Alien Skin's Bokeh

 

Original Image (top)

Focus changed with Bokeh (bottom)

Alien Skin software has been a favorite of mine for quite some time offering professional plug-in packages for Photoshop, such as Eye Candy and Xenofex (see my past post for a review on Eye Candy 6). Once again they come up with a great little utility to help you enhance your digital images with the plug-in Bokeh. It's one of those don't always need it but when you need it, there's nothing else like it helper tools. In the past whenever I wanted to draw emphasis on the foreground subject matter I would mask off the foreground, feather the selection, invert it and add a gaussian blur. The results would work sometimes, but the control over the depth of field look was rather limited. With Bokeh, you get a great interface that comes with a long list of preset blurs to simulate the look of a Canon or Sony lens, or allow you to adjust and save your own settings for other projects. Caution must be used with Bokeh however, as one tends to be given too much control and before you know it, the foreground subject matter you selected seems to 'pop' off that page a bit too much. This plug-in is great for sports images or food product shots in a natural background setting. You can even add some vignette to the image to help give a more realistic blend to your masked selection. 

Demo copies of Bokeh can be downloaded from their website. The price for Bokeh, when weighed against trying to reshoot an image, may be worth the money to invest in this great tool for electronic photo manipulation.

Bryce-the Ultimate in Landscape Generation

Bryce 6 interface

For over a decade Bryce has provided electronic artists one of the finest landscape/terrain generation programs. The latest version (6.1) allows more flexibility in usage and some of the best quality renderings you could expect from a mid-range program. Within minutes you are able to create stunning landscapes, complete with foliage, imported 3d objects, 2d planes that support aplha channel graphics AND adjust lighting shadows from the alpha channel (a big plus)-there is just so much this package offers. You can rely on the installed textures, objects, lighting and sky settings or advance into any of these areas and give it your own settings. Web support for this program is enormous with literally thousands of sites online to help with tutorials, downloadable models, textures, etc. to give you endless possibilities for your ideas.

In the past Bryce was known pretty much for its terrain generation quality but with the added support of Daz models and animations your ability to make stunning landscapes with animated characters is so much easier.

Other features include real world lighting with IBL (image based lighting) support, MAC Intel compatible (another big plus), image based brushes for advanced terrain editing and mesh export of Boolean objects.

For those interested in test driving this program, both Bryce and Daz are available for free download with limited program capabilities (they want to entice you to buy full versions but allows you to get familiar with the interface) so visit their site and find out more about this truly remarkable program.