Alien Skin’s Exposure is simple, powerful, and fun

I was recently sent a copy of Exposure from the folks at Alien Skin to kick the tires and report here. While I had heard of Alien skin before, I have never used their products, and I had no idea what Exposure was or did.

In short, Exposure is able to make digital photos look like they were made with film. Lots of film types can be mimicked and there are presets for dozens of real-world film stocks. But mimick is too understated a word. The abilities of this product astounded me. Using the built-in presets I was able to produce a plethora of effects, all at the push of a button. I really liked the TRI-X 400 setting as that is what I cut my teeth on back in the seventies when I started taking photographs.

Another feature I really liked was the sharpening and softening tools. They do a much better, more professional job than a simple unsharp mask tool can.

I still have a lot to try with this product. There are tons of possibilities toning photos, colour filters, and special effects like lomo and push processing, something that film users are familiar with but doesn’t exist in digital.

For someone like me, an advanced amateur, Alien Skin’s Exposure takes the complexity out of complex photoshop methods. Professional grade results are at your fingertips with a little experimentation.

While I did receive an evaluation copy of Exposure for this article, I did not receive any form of incentive to write this article.

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