Web Presenter
Many of us have a belief that resizing incrementally produces a better final image. That is, you change the size only 10% at a time until the desired size is reached. I very strongly believe in this, and have run many many tests to prove it to myself. It's a bit more work, but definitely produces a slightly better image.
This is what WP does - quickly and easily.
Basically WP just does a downsize (it does not upsize!) of an image to a specified size by changing the image size in 10% steps. This is very easy to do in an action, but WP intelligently stops at the size you choose. With an action you have to keep running the action until you are close to the desired size, then do the final resize by hand so you get the exact dimensions you want. WP makes this much easier. Ridiculously easy. And fast.
Now I'm going to spend the next paragraph knocking one quirk in WP. So go into this paragraph remembering that WP is extremely handy, does it's job *very* well, and is much faster than you could do it by hand.
One quirk with WP is that I don't like it's math. I will crop an image using Marquee locked to 6x4 aspect, then resize to 600x400 pixels. Sometimes WP makes this 600x399. Sometimes 599x401. I can never figure how or why it does this. Also it automatically updates one side when you type in the other. So I enter "600" for width and hit tab to get to height, and the height is automagically changed to 400 (or 399, or...). Now if I hit Tab again, it goes back to the Width box - and it changes the Width based on it's screwed-up math from the height I entered. Hit Tab again, it goes back to height and it changes again! So if I just keep hitting Tab I will eventually get to a 1x1 image even though I originally typed in 600.
It's very screwed up. But is it a big deal? Probably not. Does it really matter if you post a 600x400 or a 600x399 image? It mattered to me since I'm creating a website and I needed locked sizes for all my images. I wanted all my images to be 600x400, period. So this quirk really ticked me off. But for web posts, or even prints, it doesn't really matter if it's off by a pixel. So take this with a grain of salt.
So besides the screwy math, WP is very very handy and will help cut down processing time. I can easily recommend it, but only if this sounds handy to you. For $20 it's not a huge bargain, but I'd do it again because $20 is cheap to me.
Shadow Recovery Pro
I haven't used this since I got PS CS because Shadow Recovery is built in. But this was damned handy for a while. It made short quick work of recovering data and brightening shadow areas. I have been doing a manual Shadow Recovery in PS since version 3, and had the process down pat. But SR Pro was much faster and very nearly as good as my manual procedure. I used it whenever I need it, and I liked it.
But then I got PS CS, so it never gets touched any more.
I recommend this if you often need shadow recovery but don't have PS CS. If you have PS 7 then you could run a curve or levels on a color range - SR Pro is faster and better though. If you have Elements then you don't have Levels or Curves, so SR Pro will be priceless to you.
For owners of PS CS: Not too useful.
For owners of PS 7: Extremely useful, but can be done by hand.
For owners of Elements: Priceless I'd say.
Intellisharpen II
This applet rocks. It sharpens, that's it, but does so with a good deal of intelligence and many options. It uses an edge mask (and seems to use blend-if layer options) and does a damned good job.
Options exist for High- or Low-ISO shots - setting High-ISO reduces the sharpening of noise particles at a cost of a tiny bit of detail loss.
You can choose a sharpening level between 1 and 100 - much better than the old days of Intellisharpen I where you had only 15 levels. You can also choose to sharpen fine details, also at levels from 1 to 100. It takes a little longer, but the time isn't noticable at web-sized images. I've found that proper use of this option can save some slightly out-of-focus shots and make it look great.
Options exist for halo size - Normal, Lower, or 0%. I use 0% for all my web photos since I don't believe that halos should be noticable at this size. Normal would be good for prints, where a small halo is preferred to make an image look sharper. Lower Halo should be used for contrasty prints, though it would also look good for certain types of web images. I've never needed to try it though.
An option exists to Reduce Color Noise, which can sometimes occur when sharpening some images. Basically it seems to rely more on a luminosity blend for sharpening. I rarely need to do this, but when needed it's a huge benefit.
You can choose to tweak the sharpening in 2 different ways. One is to simply sharpen the image and if it looks too sharp you can change the Intensity Tweak to bring it back down. Or you can enable Levels and Sharpening Tweak before you sharpen, and then you'll get fine-grained controls allowing you to tweak certain steps as it goes. I haven't needed to get to this level as I find it does a damned good job automatically.
You can also choose a combination of settings and save this for quick retrieval.
Personally I feel that everyone should own this. It is so fast and so easy and produces excellent results. I've used this for about a month now, and almost every shot you've seen from me has been run through it. It's great.
Now I have to say that 98% of my experience with this has been for web posts, and it's 99.99% perfect. I might not run this on all my prints though. By the time you get to that size it often pays to perform some extra steps which will result in better sharper prints. I would probably use this as my *only* sharpening tool for maybe 50% of my prints, with the remaining prints needing some better manual fine-tuning. But I would probably still end using Intellisharpen II for the final sharpen right before print. So I expect that I'd still run this in some fashion on 95% of my prints - it just might not be the only sharpening tool used.
I have not yet found anything better or easier than this tool for *web* shots. Other tools - and manual methods - exist which will be comparable, but I don't think they'd be as easy or as fast. Many better tools exist for prints, but not at this price, not at this speed, and not as easy.
This program is very highly recomended, and I think it will be the best $25 you've spent on photo software. Get it.
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