Alien Skin Software 1.0.0.174Īlien Skin Software is known for great quality software, and pretty basic (i.e., no-frills) user-interfaces. UPDATE: Click here to see my new review for 2.0. However, there is an added benefit to FocalPoint in that it offers some interesting presets for nice vignettes and the spider is great for offering control over the effect for a really slick border to your photo.įocalPoint is included with the great product suite offered by onOne Software called Plugin Suite 4.5 which is offered at a discount for readers of this blog.Ĭlick here to learn more about FocalPoint. In addition, using its strongest blur, still results in a blur that isn't super strong as shown in this image:įocalPoint is easy to use and offers a fantastic UI, but its spider control doesn't yield the best results for a shot like this. This control works great if you have a fairly simple oval or planar region that you want apply your blur towards, but it has holes in real world applications such as the the situation below where we want to make my lovely expectant wife the focal point and ignore my daughter and the noise in the background.

OnOne's way of trying to simulate the sweet bokeh created by great lenses like the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM or Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G is to apply a radial blur to the entire image and then let you tweak the settings in its UI as shown below using its unique 'spider' control: This article will compare two add-ins from two top notch companies - onOne Software and Alien Skin Software as well as Photoshop CS4's own Lens Blur filter.

Lately there seems to be a trend of trying to create that sweet bokeh you get from expensive lenses using Photoshop add-in filters.

Onone photo suite 9 review