Alien Skin Exposure 4 Photographic Software Review

There is nothing more wonderful than exploring new tools or ways for something you are passionate about.

 

A B&W Infra-Red (IR) processing of a red barn and green fields

What is the Purpose of this Software?
Exposure is an add-on photo-editing application for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Elements that provides almost a complete list of film types, both B&W and Color, for processing for the digital darkroom. I say almost as I didn't count the list of film types in this application and I don't even know all the films that have ever been made, but they sure seem to be all here.
 

'Sepia – blue Finish (modified)' setting with a layer set to 'Lighten' mode (31%) for an Expsure 4 ver. of 'Kodak HIE (Halation moderate)'

One test of software is to see how it feels right out of the box. A lot like taking a performance sports car for a test drive. You may not know everything about it but you know how to drive and turn corners.

I never read the manual first as I believe that a person with reasonable skills on the computer and with digital editing should know how to turn it on and drive around a little. 
 
Exposure 4 did not fail here. It was easy to install and when launched, the layout and buttons were intuitive. The only problem I had was that it was almost 2 hours later when I realized how much I had been playing with the different types of films.

How would I use this Photo-Editing Software?

Exposure 4 has a great repertoire of classic, vintage and just plain old films both in color and B&W. Combined with these types of film selections are the various processing adjustments you might make in a wet darkroom, such as contrast, toning, bleaching, cross-processing, calotype, platinum and much more.

Some of these are obvious as the IR and Platinum and High contrast B&W I have shown above. Even old color films with faded color can provide unique approaches to the photographic images.


Without having access to the original old photograph, an older reproduction could be re-made. This could be cast against another image to create a story of 'then and now' and subject of an interesting photographic book.

In the image above I took 2 photos and I applied old color film technique to the bordered version to create the effect of laying an old photo on a new photo to show a change over time.

How well does it Perform?
Having a 7 processors and 12TB of RAM there should be no speed issues with loading and applying application settings. It was just over a sec to load and less to applying any film setting. The window is originally set up with 3 panels. Large central being the photo being edited. The panel on the right is the main adjustment panel color. See composite below. There is enough functionality to do almost everything you want.


A minor problem with the numbers dialog boxes. When you enter a number it doesn't apply until you click the panel and if you use the Enter key it applies the Exposure 4 application. I would rather have that only happen when I click the OK button.

The panel on the left are all the pre-set film settings which are based on some combination of settings on the right panel. This is great because once you found a style that suits your needs you can then tweak it to best suit the photograph.


I did find that using the color filter produced better color (brighter) for me than using the same color on a layer in Photoshop. It might be the preserve luminosity check box.


With my sample photos the rendering of effects was clean with no noticeable distortions unless of course you cranked the saturation way up.


I like that both side panels can be minimized and it's easy to zoom into a section for better clarity. With a 24" monitor some apps don't allow full screen editing.
I also like how you can save your own presets.

The above image is from one I tested since I had created a B&W version previously. The software did produce versions that I liked as well and maybe even better than the original.



Who is this Software meant for?
For anyone how wants to experience the look of chemical film technology and its variant processes.
Definitely for commercial ad type photographic needs. Here with the press of a button, a vintage effect can be created without much time spent by the user.
For creative types who may want to create story-line or books where the type of photograph is integral to the story experience
For fine-art photographers that require a specific look, as with my image of the tree and bench, that is not easily achieved in Photoshop.
To create new layers that can be set to one of the blend modes. There is a practice to create a B&W version of your image that looks best and then set this to luminosity for your color photo. While I haven't experimented that much with these I suspect I will find some of the film output useful as a blend mode.

Recommendations
This is a good solid product that provides a wealth of film types and genres. It is easy to use and intuitive.
I would give this software a 4 – 4 ½ rating. The limiting factor would be price for a new user at approx $249. but an upgrade is only $99.
As an investment, I view software the same as a lens. It's a tool to help you meet your needs or goals. Many people find the cost of software somewhat prohibitive and yet see no problem with spending more on a new lens. I love a lens also as there's something about that precision instrument you are holding. But I photo-edit every photo I show to the public. I always want to bring out the very best and convey the feelings and experience I had at the time I took the photograph. The straight out-of-the-camera version doesn't give me this. It is a mechanical device and not a human.



Definitely do download a trial version and play with it.

Niels Henriksen

Disclaimer: Other than receiving a copy of the software to review, I did not or will not receive any remunerations, gifts or any considerations from this review from the company, its agents or any of its distributors

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Word beasts: tree crickets break the rules, sort of.

This time its my own work. We just published a paper that I think is important for a couple of reasons. I'll outline the main one here. I've not gone into this detail in any of the popular science articles I've interviewed for, simply because this is a subtle point. (And also because it got lost in trying to explain the work, I'm not practiced at this interviewing thing). But this is my blog, so I can tell you and take the long route, consider this your fair warning! This is not an explanation of the paper, but of why its interesting.

There are very few laws in biology. By laws I mean rules that hold far and wide across a huge phylogenetic range of organisms. Biology is about variation, making oneself distinct, occupying a new niche. So, in the complicated messy world of biology,  it's quite rare and hence, comforting to have a 'law'. Often when such laws exist, they are rooted in physics. For instance, the law that relates thermoregulation capacity to body mass. Since larger animals have a lower surface to volume ratio, they retain heat well and lose it poorly. And vice versa for small animals, loose heat easily and retain it with difficulty. As you can see, this law is very rooted in the physicality of the body. You may even say it is rooted at an even more fundamental level, in geometry itself.

The law that relates to our paper is quite similar. In animals that communicate using sound, the dominant frequency of the sound they produce is correlated to their body size. Neville Fletcher, who has written text-books in the field of acoustics and bioacoustics, calls it a rule that holds from insects to elephants. And he is right; it does, by and large. There are simple physical reasons for this behaviour. They relate mainly to the efficiency of sound production at frequencies appropriate to the organisms size and to the mechanisms of sound production. For instance, insects use resonators as an important element in their sound production mechanism. A large resonator, therefore, leads pretty much deterministically to a lower frequency.

Now, many bioacousticians take this a step further and suggest that size relates to frequency not just across species but also within species. This is not really a large logical step. The reasons why this relationship would hold are the same as for the across species relationship.

The next step that researchers in the field have argued for is somewhat more problematic. They assume (and also test, sometimes) that because this relationship exists, information about size exists and can be percieved in the sounds an animal makes. There is some tentative evidence and a strong belief that size is important to mate choice and choosy females prefer larger males who are somehow 'better' in evolutionary terms. Taking the step, however, it turns out is more complicated; there are a few assumptions that have to hold to make this 'information transfer' and consequent 'choice' possible.

The first assumption is about reciever psychology. There is a presumption that a reciever can make frequency discriminations that are as fine as the spectrum analysis techniques used to study the sounds in the first place. If the change in size associated change in frequency within a species is smaller than the frequency resolution of the listening party, the question of telling the size of a caller is moot.

The second assumption, which we are concerned with, relates to the next level of variation, the within individual variation. The first level of variation is across species, then within species and finally within individual variation. If within individual variation in frequency is higher than within species variation, then information about size is obliterated and no meaningful 'choice' is possible.

 Here's where the crickets come in. The way crickets sing is quite special. Not only do they use resonance to produce song, they also use the resonance to tightly control the song frequency using something called an escapement mechanism*. The idea runs: therefore, within individual variation will always be lower than within species variation and the information must exist in the song. And not just for crickets; this relation is often thought to hold for insects in general since many of them use resonance as a sound production mechanism.

Not so, say the tree crickets, whose frequency changes with ambient temperature. As a direct result of this property, an individual tree cricket's frequency variation is as large as that of the whole species and the train of logic crumbles because an assumption is not met. Remember the law has not been violated, not strictly, the range of frequencies each individual insect will produce will still depend on his size. But since he can call from anywhere within that range, you can't figure out his size from hearing him at any given time. The information that falls out of the 'law' is gone.

We found that these insects, tree crickets, use resonance for song production as well, and have the same singing mechanisms as other crickets. But these mechanisms fail to control song frequency. So we asked, well, how do they do it? What does it take to break this link down and remove 'information' about body size from song frequency? How hard a transition is this? It turns out, its really simple. All you have to do is sing with longer wings. No fancy non-linear mechanics, no stochasticity in the relation between body size and resonator size, no super temperature sensitive materials, nothing special. Just longer wings. Geometry trumps everything.

And that is why its an interesting result. It doesn't take a lot to break down a train of logic which everyone thought derived from a profound biological 'law'. It takes a relatively small change in geometry to undo a laws effect. That is how easy it is to tweak biological systems. And that ease is one of the sources of the huge diversity you see out there.

Paper: Mhatre, Montealegre-Z, Balakrishnan, Robert (2012) Changing resonator geometry to boost sound power decouples size and song frequency in a small insect. PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1200192109 

*  Its the same mechanism that clocks use to keep time. There's a starter image to explain it on this page if you want to know more.




Copyright © Natasha Mhatre If you're reading this without attribution to me anywhere other than at my blog Talking Pictures, its probably being plagiarized.

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Buildings of San Miguel

This is a story that evolves over time. Every year as I explore new parts of town or even revisit other parts at different times of the day, there are new buildings emerging. Not new in the sense of being just built but new in the sense of discovery. Especially when its not your town and even not your region, everything is so different.

Along the side of the Biblioteca on Relox

This is almost an abstract image with 3 main sections. I wanted the yellow to be dominant so I increased the contrast in this section and a bit in saturation. On some monitors if not calibrated it will display as very bright yellow, whereas it should be a bit soft. I darkened the blue and decreased saturation to make the yellow appear brighter. I didn't want to lighten the whole road so I increased the brightness in the highlights and strengthened the yellows.


Sometimes you get a 'batch perfect apples in the basket' so to speak. In the image below, the house was painted a blue to match the strong blue skies of San Miguel. The sky is also a darker blue here at approx. 7,000 ft. Strong blues ranging from this sky color to almost navy-blue can be found on several homes.

Near the corner of Aldama on a walk-only side street between Xichu and Oje de Agua
Google map reference (20.90370, -100.7432)


A very skinny house. Not sure what it's used for. I guess someone wanted to build a house in an alleyway. I seen places like this in Toronto where the house is 3 storeys high and 10' wide. This building in San Miguel may be actually skinnier.

Even with a 18mm lens I needed to stitch 2 vertical photos to get the whole building in one combined photo.


San Miguel, like most Mexican towns, is always undergoing some sort of building repainting. The standard building colors are yellow, rusty-orange, burnt-red, and some white. They may be repainted these same colors or even repainted a vibrant new color such as blue. That's why in Google Street View the photos of the buildings may not now be as shown in Google. Sometimes as in the photo below there has been some new painting with bolder colors.

This small section of buildings has all the colors of the rainbow and a few extra. Corner of Aldama and Terraplén



This colorful green building with just enough red to give it some accent caught my interest I. It wasn't until after I looked around that I realized that it was beside the entrance to the Bull Fighting Ring.

And sometimes with luck a car drives by, whose color enhances the photo of the building.

Next year I will be in San Miguel for six (6) months and I be conducting photo-walks again. If you are in the area then drop me a line and we can go out and photograph this lively town together.


Niels Henriksen

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