A new toy from Topaz Labs. This one makes pretty star effects. of course, they already have lens effects as a plugin, but this is an easy way to squeeze a few more bucks out of the loyal customers :-)
Anyway, I thought I’d try out the one month free trial and the very first thing I noticed is how badly the preview matches the result. This is really annoying.
Preview (screen shot)
Result (screen shot)
Not even close. That’s a pain in the butt I think. Anyway … let’s put a little show together to see whether this is a temporary cure for ORBs on the X10.
Here is the same shot from the X10 with massive ORBs present. This is an animated GIF with two other layers. One is a fairly subtle set of stars that make the image more palatable. The other is an ostentatious presentation of heavy stars that essentially eliminate the ORBs by increasing the point source to a larger dimension. This is the “spread” slider in action.
So it’s your call. Topaz Star Effects can certainly mask the ORBs when you turn it to 11 [Spinal Tap reference for those peeking out from their caves.] But in its more pleasing and subtle form, the ORBs are still there. Still, they are somewhat mitigate by the presence of so much extra light, so they look smaller in relation.
There are many settings, so experiment away.
