Software Recommendations

There are a few tools in my arsenal that I use weekly if not daily. The first and most important is of course Adobe Photoshop CS3. Photoshop is the foundation of everything I do to images. I use it to crop, color correct, edit, enhance, and much more. The next most used software is Corel Painter. I use Corel Painter to make that painterly effect to my images. I usually will enhance in Photoshop then bring into Painter. Those are the big two I use.
Besides the big two there various plug ins that I find useful. Photoshop has a lot of functionality and built in filters but even with the massive range you have with Photoshop there are various plug ins that can enhance a good image to make it great. The first is nik color efex. This is photographic filters for photoshop. The great thing about these filters is you have so much control as to how powerful the filter is.
There are many other plug ins that I do not use but have many friends who highly recommend them. The first is Lucis Art or Lucis Pro 6.0. Below is what Lucis has to say about their software:

Lucis^® Image Processing Software, an easy, fundamentally new way to view image content

Images often contain hundreds to tens of thousands of contrast levels. Our eyes can only differentiate 32 levels of contrast. Therefore fine contrast variations are only partially recognized as textures our eyes can't resolve.

Lucis^® makes visible the fine contrast variations (details) you would like to see.

Using two cursors (sliders) in Preview Mode, select the range of contrast variances to view. Lucis compares each pixel to every other pixel along hundreds of radial lines in two directions to map out contrast variances. Contrast variances within the selected range are enhanced and contrast variances outside the range are diminished. The relative emphasis of contrast information is shifted, but information is not thrown away. Lucis reveals detail that other image-processing methods can’t.

Lucis reveals detail throughout the image, in both the bright and dark areas.

Dinoflagellate images courtesy of Prof. Brian Matsumoto, U. of Southern California, Santa Barbara, CA. The single-luminance-channel Lucis image most clearly defines the transparent reticulum of the cell and reveals details within the dark central mass of the chloroplasts. Lucis most fully reveals the full extent of the central fissure that divides the mass into two halves and shows details, such as varicosities, within the transparent strands.

Lucis processing only effects the intensity information in an image. To process a color image, Lucis converts the RGB (Red Green Blue) information to HSL (Hue Saturation Luminance). Lucis processes the Luminance information, and then combines the new Luminance (L') with the unaltered Hue and Saturation. The HSL' information is converted to RGB. Color images will experience color shifts as Lucis extracts the image detail.

Lucis 4.2.1 processes color images as single luminance channel images.

Lucis Pro 5.0 allows the user to process each RGB channel separately with differing Lucis processing parameters, so the details in each color can be seen as clearly as possible. This is essential for applications like Fluorescence Microscopy.

Fluorescence Microscopy Images

Obelia image courtesy of Prof. Brian Matsumoto.	Lucis Pro 5.0 image

The next plugin software is from Alien Skin. They offer numerous products the most talked about being Blow Up (which is similar to Genuine Fractals) and Snap Art.

-Mike

Digital Photos on Canvas
Digital Photos on Canvas Express