Let's talk about cool Photoshop/AE plugins

[duke2]

Yes, lets. At my previous place of employment I used Digital Fusion, but it's completely ridiculous to buy such an expensive post package at an Architectural firm just to do stuff to renders, so i'm back to good old Photoshop/AE.

So what cool plugins do people recommend for achieving things like DOF, highlights and such? Pro-EXR looks like quite a good investment for the file-handling side of things, and I was also looking at Frischluft fLAIR (it has a cool highlight plugin that does lens flare type things on high spots - could feed it the self illum buffer to put these on halogens and such) and lenscare plugins (DOF). Post-DOF is always not as fun, but i'm sure of all the Photoshop post-DOF plugins out there, one of them does it better.

And here's another thing - does anyone use After Effects rather than photoshop so they have the flexibility of being able to just load it up and render out a frame after doing a new render? Putting a new render into an existing Photoshop file and remembering what the hell I did to things each time seems to be the most un-fun part of using Photoshop, which is eliminated in AE.

[lukx]

Yes, lets. At my previous place of employment I used Digital Fusion, but it's completely ridiculous to buy such an expensive post package at an Architectural firm just to do stuff to renders, so i'm back to good old Photoshop/AE.

So what cool plugins do people recommend for achieving things like DOF, highlights and such? Pro-EXR looks like quite a good investment for the file-handling side of things, and I was also looking at Frischluft fLAIR (it has a cool highlight plugin that does lens flare type things on high spots - could feed it the self illum buffer to put these on halogens and such) and lenscare plugins (DOF). Post-DOF is always not as fun, but i'm sure of all the Photoshop post-DOF plugins out there, one of them does it better.

And here's another thing - does anyone use After Effects rather than photoshop so they have the flexibility of being able to just load it up and render out a frame after doing a new render? Putting a new render into an existing Photoshop file and remembering what the hell I did to things each time seems to be the most un-fun part of using Photoshop, which is eliminated in AE.

for dof: http://www.richardrosenman.com/

I'm courious, so if you could buy DF you would prefer to work with it instead of PS?
You didn't need any plugs when working with DF? to achieve DOF, etc?
Were you able to edit photographs in DF (clone, paint etc)?

[mike_kennedy]

Lenscare for AE is the way to go for AE and Richards Plug-in for PS rocks, the last version we bought could only work in PS but was very powerful.
The nice part about both of these plug-ins is that they can come fairly close to in camera DOF from VRAY, not as nice, but waaayyyy faster...
Cheers
Mike K

[dlparisi]

And here's another thing - does anyone use After Effects rather than photoshop so they have the flexibility of being able to just load it up and render out a frame after doing a new render? Putting a new render into an existing Photoshop file and remembering what the hell I did to things each time seems to be the most un-fun part of using Photoshop, which is eliminated in AE.

Except for the advantages of using 32 bit workspaces I can't see much advantage in using AE over photoshop for stills. Using adjustment layers and smart layers with filters I can acheive almost the same workflow as AE. I typically set up my photoshop files so I can just plop in the new layer at the bottom of the stack and everything above it just modifies or adds to that layer. Other than perhaps copying a mask or somehting it's pretty easy to just shoot off a new render and then drop it into the stack.

[Neilg]

Putting a new render into an existing Photoshop file and remembering what the hell I did to things each time seems to be the most un-fun part of using Photoshop, which is eliminated in AE.

It's also eliminated in PS if you use a non destructive workflow.

I use combustion for stills now, but thats only because it's node based and I can keep a couple of different versions (colour grading/levels) within the same workspace - at an early stage I find it really helps decide how to develop it.

On the subject of plugins, i've been getting some good milage from sapphire lighting ones but you need to take into account them seeming useless until you start getting creative with them.

[dcullipher]

The relighting suite at http://www.minning.de/software

Uses the normals pass to adjust lighting in a multipass comp. And its free!

[Tim in Hollywood]

Ultimatte AdvantEdge

We use Ultimatte AdvantEdge every few days. www.Ultimatte-Software.com

Typically use it with Photoshop, but sometimes with After Effects.

Much better than any other green screen plugins we've tried. With the Ultimatte plug-in, we keep all of the fine details of our people or objects. Not just an ugly (fake-looking) cutout.

It's not cheap. We think it's worth it, though.

[duke2]

That relighting thing looks cool. Even for little things like adding specular highlights that dont make sense but look good. It brings up another thing though - has anyone tried zborntoy as anything other than a toy? I mean it does ambient occlusion based on the depth and normal map which could be handy for stills.

And yes I'm still at the office at 4:15 AM.