotoFrames. If you have the Suite, all the plug-ins can be accessed from inside one interface and do not have to be opened individually – that is a big improvement.
2. When the layer is first converted to a Smart Object before entering the program, the Masking Bug and/or Mask Brush results are not retained when you go back to adjust one of the effects. This can very annoying if you did not takes notes on what you did. All the other settings are retained. When stack is saved as a preset, all but the Masking Bug/Mask Brush results are retained, which is what you would expect since it is being applied to a different image.
3. If you had PhotoTools, the presets cannot be used in Perfect Effects due to the fact that PhotoTools is based on actions inside Photoshop and Perfect Effects has been re-engineered to stand alone now. They are currently trying to recreate all the presets from PhotoTools and hope to have them available soon.
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In this final image the red trees and flag were selected in Photoshop using Color Selection. A layer mask was then added to the layer before it was converted into a Smart Object. I wanted only the background to be affected by the plug-in (the manual said this could be done so I thought I would try it out). I think the results turned out really nice – these settings were used: Black and White Effect Casablanca; Nicely Toasted (Strength 46) and Apply Effect To: Flesh Colors at Fuzziness 53; and Vignette – Edges to Black with Effect Options Brightness -86, Midpoint 47, Feather 56, and Roundness -28. The Casablanca black and white effect is turning into one of my favorites.
Well I believe this is a very good plug-in – OnOne has really stepped it up to compete nicely in the plug-in field – it is so very user friendly. The Pros definitely outweigh the Cons which I believe can be fixed pretty easily. I had a lot of fun working with all the effects and I know I have not even touched on some of the looks you can get if you get your combinations right. I will be checking out the complete suite when I get a chance. I already use many of the plug-ins included but there are a few new ones I want to experiment with. In the meantime, at least take a look at the Perfect Photo plug-in – it has a 30-day trial that is fully functional. I am looking forward to trying some of the other plug-ins – already tried Perfect Portrait (it is in brand new and in the Suite) and really like it. Hope to report on it soon!…..Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd’s Related Blogs:
Another OnOne Perfect Effects Pix – Got to Love It!
Pseudo HDR in OnOne Perfect Effects
First Try – OnOne’s Perfect Effects 3
“Perfect” Perfect Layers
Same Image – Different Plug-In
I decided to do this blog because I was experimenting in Photoshop trying to see if different plug-ins can get the same look even though they are very different. I started with this basic image from Camachee Cove in St. Augustine, Florida. This is a really pretty place to take images and my beloved sailboat lives there. Only the Basic sliders in Lightroom were adjusted and all the following images used this one as a starting place. Also, whenever possible I used a Smart Layer to save the settings so I could easily go back to tweak the sliders. I am becoming a big fan of doing this with all plug-in adjustments!
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Overall, the above is not a bad picture. That said, I still love the new Topaz Black and White Effect plug-in (click on right in my Tidbits Blog to access site) and decided to give it a whirl and see if the image feeling could be improved. Below is what was achieved using this plug-in.
Personally I loved the results (this is how I remember it) and the cool thing is that it took only two minutes to get this look and it was done! If you are interested in the settings for the Sunny Preset, my Tidbits Blog “Sunny Preset – Topaz Black and White Effects” list how to do it. There was just one further adjustment made in Photoshop which, unfortunately when adding most of these plug-ins, there is some noise created. I took the image back into Adobe Camera Raw (see my blog “Edit Layers with ACR Script“) but any Noise Reduction plug-in would work fine also.
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Next I tackled the updated NIK Color Efex Pro 4.0 (CEP4) plug-in to see what I would get. This plug-in is another fabulous NIK product and I totally love using it. I could not get it to do what Topaz B&W Effects did as quickly and as well. I spent a long time fooling around in CEP4 trying to get this effect, especially the color effect.
The sky has a really ugly edge in the upper clouds that I could not adjust easily. This image also has Hue/Sat and Selective Color adjustment layers and still is not quite right. The stacked CEP4 filters used for this image were: High Key, Brilliance/Warmth, Graduated User Defined, and Vignette. Normally this image could be adjusted nicely but when trying to copy the Topaz B&W image, it does not do this so easily.
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Now to be fair, since Topaz B&W was used, I next tried the NIK Silver Efex Pro 2 (SEP2). The results are pretty nice, but they still had to be adjusted in Photoshop. Below is the final image that started as a black and white using NIK .
The results are pretty close. The image was processed in SEP2 using the High Structure preset and a Red Color Filter. The layer was set to Luminosity blend mode in Photoshop, a Color Fill adjustment layer using a a yellow-beige Fill Color (9f9f84) set to Vivid Light blend mode and 55% opacity, and a low opacity light beige edge added to the top and bottom of the image. The sky and water color is very close to the Topaz B&W results, but it took a lot longer and required Photoshop work to achieve the results, and you had to know what you were trying to do.
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Now this next image uses OnOne PhotoTools 2.6 (click on right in my Tidbits Blog to access site). They have a new version coming out shortly which may make this much easier to do but overall, it gave a reasonable approximation to the Topaz B&W result.
I do not use this plug-in as much since I seem to have trouble getting the look I want and it is very computer RAM intensive. It also does not support Smart Objects at this point. In all fairness, I do believe it is a really good plug-in and it already has stacking abilities for effects. Unfortunately, at this point it does not have different sliders for the effects, but they do offer several setting choices for each filter, and several filter effects can be brushed on using a brush and mask in the plug-in. I plan on reviewing the upgrade after it becomes available. In this case, the clouds just do not have the detail and water and sky color is not quite right. There were 6 effects stacked to get the effect and I saved it down as a preset to preserve. If I was more familiar with the program, I might have been able to get a better result since there is no shortage of filters in this plug-in.
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Alright, let’s change things up a bit and go back to Topaz using their fairly new Lens Effects plug-in (click on right in my Tidbits Blog to access site).
It also gives a nice result even though it is a different type of plug-in. The Dual Tone Filter Effect was used as a starting point using the Green to Yellow preset. Both Regions A and B were adjusted – this is very similar to the Quad Tones in Topaz B&W Effects. That is one reason there is some similarity, especially in the sky horizon area. A Vignette was also added in the program. It is nice that you can get similar results without buying every plug-in module in the set.
Conclusion
Personally I still like the Topaz Black and White Effects result the best. I hope this gives you some idea about how similar but how different these plug-ins are when applied to the same image. I did not mean to make it look like one plug-in is better than the other, just that it really depends on what your picture is will determine how it looks finished. If you do not like the way it turns out with one of the plug-ins, try a different one – it can be totally different! Have fun experimenting…..Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd's Fun Photoshop Blog 