About Exposure
Exposure presents itself as two different filter effect choices in Photoshop or any other Photoshop filter-compatible application; Black and White Film, and Color Film.
About Exposure
Things aren't what they used to be. No, really, some things actually aren't. The developers at Alien Skin clearly agree, as they've produced Exposure, the first way to recreate film-based photographic effects with digital images. Exposure is billed as 'the closest thing to film since film', and it lives up to this claim. It is a Photoshop plug-in that makes your digital photos - and scans and other bitmap artwork - look like they were shot on old-fashioned film stocks. It also lets you try out a number of different darkroom development techniques such as bleaches, dyes and so on.
When the developers produced the different settings for Exposure they worked with many different photos of sample subjects and compared them with normal digital images. The characteristics of each film stock were worked out to an amazing level of detail so that they could be recreated with any digital image. Exposure is also far more than just a slice of high-tech nostalgia; it is a complete photographic studio and darkroom effects package as well. But it is the film replica features that lie at its heart that grabbed our attention first.
Exposure presents itself as two different filter effect choices in Photoshop or any other Photoshop filter-compatible application; Black and White Film, and Color Film. You have to choose which of these two general areas you're going to explore, but within those sections you're free to try out whatever settings you like.
Just by picking films from a list you give your images the glorious saturation of Fuji Velvia, the deep blacks of traditional Kodachrome or the delicate sensitivity of Ektachrome, or select from a wide range of other film types, both relatively modern and long-discontinued. Among the colour film presets are Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200, and 'Kodachrome mid-1970s', a recreation of a particular period in Kodak's film history.
As part of its bag of tricks, Exposure also creates realistic film grain and, for transparency film, even mimics the pigment clumps that replace grain during processing. In just the same way as with the colour behaviour, the developers have gone the full extra mile in making this as realistic as possible. Exposure's grain simulation is based on the real grain from a wide range of very specific different film stocks, so you can, at a click, recreate the precise feel of Kodak TRI-X 400 grain and even try it pushed one or two stops. You can experiment with out cross-processing effects, simulating different films such as putting C41 film through E6 chemicals, Lomo cross-processing with different film brands, and so on. You can even reach for all sorts of other chemicals and dyes, in a virtual sense of course, to make photographic duotones, bleaches and dyes, sepia and onwards.
When you decide that you want to take a little bit more control than you get in the various film and processing presets found in the Settings section, you can use the four other tab buttons: Color, Tone, Focus and Grain. Each of these lets you take over completely, with sliders to adjust the different image characteristics. For grain effects, for example, you can choose different characteristics for different brightness levels. At this point you'll be moving away from matching known film stocks, but Exposure is also designed to help you create entirely custom film-style effects as well. What's particularly handy is the way you can browse the different parameters of each preset just by choosing it in Settings and then peeking at the various controls.
Of course, these features may sound a little bit wacky and over the top. But Exposure is capable of real subtlety as well; its controls can be used to perform delicate tweaks for control of colour cast, image warmth, dynamic range and other settings. The benefit of doing this in Exposure rather than Photoshop's regular features is the way the controls are brought together in a pleasingly photographically oriented manner.
Other useful controls can create black and white images from your colour originals, either by mimicking the behaviour of different colour filters and orthochromatic films or by taking over the sliders yourself to control just how the reds, greens and blues translate to monochrome tones. Blur and sharpening round out the package. These are relatively simple compared to the other features, but having them in the mix is useful all the same.
Our only quibble is the software's absolute split between black and white and colour film settings. If you want to try out options in one you have to cancel or apply what you may have been doing in the other area first; you can't just flick between the two settings within one overall window. But, given the ease of recreating film and processing effects which used to require specialist experience to produce, this really is a minor issue.
Exposure is the closest thing we've ever had to a true digital darkroom. Photoshop's own controls can be used to create some of its effects, but not all by any means and certainly nowhere near as easily. The whole focus of the software is to provide the range of abilities a traditional darkroom wizard would have without spending hours to stop bath chemicals staining your fingers, and match traditional film characteristics and performance without the inconvenience of actually using film. Thanks to Exposure things aren't what they used to be... they're even better.
Verdict
Exposure is the closest thing we've ever had to a true digital darkroom
Author: Keith Martin
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