By David Gewirtz
Whenever I talk about digital photography to "regular" people, I'm always asked if there's any way to do digital image effects without buying expensive software. That, of course, is what our Budget Photo Secrets series is all about.
This week, we've got a very nice photo effects tool that's available for download from TwistingPixels, the TwistingPixels Sampler. TwistingPixels sells a library of Photoshop plug-ins and filters. As part of their effort to get the word out about their for-sale plug-ins, they offer a very nice sampler pack of free plug-ins you can download and use.
One aspect of their sampler pack we particularly liked was the TwistingPixels program. This is a very simple application that lets you run their plug-ins on images without requiring you to install a big photo editing application like Photoshop.
The sampler pack comes with nine filter plug-ins. We'll take you through examples of each. For the filters we're talking about in this article, we started with the boat image from our handy clip art library, shown in Figure A.
FIGURE A
This is the starting image. (click for larger image)
Black and white
The company claims to have some unique technology for getting better black and white images than you'd otherwise get doing your own editing. We couldn't necessarily verify that the imaging was better, but the filters did produce some nice black and white conversions, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
We converted this to black and white using the red channel. (click for larger image)
What's nice is this plug-in allows you to use channels for your conversion, so you can produce some of the best black and whites we've seen from a free tool.
Contrasting levels
Contrasting levels, as explained by the company, Captures details lost in the shadows. It also reduces the brightness range of an excessively contrast image, by subduing bright areas of sky, water, snow, and sand, which bring the light back to a normal range. We liked it because it allowed us to really punch up an image without making the colors look distorted, as shown in Figure C.
FIGURE C
Contrasting levels lets you really have fun tinkering with your photos look. (click for larger image)
Duotone
We've all seen duotone effects, the use of two colors to represent a photo's image data. The TwistingPixels Sampler also includes a duotone filter, but we really liked this one because you have a lot of extra control. You wouldn't think that Figure D was done with a free duotone filter, but it was.
FIGURE D
This isn't what you'd expect from a duotone filter, but it's cool. (click for larger image)
Monotone
Monotone is a variant on the black and white effect, but with a single color wash. Again, because the sample pack includes a lot of extra control, you can get some very nice effects, as you can see in Figure E.
FIGURE E
Monotone doesn't need to be boring. (click for larger image)
Grain
It's funny. Back when we all used film in our cameras, we were always concerned if the picture turned out too grainy. Now, when we're all using digital cameras, we sometimes want grain in our images to give them the old school look. The TwistingPixels Sampler doesn't disappoint. It's got a nice grain filter that'll give you that film camera feel, as shown in Figure F.
FIGURE F
Grain is good, at least now that we've got digital cameras. (click for larger image)
Warm Cool
I love one-click filters that do nice things to images. The Warm Cool filter is just such a filter. Open your image and drag to the left to warm it up. Drag to the right to cool it down. As you can see in Figure G, the photo's been warmed up a lot.
FIGURE G
It gives us a warm glow all over. (click for larger image)
And there's more yet
There are actually three more interesting effects in the TwistingPixels Sampler. This article's getting a little long, so we'll save those for next week, along with some minor things we didn't like about the program, a few more things we really liked, and our overall rating.
Stay tuned.