As far as the quality of the plugin, I’ll let the pictures here speak for themselves. You’ll know right away whether it’s going to work for the type of projects you usually work on. I personally found the filters to range from “wow, I wish I’d had this when…” to “I can’t imagine when I’d ever use this.” On the most extreme filters (such as the lava lamp preset in the Ghost filter) there is some color banding, but I figure this just adds to the craziness of the look.
Some surprisingly realistic pencil sketch simulations can be coaxed from the Hand Drawn filter.
Now let's single out a few of the filters that I thought were useful. My favorite was Colorize, because it can produce some really unique “film looks” such as two-tone technicolor that are hard to get elsewhere. The idea behind this filter is also interesting, as it claims to emulate Ted Turner’s annoying practice of colorizing black and white films. What it does in reality is turns your video totally black and white, and then adds back in only colors that you specify. In moderation, this produces some neat effects, although, when pushed, certain parts of the picture get patchy and jittery.
The presets in the Line Drawing filter produce some very cool retro-chic video, mostly due to the hip color combinations NewBlueFX has setup.
I also liked the Airbrush filter, and thought it looked best when the parameters were maxed out so that all small details in the picture disappeared, creating a strange cartoon/anime effect. Alternately, Dreamglow only seemed useful in moderation, producing a unique diffusion for dreamy or romantic scenes at the lowest settings, but completely washing out the video when pushed. The Hand Drawn filter also produced some fairly realistic-looking emulations of pencil sketches, which I could see being useful in historical documentaries.
The Metallic filter does exactly what its name implies, which is to make everything in the scene look like it's made of different sorts of metal.
Value
At $139.95, this plugin isn’t ultra-cheap, but is definitely in the range of most microfilmmakers. (Plus, if you get this as part of one of NewBlueFX's multi packs, the price is substantially lower.) If you need your video to look like it was run through stock Photoshop filters, this is the way to do it, and it’s definitely going to be worth the money. Even though I personally couldn’t find enough useful filters to make it worth it for me, I’m sure there are plenty of creative people out there who will find practical uses for this plugin.
Final Comments I can definitely say that I had a great time testing out all of the different presets in this plugin; it brought me back to the excitement I felt when trying out the built-in Photoshop filters years ago. NewBlue has created a piece of software that produces some really interesting and fun results, but I’m just not sure how useful they’re going to be in these days of hyper-realism. However, as I said, maybe someone out there will “bring back the 90s” by applying this plugin to their videos in order to create a fresh take on Photoshop’s well-worn stock filters.
Ease
of Use
10.0
Depth
of Options
9.0
Performance
8.0
Value
5.0
Overall Score
8.0
Ryan Graham is the director of Livelihood, a critically acclaimed ultra-low budget zombie comedy. He also runs 37.5 Productions, a post production company specializing in giving a Hollywood sheen to independent films. In his spare time he is the lead guitarist for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.
