[Pavel]

On One is company known for a very well respected collection of plug-ins. Right now, the whole package is $200 off and it costs $399. It is the best price I ever saw. I just bought it. For those of you who are NIKers, this pack seems to complement NIK very well and there is little overlap.

By the way - I have no relationship with the company except that I just bought their package. This post is a service for members.

Pavel

[shuttertalk]

Who is this Pavel guy again? I don't recognize the username. Sounds like a spammer - maybe I should bam him...

[Pavel]

Oh please, do not BAM me, not that!

[shuttertalk]

Touché

[Zig]

Best of, Pavel; I also bought this some time ago and have to confess it's the traditional curate's egg: good in parts. I found I drew many conclusions from the paucity of posts on their user forums on anything other than crashes and complaints. Mercifully I find Genuine Fractals, the Frame-thingy and a couple of other bits justify the rest, but as yet still cannot get Photo Tools to work without crashing CS2. Keep a handy eye on the FAQs. I hope it works with not a squeak though.

[Pavel]

Thanks Zig. I tried the demo of phototools before purchase and had no problem. Let us hope for the best. NIK works flawlessly for me. I am truly amazed by NIK - it allows me to pay attention to what I wish to do rather than how to do it. Amazing software. I do most of my editing in NIK, even if I know how to do it in CS. Fortunately, On One seems mostly complementary to NIK.

[Zig]

Good man: delighted!
Thank you; I hear good things about Nik and its reliability, and one day I might treat myself to Silver FX. I have a love/hate thing with OnOne: I bought the Suite as a birthday deal for myself and find it an odd mix of "really useful pro" and tacky, amateurish superfluity. From what I've seen of the Photo Tools interface(before the crash hits) I like its one-shot effects but was frustrated that there is no way of getting in and fiddling with it apart from an opacity/layer slider. It's as though the programmers took a bit of the Crappy Snapper approach of Paint Shop and a bit of Adobe and made a mad frankensteinian clone of both: Genuine Fractals is very good indeed, and the Mask Pro half decent as is the Frame thing...but I do find the Photo Fix and the selective focus thing a bit lame. The language of the text is also very puzzling: the help files and assistance with Genuine Fractals is reasonably sound English, with an obvious sense of professional register...but the English of the rest is poorly proofed and sounds as if the devs have no knowledge of light or what the photographic process entails. I thought it was a reasonable piece of stuff put out by somewhere in eastern Europe, judging by the language...and was quite stunned to find it's based in the US(?). Its Tech Support is just 2 guys: severely overworked but very courteous and approachable, I found. Bless 'em, they sent me no end of versions to try and find one that worked! In the end, I just get on with all the hard pp stuff and make it up myself in CS2 now...but I do think that Genuine Fractals and the Frame thing really help me on the print side.
One thing I found interesting: uprezzing a fresh tiff in GF, then working on that, then downrezzing in GF to the print output size..it really does appear as if one has gained extra sharpness from somewhere.
These are only my own findings, of course: I can see many a time I'd have loved some of the mono fixes in Photo Tools! Really, best of with it, and I'm really glad it works for you!