Essential Photoshop Plug-ins

[Kirk Gittings]

I am curious what Photoshop Plug-ins are being used that people think are absolutely essential to their digital darkroom workflow. For me I wouldn't want to do without Optipix, Photokit Sharpener and Color Mechanic.

[Doug Dolde]

I really like Photokit Sharpener. It's a great toolbox and moreover keeps me from the dreaded oversharpening syndrome. I use a couple of Fred Miranda's plugins also. Digital Velvia, B/W Workflow, and his DRI for combining exposures.

[Kirk Gittings]

Doug and what are you primarily using these for? Digital Velvia-color manipulation?, B/W Workflow-conversion?

[Doug Dolde]

Digital Velveeta: When I shoot digital I get Astia colors. So I use it to get a more saturated look. It also has a nice Add Dynamic Range adjustment which is really a contrast mask I believe. Will save as a layer so you can adjust after the fact.

B/W Workflow: Yup convert color to B/W or toned. Emulates filters and has quite a few duotone, tritone, and quadtone settings. Also has the Add Dynamic Range function.

I was using Fred's Intellisharpen but since acquiring Photokit haven't even looked back.

[Kirk Gittings]

While I like Photokit Sharpener alot. It's great drawback is that in 16 bit it requires an RGB file, when I mostly need a single channel 16 bit grayscale file. If I run my b&w in RGB with all the layers that PKS creates I build up unnecessarily huge files quite rapidly, what only requires 100MB GS file balloons into a .5G or even a800MB file very quickly with PKS. The sharpeners in Optipix which are just as effective (but not as user friendly) do not require 16 bit RGB files.

[Ellis Vener]

Photokit Expert Sharpener; Photokit (especially fo color to B&W conversions); Noise Ninja (mostly for high ISo (ISo 800 & beyond images fro m a DSLR and scanned images.)

[Kirk Gittings]

For those architectural photographers out there, I cannot recomend Color Mechanic more. We are always dealing with off color areas from mixed light sources etc. The hours that I used to spend making selections to correct those areas are now gone. Color Mechanic makes correcting those casts a an extremely simple task.