Re: Alien Skin Exposure 5 Keygen Download
Tommye Hope
Exposure started out as a plugin for Photoshop 10 years ago. At its conception, it brought the ability to add the characteristics of popular analogue films to digital image files. As Exposure evolved, it incorporated darkroom effects and general editing abilities. In 2015 Exposure X was introduced. X was a stand-alone application which allowed for browsing, organizing and RAW editing of photos. Fast forward to late 2017, and X3 was released.
For those of you coming from Lightroom, there is an immediate familiarity when opening X3. Three panels divide the screen. The two side panels each contain two docks. Out of the box, the left panel includes the Navigator, Histogram, Folder, Presets, and History tabs.
The centre panel displays images. You can choose to arrange images in a grid format, see a single picture, or you can compare up to four photographs at once. This last feature is handy for examining focus in similar images.
One feature that I particularly liked was being able to customize the layout of the panels to accommodate the way I work and to mimic what I am used to in Lightroom. This customization made the transition from Lightroom to Exposure easier. I like having the histogram in the top right corner and the navigator in the top left. The panels can also be collapsed to allow you to see more of your image when editing.
If you have images on a card, Exposure can copy those images to a folder on your computer or external drive for you. While copying, you can specify a destination (including a subfolder), rename files and apply metadata (including keywords).
Another difference between Exposure and Lightroom is the lack of modules. Viewing, searching, applying keywords, editing and exporting are all done from the same location and can be done at any time, even from within the grid view.
One thing I noticed when applying edits in X3 is that the sliders seem more sensitive than those in Lightroom. For example, adjusting a slider by a certain amount in X3 produces more of an effect than adjusting the corresponding slider in LR the same amount. Here is an example. In this image, I adjusted the Whites and Blacks sliders until I just began to clip the image. In X3 I did not need to be quite as heavy handed with the sliders. This takes a bit of getting used to. At first, I found that I was over-doing my edits. However, once I realized that it was easier to make fine exposure adjustments using the shortcut keys, rather than using a mouse or even using a stylus and tablet, I did not have any issues.
I also found that my images appeared to have more contrast in X3 than in Lightroom. You can see that in this image as well. Sometimes this was to my advantage, but sometimes I had to open up the shadows a bit to create the same look in both programs.
In X3 the Tone Curve and Split Toning are combined into a single tab. And for each one, there are a large number of presets to select from. For a photographer who does not want to spend a lot of time on their post-processing, or who wants a place to start from, the presets offer a great jumping off point.
While both Lightroom and Exposure have the ability to adjust the color channels individually using the Tone Curve, Exposure goes one step farther. In X3 you can also use the eye-dropper tool to select a black point, white point, and a point that is neutral grey in your image. This feature is similar to what you find in a Curves Adjustment layer in Photoshop.
Once I was happy with the vignette shape, I dialed back the amount to 58, size to 29, softness to 60. I left the values for roundness, distortion, lump size and the random seed unchanged. I feel the final result has a much more organic feel than what you would achieve with a standard shaped vignette.
The Overlays panel is strictly for creative effects. You can add borders, light effects, and textures. You can vary the blend mode and opacity of each and protect areas you do not want to be affected by texture overlays. While kind of fun to fool around with, beware, this panel will take you down a rabbit hole, consuming large quantities of time! I can not see myself using the Overlays panel very often for my style of photography. In fact, I found it very difficult to find a shot to illustrate these tools! However, for some people, this trio of tools may prove useful.
The grain panel lets you customize grain behaviour to simulate vintage film grain effects. Alien Skin has taken much effort to create realistic film grains. Through the panel, you can adjust grain in the shadows, midtones, and highlights independently. This allows the creation of much more realistic effects. And the amount and type of grain can also be adjusted independently.
Finally, the IR panel is for adding infrared effects to images and the Bokeh panel allows you to mimic lens blurring effects. There is a huge range of lens blurring presets to select from. The presets include collections for creative aperture, motion and traditional lenses including lenses from Canon, Nikon, and Zeiss.
A considerable advantage of Exposure X3 is the ability to use layers. You can apply presets, basic edits, and special effects to individual layers in X3. Moreover, each layer contains a mask so effects can be locally painted in with the brush or gradient tools. In addition, the opacity of each layer can be adjusted so that edits can be toned down and more subtly blended in.
You can modify a mask using any combination of the brush tool, or three different gradient tools (radial, planer and half planer). And the opacity of the active tool on any mask can have its opacity adjusted independently. To illustrate this take a look at the screenshot here. After doing some basic edits for exposure on the bottom layer, I added a black and white layer. To this layer, I created a mask by applying an oval radial mask reduced to 50% opacity, added a horizontal planer mask and dropped its opacity to 75%, added a vertical half planer mask to the right side of the image and finished the mask off by painting with a brush in eraser mode. Not something I would normally do, but for illustrative purposes, it works!
A feature missing in X3 is the ability to mask based on luminosity values and color. Although this is a feature which is new to LR, it is an extremely powerful way to make local selections. And I find it much more accurate than simply painting with a brush. If Exposure wants to compete with Lightroom, this ability must be added in an update. On a side note, in X3 you can zoom into images to the pixel level. While this does make brushing on masks easier, it does not make it easier to mask out fine, dark tree branches against a light sky!
Once you have created your pre-sets for each of the export components, you can combine these into recipes which are accessed via Quick Exports. Here I have started to create a new Quick Export preset.
An advantage of Quick Exports is that once you have presets organized, you can send images to several different locations and in several different file formats at once. You can see here that I have five presets in my Quick Export library, and I am sending images to four locations at once. However, I do not like that you can not see the complete destination path. In Lightroom, I can select a preset, and easily change the destination folder without affecting any of the other variables. With X3 you must go to the export preferences, create a new destination, save it as a new Destination preset, then edit an existing Quick preset or create a new one. These extra steps completely negate the advantage of presets!
Noticeably missing from Exposure is chromatic aberration correction. As Spencer mentioned in his article, there is no easy or fast way to correct for chromatic aberration apart from painstakingly painting over any signs with desaturation on a new layer. I see this as a major setback for the software!
Let me start by prefacing that I have an old, slow computer (we are kindred spirits). I am using a mid-2012 MacBook Pro. It does have 16 GB of ram though, which helps muscle through my edits. On the whole, I found X3 to be marginally faster than the latest update to Lightroom Classic in some areas, while not as fast in others.
However, for professionals and for users who depend on features such as chromatic aberration corrections, perspective control corrections, and more robust lens corrections, then Exposure is not up to the task, at least quite yet. I am hopeful that Alien Skin will address many of these shortcomings in future updates. And to give them full credit, they appear to be listening to what users are asking for. At that time, Exposure will become a real contender in the RAW processor race. Until that time though, I am saddened to say that I will have to maintain my tempestuous relationship with Lightroom for a bit longer.
Elizabeth grew up in Vancouver, on the beautiful West Coast of Canada. In 2012 she relocated to Houston Texas for two years and then moved to Gautier, Mississippi in July of 2014 for another three years. Now back in Vancouver, Elizabeth runs photography workshops and teaches many aspects of photography. Her areas of interest are widespread and include street, wildlife, nature, architecture, macro and long exposures. She is particularly passionate about black and white images. You can see more of her work on her website at www.photographybyelizabethgray.com or on Instagram at photosbyelizabethgray
Thank you for these reviews. As an amateur I have been using photoshop elements (PE) for about 2.5-3 years. I like the ability to us layers, panarama feature, group photo feature and have also be experimenting with many of the other tools. However I have been wondering, what have I been missing from other software, and what should I upgrade to? I have also wondered, with certain features, PE forces me to change to 8-bit, and am I losing some important details?
For me, as a hobbyist, having switched to Fuji and Jpeg primary (Raw backup), I am mainly looking for a LR replacement that will let me import, cull, do some adjustments (if needed), and export. X3 fits all of that very well. The non-catalog design will simplify multi-computer work on same photos. Not having to switch modes (Library/Develop) is a welcome relief.
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