Tiffen Dfx Creative Digital Effects Version 3.0

Photographers know the advantages of using preset filters and effects to improve their still photographs. More than just adding a special effect, digital filters and effects also allow a photographer to reach the goal of making a digital file fulfill his or her vision.

And while user interfaces have improved with many stand-alone and plug-in software titles meant for still photography, the same can’t always be said for interfaces that have existed in popular video editing software. Though many include important filters and controls, the process of using them hasn’t always been intuitive or user-friendly.

Tiffen Dfx Creative Digital Effects Version 3.0 provides the photographer-turned-videographer a software package that can work seamlessly both with still photography and video. Available as both a stand-alone and plug-in, the software features 125 individual filters and thousands of customizable presets, which include the ability to simulate over 2,000 popular Tiffen glass filters.

The latest version of the software includes new features such as Color Shadow, which creates a high-contrast image overlay with the gradient; DeBand, which removes banding artifacts from an image by smoothing pixels in banded areas while retaining important detail; DeBlock, which removes blocking artifacts created as a result of high compression; and DeNoise to remove noise, and to use when shooting at high ISOs. It also features film stocks filters that emulate 113 different color and black-and-white photographic film stocks; all of these filters and effects are easily applied using a very simple interface.

The 3-panel interface includes a window for displaying presets, a large preview screen for your image, and extensive controls for the filter or special effect that is being applied to the clip. In the plug-in version of the software, you simply drag the wanted effect onto an individual clip or sequence and then by hitting a small control icon, you launch the plug-in’s interface window.

Though you can simply apply an effect by dragging a preset over the clip in the preview window, the real power of the software comes from being able to change its parameters, which you can do by moving individual sliders. The effects of such changes are immediately displayed on the clip image. You are unable to play the movie within the software, so it is important to choose a point in the timeline as your point of reference for any changes. And if there is a particular recipe that you come up with using the sliders, you can easily save your own custom preset, which will appear as a thumbnail in the preset panel. There you can also collect your favorite filters and effects for easy access.

Now, having the ability to use the same interface to enhance both stills and video is a big advantage, because you don’t have to learn a completely different workflow when you want to use your favorite effects. Whether it’s color correction, lens correction, black-and-white conversion or even lighting effects, Dfx 3.0 provides you the ability to work easily regardless of what kind of digital files you are working with.

Color accuracy has also been improved in this latest version of the software, which now allows it to use the ICC code being used to profile your monitor. This helps create a consistency of color as you move between the plug-in and your video editing application.

The software is compatible with Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid editing systems. Multiprocessor acceleration has been added to significantly speed up the performance of the majority of filters. The stand-alone software supports 64–bit processing on the Mac and both 32-bit and 64-bit processing on Windows operating systems.

Though there are lot of software titles that provide similar filters and effects, Dfx 3.0 is one of the few software titles that allow you to work seamlessly back and forth between stills and video. So, for photographers who find themselves delving both into stills and motion, the software provides a single destination for enhancing and improving digital imagery.

The software is available in a variety of different configurations. It is available as a stand-alone and plug-in for video only for $599.95. The photo and video/film plug-in is available for $659.95, and the stand-alone and plug-ins for both still and video is offered at $789.95.    

Ibarionex Perello is a photographer, writer and host of The Candid Frame Photography podcast (www.thecandidframe.com). He is also the author of Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography Using Available Light.