Tiffen Dfx Essentials Creative Digital Effects Software
by Tiffen
Our Price: $59.95
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Category: Digital Camera
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Digital product summary information
Manufacturer: TiffenFormat: CD-ROM
Platform: Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP
Model: DFXESS
Product features:
- 37 filters with hundreds of presets
- On-screen tutorial with audio
- Preview allows you to see the effect before applying the filter
- Easy-to-use interface
- Works with Windows and Macintosh
Digital camera reviews of Tiffen Dfx Essentials Creative Digital Effects Software
Digital camera Review: Good at some specific things, but clunky user interface
Summary: 3 Stars
Note: This review is for the Mac version of the Tiffen Dfc Essentials product. I am an avid novice photographer and I shoot a Canon 40D, using Aperture for most of my post-capture photo refinement. I shoot about 200 to 600 photos a week, and manage them all in an Aperture catalog, which stores all the EXIF and other meta data as well.
I do not use Photoshop or other "heavy duty" image editing applications, so I was hopeful that Dfx Essentials would be a nice addition to my basic Aperture workflow. If it was offered as a set of Aperture plug-ins, I think that the Tiffen Dfx Essentials tools would rate four or five stars. The filters and effects are extremely flexible and can easily achieve some very nice effects that are either not possible or much more difficult with Aperture. Some of the effects are just plain goofy, but for the most part the filters work very well and are very useful for portrait and still life photography (e.g. blurring, halos, highlighting, color enhancements, b&w effects and filters, etc.)
However, the Mac version of the application suffers from a very poorly designed user interface in my opinion. I'm not sure what the engineers were thinking, but they may have been trying to emulate the Mac experience without ever having actually used a Mac before. The colors are dark gray, and the file browsing menus are a weird cross between Windows and Mac, but are more confusing than either.
This interface causes the workflow to be much more difficult that it should be, in my opinion. For example, to edit an image in Tiffen Dfx that you are looking at in Aperture (my starting point for workflow), I have to save off a version of the file somewhere easy to find (like in a folder on my desktop) and then open Dfx up, use the terrible file browser to find and select the image (which must be done by memorizing the file name because it lacks thumbnail images), and then conduct the editing in Dfx. Once the image is finalized in Dfx, it must be imported BACK into Aperture as a separate file from the original master (thereby breaking the association to the original file).
After a couple of weeks of using Dfx, I found this process to be more of a hassle than I was willing to deal with for all but the most specific types of projects which Dfx does particularly well (like black & white effects and blurring backgrounds)
Overall, I believe it is a nice tool for those "special" photos that you want to retouch before having them printed, but the clumsy user interface (on a Mac) make it just too unpleasant to use frequently.
Summary of Tiffen Dfx Essentials Creative Digital Effects Software
Dfx Essentials software allows you to apply the most popular creative photographic filters after you've taken the shot and is available for both Windows or Macintosh users. This software is a selective version of Tiffen's professional award-winning Dfx Creative Digital Effects software. This latest edition to the Tiffen award-winning software line, gives digital camera owners the ability to explore their creative options with an easy to use application that includes a step-by-step on-screen tutorial with audio. Dfx Essentials compliments any digital camera and features a definitive selection of 37 specialized filters and effects with hundreds of built-in presets and the ability to create and save custom versions and custom setups to repeat favorite looks. Dfx Essentials offers the ability to easily create multiple filter and effect layers, color, clone and red-eye removal tools, with non-destructive crop, rotate and scaling. The intuitive filter palette with thumbnail previews makes it simple to evaluate effects before applying the filter to an image. Dfx Essentials is compatible with a wide range of file types including camera raw and final images can be saved in either tif or jpg formats.Accessories
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