Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

84
The Digital Photographer's Software Guide
AnselPRO
Vendor: Sean Puckett
Purpose: Bibble plug-in to alter a histogram according to the theory of light zones
Description
AnselPRO is designed to give you complete control over the lighting in a digital image,
worked out according to Ansel Adams’s theory of light zones. It has quite a complex
user interface: two of them, to be precise. The big one looks like the mixing desk in a
recording studio, with nine slider controls for each of nine zones including black and
white. There are four more slider controls for the film curve: contrast, shadows, balance,
and highlights; and two more for exposure: linear and midtones. Finally, there are two
“modifiers,” one for adjusting total luminance, the other to control how much of the
“Ansel Effect” gets applied to the image. The alternative UI collapses the zones into tabs,
which makes it look somewhat less intimidating.
The secret to using AnselPRO is to follow the developer’s instructions and try not to
start adjusting zones immediately. Start at the top of the interface and work your way
down, one step at a time. It is really very well conceived and it incorporates many of the
developer’s ideas from his previous work.
Comments
If you find Ansel Adams’s zone system inscrutable, as some photographers do, this is
obviously not the ideal tool. But it obliges you to consider the shadows separately from
the midtones, and both independently of the highlights. This is good photographic
practice, whatever your style or genre. AnselPRO is definitely a product to use in conjunction
with reading Adams’s classic instruction manuals (The Camera, The Negative,
and The Print ).
Version: AnselPRO 1.1 (2008)
Plugs into: Bibble Pro (Note: Upgrade when Bibble upgrades)
OS: As host
RAM: 256MB
Supported file formats: As host
Price level: $20
Address: seanmpuckett@gmail.com
www.nexi.com
ArcSoft PhotoStudio Darkroom
Vendor: ArcSoft
Purpose: Non-destructive imaging processing for RAW, JPEG, and TIFF image files