Alien Skin Exposure X4 4.0.5.135 Crack Mac Osx
Viva Allor
When I reviewed Alien Skin Exposure X3, I noted several features that make it unique among other photo editing and organizing applications, such as its extensive library of professional presets, a quad-layout interface option for reviewing multiple similar shots at once, and a novel way of storing nondestructive edits on disk.
The Shadows control, which was oddly heavy-handed in the previous release, now behaves as you would expect, manipulating just the tones in shadow areas instead of lightening or darkening the entire image.
When importing photos from a memory card or camera, Exposure X4 now includes image thumbnails so you can choose which photos to copy - a seemingly essential feature that was missing in previous versions. That fills out the Copy Photos from Card dialog, which also allows you to select multiple cards or directories at the same time, make backups to a separate location during import, and assign metadata to the images.
Exposure X4 is a solid update that shores up some areas that needed attention and builds on a photo editor that already stands apart in interesting ways. And most important, Alien Skin improved the performance in areas that make a difference.
I really miss the days of the competitive upgrade. It was a saving for us, and got us in your customer base and upgrade path. Plus adds potential to better sell your other products. It does look great, but as others have said, will wait until there's a discount offer from somewhere.
So many negative comments, particularly from people who haven't properly used it. X4.5 is a solid, very quick, and productive piece of software. I'm now Adobe-free and I use Exposure every day in a professional capacity. Noise reduction is demonstrably better than Affinity Photo (which I also use) and the ability to non-destructively change RAW edits is similar to ACR, and badly missing from Affinity. As for chromatic aberration removal, with today's lenses it's hardly a problem, but this is where Affinity Photo comes in handy very occasionally - though you can be sure Alien Skin will add this feature in a future update. You can keep ON1, Capture One, Lightroom etc, as, at least for me, Exposure x4.5 is the better bet and a godsend. And if the likes of Kevin Mullins and Sue Bryce use it, then I suggest it's more than good enough. It rocks.
Software looks interesting, but supported lens corrections are presently sparse. As with DxO, there can be a serious wait for lens corrections following a request. Modern lenses contain corrections in software in the lens, but this is apparently not used by Exposure X4.
It's much faster, has far less bloat, and is a joy to use. Not quite prefect but not far off. Used by a lot of professional photographers, including me. I much prefer it to Capture One, and, yes, I'm serious.
I think for culling/rating images it maybe better than a catalogue as you are not forced to import first and then sift through. You can rate and then prioritize the images you need to work on right away. BUT! will LR or C1 see the rating, color and flag info(Both LR and C1 being non subscription versions)? I use ACDSee for somethings, yet these ratings do not transfer to LR last time I used it. This would be a KEY requirement.
Thanks for the review of this affordable piece of software. I appreciate learning about alternatives to Adobe. Yes, their products have good feature sets but for a hobbyist to pay monthly for the rest of your life is a pretty bad move financially. If automatic investment plans like 401K's build wealth, automatic spending destroys wealth.
After a little usage of Exposure 7, X2, X3, X4 over the years.
I agree with Sankos: Exposure X4.5 - demosaic Ok (not earth shaking), highlight (and shadow) recovery may not the best (but improved a lot over the times), NR not the best, etc. So, for pure lens correction, geometry, noise, highlight, and similars you can find better. Note: usually i use DxO for Raw processing (Prime NR), and export Tiff for finishing in ExposureX
BUT...
I just love the Exposure X...
May its not perfect in all technical terms, but fun and love to use it (what i never feel over Lr, DxO years). And i love the result, it has some 'groove'.
After you find your favourite presets (like Kodak25), you may never look back about how color accurate the profile. Layering is super, Exposure works great, Grain, Sharpening works nice, misc things like 'Focus' also good, etc.
Improvements in each version (visible development)
Price is okay (definitelly not the price of C1)
Support is great (and kind)
Ive used Alien Skin quite a bit, but honestly if you want some interesting color looks, I suggest learning RawTherapee a bit and ofc installing HaldCLUT. If you nail the processing, results are very interesting (and can be rather close to film colors).
One thing that I think would make this a really awesome review, would be to take a few RAWs from different cameras and run them thru C1, ACR, AlienSkin etc. and see if you can pixel peep any significant differences.
I will say, that I do not allow anything other than C1 to handle my Sony files - they seem to have the special sauce down, exactly right, for not only the RX10 I have, and the A7RII my friend has, but even for the DSC-R1 (the old APSC camera with Zeiss zoom).
Thank you for saving me a trial run. I tried v4 at the start of the year and noticed shadow detail behaved strangely in this program. From your words it appears to be the same. Maybe v5 they'll resolve it?
Finley Lee, to be more specific, bumping up shadow detail made the images mushy and not nearly as bright as LR. If you can figure out a good way for me to share what I am talking about, I would be glad to show you how the same image is treated with LR. Like I said though, I plan on buying the program anyways. The presets are amazing and the way one can stack and blend them have me looking forward to editing future images. Also, I love how generous the trial is. 1 month, no credit card.
If you want to edit a few hundred images as normal it gets slower and slower as you go making it super slow to get a job done. If working on one image its not bad. Also the output quality is very poor vs other programs it creates artifacts in the images to the point that I cant use it..
I have contacted your support many times and sent in sample images showing the problems and you have not been able help. The image quality of the output is just not as good as other programs. Also, the highlights get blown out super easy in the program that can not be recovered like in other programs. I have sent you side by side versions of the same photos edited to see as well. I also reported the editing time that is so slow. In Lightroom or ACDSee I can edit say 1000 images in less then half the time - as your program gets so slows it starts taking forever to show the image displays all the way then the output is so bad I had to re-edit all the images over as I did not want to give them to my customers looking that way. I can not match the same quality output in your program that I get from Lightroom or ACDSee not even close. Your noise reduction is very poor vs the others as well.
Thanks for this info. I had used Exposure 2(Not x2) many years ago, and I still use EyeCandy(which they dont offer a discount to) And I certainly dont want a slow process. I use ACDSee which is pretty fast. I just wish I can rank and rate and see those details when importing to LRclassic. $120 is too much, and they dont even have that option, its $149.
There's already an expensive method of getting a non-rental copy of PhotoShop (really Adobe) CC. Additionally, I get monthly emails begging be to rent CC for 40% off. (Funny how my copy of PSCS 6 is 100% off every month.)
I only bring up claims of Topaz having real raw extraction software as of July 2019 because someone else claimed to be extracting Sony A7R IV raws with Topaz Studio. (The camera was only announced last week, and nothing extracts the raws yet.)
Weeks if the software doesn't crash constantly, runs swiftly and produces results that are equal or superior to products you always use. For me, this was NOT the case so 30 minutes of play was enough to know it was time to uninstall. Perhaps this latest version fixes those problems and matches Capture 1 results.... only a test will tell!
@Jonsi - if you need to wait after a click but a rollover is instant.. then there is something wrong wit the software (or your computer). The process should be the exact same thing... just without exercising your trigger finger.
Does anyone know if exposure can export metadata, rating and keywords to sidecar files that are readable by third party programs? I know it can import xmp sidecar files, but can it export to them as well? I really don't want to build a library with exposure only to find out that I locked myself in because no other program can read the data.
@Auf Reisen Yes, the export options are pretty granular. I just exported the image at the top of the article as the original raw file with metadata, and ended up with an .xmp file. I then opened the raw file in Adobe Bridge and see the rating, keywords, and EXIF data.
The edits are stored in the .xmp file, but are not read by Bridge (or Photoshop) because they're saved using Exposure's values; i.e., someone else with Exposure can open the file and see all the edits, but someone with Photoshop could not. (You were just asking about metadata, I know, but I thought it worth pointing this out.)
It's always a good thing to see more robust competition for Adobe products. But I would be willing to bet that within 5 years you will be hard pressed to find any relevant photo editing tool that isn't subscription.
@HowaboutRAW: The key word is "relevant." In 5 years GIMP will still be an open source free alternative for mostly amateurs and enthusiasts who don't want to spend the money on pro tools. Paintshop will still be a paid alternative for the same demographic. That is fine in and of itself, but pros and serious photographers aren't going to use either.
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