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| Click photo to see images of all the Editors Choice 2007 products. |
How do you choose between Lightroom and Adobe's new, improved Photoshop? If you rely on Photoshop for serious retouching, and never upgraded from v. 7.0 or the first generation of CS, CS3 makes a compelling case for sticking with the classic image editor. It's the first release in years to feature significant improvements to the Photoshop interface, and with improved versions of both Bridge (the image browser) and Camera Raw (the RAW file converter), you're really getting three excellent pieces of software for the price of one. CS3 also has Photoshop's first-ever dedicated black-and-white converter, which brings much more control and refinement to the task than the usual methods. Another favorite is an automatic layer alignment tool that lets you make high-dynamic-range images -- seamless composites with a brightness range impossible to capture in a single exposure -- from bracketed handheld photos, no tripod required. About $640.
DxO FilmPack
Plug-ins take a lot of the hardship out of image editing. That's not lost on French software innovator DxO Labs, whose powerful Optics Pro automates such complex tasks as reducing chromatic aberration, correcting perspective, and reducing noise. So when they were working on a new app that would allow digital photographers to simulate the look of particular films, we weren't surprised that their research included measuring film grain with an electron microscope. DxO FilmPack gives digital images the qualities associated with classic emulsions such as Velvia, Kodachrome, and Tri-X, as well as lesser-known films of varying speed. You can choose a given film's color palette minus its characteristic grain, if you like, or even combine the palette of one film with the grain of another -- Velvia color with Tri-X grain, for example. The program even factors in the output size of your image when it adjusts the diameter of the grain it is simulating! About $70.
American PHOTO Editor's Choice 2007
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