In the last day or so LightZone has been updated to version 2.4. The most important new features are:
Revamped Tone Mapper - re-light virtually any image with a single slider
New - Vibrance - create more vivid color, with a new vibrance control
The Black & White Tool turns images into great Black-and-Whites with a single strength [...]

I’ve written before about simulating film grain using some Photoshop actions that I made available for download (see Simulating Film Grain In Photoshop). I kind of like the look of slight grain - for me it helps overcome that slight “plasticky” look of digital although funnily enough I tend to use it more with color [...]

In a recent contribution to the LightZone forum (see this thread Split Toning - LightZone Forums) I made available for download 3 Templates using Color Balance layers in LZ that mimiced conventional darkroom toning effects in LZ. The 3 effects were Selenium, Platinum/Palladium and a bluish Warm/Cool split tone. They appear to have been quite [...]

I can’t stress enough the importance of controlling the tonal range of your images, most especially with monochrome work (see Tone Control In Image Editing). As I’ve said before, with monochrome it’s all you’ve really got to play with. As an illustration I will use this new image of mine:

Click here to buy this print [...]

I just found an interesting article, Get Those Highlights Right, and Shadows Too, over on the Digital Outback Photo site. The article was written by George Barr (see George’s blog Behind The Lens) and describes a very quick and easy way to safely edit the highlights and shadows for that extra pop and sparkle. George’s [...]

In LightZone - The Review I extolled the virtues of Lightcraft’s LightZone image editing software. In this post I will use 3 examples to go into more detail about how this remarkably intuitive application can quickly and easily enhance images that you may have given up on. I should say here that I have no [...]

I’ve mentioned that I use Lightcraft’s LightZone before and as I have really grown to love this application I figured now is a good time to write about it at greater length. The software is available in two versions LightZone and LightZone Basic. Actually whatever version you use the software is the same, your purchased [...]

As part of my free Polachrome Photoshop action (see How To Get The Polachrome Look Using Photoshop) there was an Add Grain action. I’ve explained before that effectively simulating film grain in Photoshop is more than simply adding noise to the image. The correct way is to add varying amounts of noise after separating out [...]

In my earlier post How To Get The Polachrome Look Using Photoshop I made available a Photoshop action to achieve the effect. In the post I wrote that some experimentation was needed to prepare your images before applying the effect because of the color shifts and increase in contrast. Here I’m going to show a [...]

Yesterday I was bemoaning the fact that Polachrome film was no longer available and promised that today I would post a howto on achieving a look alike effect with Photoshop. Well, as promised, here it is.
Actually this is not so much a howto more an example of the look and a free downloadable Photoshop action [...]