Digital Photography Plugin List

Question

Lets find out what plugins the community is using to enhance their photo's and why that plugin matters to them.

It would be great to get a list of the most readily used plugins so please comment by adding the following:

• What is your favourite plugin for digital photography?
• What are its strengths & weaknesses?
• How does it fit into your workflow?
• What application is it designed to work in?

Please make all posts community wiki to allow updates and editing as required.

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Current List (Alphabetical Order)

• Bibble Pro
• Neat Image
• Nik Software Bundle
• Noise Ninja
• OnOne Resize 7
• Topaz Labs
• UFRaw
• Wavelet Denoise (Gimp)

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Update #1 - We only have 3 suggestions? Maybe this is a topic that the community is not interested in......

Update #2 - From 3 to 5. I will start assuming that either the community is not interested in plugins for digital photography, or its something that this site does not need to cover. I will keep this page open for the short term but I think long term due to the way stack exchange sites work will need to pick an answer as accepted so monitoring is no longer required.

Update #3 - Have accepted an answer so question is closed as its not something the community wants.

Answer 1

I've become hooked on the Topaz Labs collection over the last little while. The two biggest I've put to substantial use are:

Topaz DeNoise

Strengths are that it's an excellent noise reduction package, especially if you follow their instructions in their tutorial videos. There are a number of reviews for this utility out there, so a quick Google search will easily find them. The Luminous Landscape folks did a review on the previous version that convinced me to try it. I tried it and I stopped using Noise Ninja (which is also excellent).

I got to admit, I'm not finding a huge amount of weakness in it. It does precisely what it claims to do and it does it very well, hard to beat, though it doesn't have the brush feature of Noise Ninja for undoing noise reduction in spots. I'm using it a little less now, and lot lighter when I do, since I moved the Pentax K-5, but I'm still using it. Here's the outcome of an ISO 20000 (not a typo) shot of mine:

Visit my website (linked in my profile) to get a larger version of that if you want. Still shrunk for the web, but about twice the size.

In terms of software, it's a Photoshop plugin and covers from PS7 and up, 32 and 64 bit. It is compatible with other software that supports the Adobe plugin model.

Topaz Detail

The plugin is primarily designed around bringing out image detail, but it does a whole bunch of stuff that I generally end up using it for more artistic outcomes.

Strengths would be in the control, it ships with some nifty presets, but then you can tweak and fiddle with the outcome as much as you like. Weaknesses, well, again not a huge amount since it does what it claims to do. Basically, same requirements and limitations as Denoise.

I just bought Topaz InFocus (today) and so I haven't had it long enough to make comments. Preliminary reviews and some sample I saw convinced me to give a go and as they're offering an introductory price of $29.99 right now and really like the other two plugins, I figured what the heck.

Answer 2

• Plugin: Nik Software Complete Bundle
• Applications: Lightroom / Photoshop (I purchased Lightroom version)
• Workflow: Allows complete integration into my workflow as covers noise reduction, colour enhancement, effects, b&w conversion and HDR processing
• Strengths: It receives lots of praise from a lot of photographers in the commercial and prosumer world
• Weaknesses: Does not integrate into Lightroom like you would expect when using DNG/RAW processing as creates a new TIF file

The bundle is a fantastic one-stop-shop for most of your digital photo requirements. If you have the money to spend, the photoshop version may allow better integration into your workflow for non-destructive editing.

Answer 3

My fav used to be Noise Ninja, but the new noise reduction engine in LR3 rendered it obsolete.

Answer 4

I'm a Bibble Pro user and I installed a handful of plugins, but there are three that I use recurrently:

• GradFilter - similar to the Gradient filter of Lightroom, very useful to correct lighting in some photos
• zPerspector - perspective correction (a huge flaw of Bibble of not having this by default)
• Black and White - simple but very configurable B&W convertion

PS - Also use NoiseNinja a lot, but it comes bundled with Bibble

Answer 5

Probably the best noise reduction software I've used is NeatImage. This may or may not be a plugin, I used the standalone version but there are plugins for PS and Aperture. Nowadays I have less need of this kind of software, but this one is top quality: it uses noise profiles, specific each camera, that you can create or download from the site

Answer 6

In Gimp my favourite plugins are Ufraw and wavelet denoise. I have written (and published) my own plugin to do batch processing of raw images and this is certainly the plugin I use the most.

Answer 7

Even with pixel counts climbing to the skies, I still find a use for onOne Genuine Fractals Print Pro. It'll give you great enlargements -- a lot better than any of the native photo editor resize options I've used.

Answer 8

For GIMP there is Resynthesizer which basically does the same thing as Photoshop's content-aware fill. Only for free :-)