For me, I'll get Color Efex if I can just get myself to spend that much money for a filters program.įeatures: 3/5 - tons of filters, cool stack concept and batching are great, but the lack of precise control really hurts this product.įunctionality: 1/5 - The UI sucks bigtime in my book You can download your own demo copy here, but I would strongly encourage you to try Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete before deciding which to purchase. net 2.0 and some componets were not JIT compiled properly. This seems to be related to the fact that it uses. After installing, I had to restart Photoshop 3 times (each time getting more of PhotoTools features to work) before it worked as it should have.Photoshop forcefully – I lost all my work (not good).I couldn't click on anything and had to terminate I was in a different app (instant message came) while PhotoTools was loading and it caused everything in CS3 to disappear. Disappearing windows every time you launch their tool in Photoshop drives me crazy!.The Polarizer, Smart neutral density, and graduated neutral density filters can't even come close to what Color Efex has and those alone are worth the purchase price of Color Efex.It is not intuitive or obvious that reset button by the fade slider resets the stack - it seems it would reset the fade (fade is basically opacity) Stack fade window should be non-scrollable and library should scroll below the search box.

You have to double-click to apply the filter - not intuitive.

Effects aren't as precise or controllable as Color Efexįewer choices with more control (ala Color Efex) would be better than the current filter overkill and duplication.

Lack of real-time preview (ala Adobe Lightroom, Color Efex, etc.).

The skin softening was fairly decent as well.

I loved the Kubota Daily Multi-Vitamins A2, and onOne Super Sharpener filters.

The zoom and hand controls are much better than Color Efex (especially double-click like Photoshop)

It has an automated batch mode to apply presets to multiple photos and output to disk.

You can even reorder filters in the stack (just like Photoshops layers concept)

You can create your own presets based on a collection of presets.

You can have up to 16 layered effects in a stack - outstanding!.

Layer Mask/Fill with black feature is very useful.

Some well known photographers swear it is a great product.

Lots of really good filters for top notch pro looking photo enhancements.

After reviewing PhotoTools 1.0 Professional Edition, I think I may have been a little bit too harsh in my review of Color Efex. Recently I reviewed Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete, so I decided to check out some of its competition to see how it fair's against other products.

Onone photo 10 review