But for the time being – Photoshop and Aperture are your installation options. From what I understand, a LR set is in R&D right now, and should be released in very short order. One downside to the Topaz plugins is that they are only functional in Photoshop and Aperture. This is definitely a product to consider as a part of your arsenal of tools though – I’ve already seen so many possibilities for photo galleries and output options on my own collections that I could be busy for months just reviewing what these plugins have to offer. The rest of their various plugins will have to be reviewed individually on the blog, so this means during September, I’ll take a more detailed look at each of the plugins – clearly more than one will have to be addressed each week, and I’ll try to post an image gallery so you can see the effects of each plugin on some photos. This alone would be worth a giveaway prize – but this is just one of the entire suite that Topaz Labs has donated to the blog/podcast for our next giveaway. To see the overall effect each adjustment style has on your images, visit this companion photo gallery here that shows each – the original is listed first, followed by the 21 different adjustment styles! The styles go alphabetically in order in the gallery: On each style I just left the default sliders in place, but what’s especially cool is that these slider values change from one style to another, so if you are paying attention to the numbers, and you like a particular style, but want to drop just a touch of the contrast, or bump a touch of the noise, you can do so easily and intuitively! Pretty darn cool in my book. That’s right, I took my one image and ran it through each of the 21 possible adjustment styles. I’d like to give some face time to each style but there just isn’t room here in the blog to do each justice. You can select a creative style, then edit within that style to go for a unique look and feel all your own! This is a very clever and unique approach to photography work flows, because now you can look at your photo with various edits in an simple and easy preview to see how various adjustment styles will look on them. To the bottom center are all the slider controls for exposure, details, color, and yes – even noise handling. See that left-hand column? There’s 21 different variations of creative adjustments done to your photo to give you a specific look and feel to your images – all at the click of a button. Lo and behold, within this one plugin are 21 different photo adjustment presets! That’s right – 21! Here’s a quick look at the interface: So, into the first plugin I went – the Topaz Adjust.

The green stalks and purple base also served as a nice contrasting set of colors to see how things progressed. Kind of a neat image: one flower all by itself ina sea of red tulips. Wanting to find an image that had some depth, color and tonal range to it, I picked one from a photo walk I did in Boulder a month or so ago of the tulips: I’ll address those in another post, just because, well… even just the 7 plugins for Photoshop was going to be a lot of plugins to review in one blog post! Thinking I was up to the challenge, I powered on and installed each package, then fired up Photoshop. There’s also two video plugins available: Enhance and Moment. In the case of the Topaz Suite – boy did I bite off more than I could chew! The Topaz Labs package consists of 7 different Photoshop plugins with somewhat descriptive names for each plugin package, ranging between: As is always the case, I like to say “thanks” in my own small way by giving the vendor some “air time” on the blog with a personalized review of whatever it is they are contributing. So, as everyone is likely already aware, Topaz Labs approached me recently to sponsor a giveaway and generously donated their entire suite for some lucky listener/reader.

Topaz simplify reviews