Review: Alien Skin's EXPOSURE 2
by Dallas Dahms

When Simon & Garfunkel once sung about "Those nice bright colours" and "greens of summers" I guess they had no idea that somebody might indeed come along and take their Kodachrome away one day. That "somebody" arrived towards the end of the last century in the form of digital photography. Since its arrival it has laid claim to pretty much the entire institution of photography, resulting in the demise of many film stocks (for instance, Agfa no longer make film for consumer use). In my country it is nearly impossible to find any films made by Ilford, harder still finding a lab that will process B&W.

But during the film heyday images published in magazines and books all had their own special "look". For example, newspaper reporters during much of the middle part of the 20th century made extensive use of Kodak's Tri-X black & white film, where the grain was almost as much a part of the photograph as the subject matter. National Geographic photographers transported us to far away lands with the vivid colour saturation of Fuji Velvia 50, and wedding photographers wowed their customers with the faithful skin tones of Reala or Portra. All thanks to the way the little microscopic pieces of silver halide or colour dyes reacted when treated with various chemicals.

Entire photographic careers were shaped by these films, so when digital came and took our Kodachrome away many photographers battled to re-establish their "look" in the digital age because let's face it, simulating the look of favourite films from days gone by involves a lot of hard work in Photoshop.

But what if you could summon the "look" by pressing a button and have Photoshop produce something that looks a lot like your favourite film from days gone by? What if you could adjust the resulting image to the point where your film simulation could have grain or no grain? And if you chose to have grain what about adjusting the size and intensity of it? Push processing? Cross-processing? Infra-red? Tinting? It would be pretty neat to have all that wizardry at the click of a button, wouldn't it? Think of the editing time you'd save.

Well the good news is this is all possible with a Photoshop / Paint Shop Pro (PC) plug in from a company called Alien Skin. Call them Ressurection Artists or Alchemists or even Wizards, the reality is that their Exposure 2 plug in can do some serious film simulations on your digital images, in colour or black & white. I guess that's why the catchphrase for this product is "The closest thing to film since film".

Working with Exposure 2
The plug-in appears in the Photoshop Filter menu under the name "Alien Skin Exposure 2". There is a sub-menu that offers you two options: Black & White Film or Color Film. Clicking either of them opens a dialog box and inside that dialog box there are a lot of options! When I received the program I was particularly looking for some B&W conversions that I could use to inject drama into my work.

What you're seeing above is the full list of regular B&W films that Exposure 2 offers. There are some notable entries, but there are also some notable absentees. Where is Ilford FP4 125? Kodak Technical Pan 25?

The interface is nice and clean. I like it. On the left you have your pre-sets, on the right you can see what they will do to your image immediately. A nice touch is the option to view the preview screen with a number of different splits, diagonal, horizontal, vertical, etc. My preferred way of previewing the changes is to simply use the toggle button. Easy on, easy off.

Once you've selected your film type, done what you wanted to with the sharpening (focus) and tone curves (they are on their own tabs within the filter), you can also directly affect the quaiity of the grain emulation on your image. As you can see in the screenshot above you can apply the grain differently in midtones, shadows or highlights. You can also push your "film" by a number of stops and even set the size of the grain! This is very cool, but it gets cooler. When you click OK the computer and Photoshop go away for a few seconds and when they return you're back looking at your image in Photoshop and there is a new layer on top of your original showing the emulation. The original image is untouched. Now that's cool! Very thoughtful of the folks at Alien Skin (you can switch this off if you prefer to work on one layer).

I must say that playing with Exposure 2 is addictive and if you're indecisive on what look to choose, you could end up spending a lot of time fiddling around before you finally settle on something that you like. This is what happened to me. Looking for a dramatic B&W conversion took me a while because I couldn't decide on Ilford HP5 or Tri-X 400 or my own modification of their defaults.

So what's the grain look like?
In the past I have seen some grain simulations that were just plain nasty. They didn't look anything like grain. I'm happy to say that what I am seeing with the film simulations in Exposure 2 is very pleasing to my eyes. Roll your mouse over the 100% crop below and see for yourself:

This is the grain pattern produced by the default Tri-X 400 conversion. As mentioned it is possible to create your own unique version of this grain by fiddling with the sliders under the grain tab in the main dialog box. You can then save your settings and apply them in much the same way that you work with the defaults provided by Exposure 2.

Next page : Working in colour