It's an odd thing being a digital photographer who hardly spent more than a semester in the darkroom, yet visualizes photos in black and white. When I edit photos, I oftentimes switch to editing in black and white to get contrast just right. So when I came across Alien Skin's Exposure, I was enthralled by the possibilities made available to me. I enjoy the film look, just not the part about tripping out on developer in the darkroom. Exposure made getting certain looks a snap, relative to puttering around in photoshop for a fair while.
With Exposure 4 now out, I thought I'd give it a go. I was not disappointed. The new borders and finer controls have made working in black and white closer to what I see when I'm shooting. It's unfettered fun seeing what works and what doesn't. Ideas bubbling, thinking "I wonder if I took the settings from this and transpose it over that?" The result makes editing a pleasure for once.
Although my one complaint is lacking the dust and scratch controls from the previous version. In one of Alien Skin's blogs, they say it ended to look somewhat fake, but having the ability to kill those effects in a preset was a plus. I can live with it's current incarnation, but I can see myself cloning things out in photoshop just because of a few speckles of dust. I'd also like to see split toning control, though I might not know how to turn it on.
The above photos are some I had laying about I wanted to test Exposure 4 on. The left photo is of rollerblader Tyler Hester, who I went out to shoot in Burbank last year for an ad in Be-Mag which ended up not being used. The right photo was a snapshot I took in downtown LA a few years ago and have wanted to play with a while now. With a few tweaks, I'm pleased with the results. I highly recommend you give Exposure 4 a go and if you're a film buff, you'll be giddy with what you can achieve.
A quick side note, Exposure integrates with Lightroom, which is what the right hand photo was edited in. It's nice not to have to open photoshop just to work on a photo sometimes!
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