Product Description

Dfx Essentials software allows you to apply the most popular creative photographic filters after you've taken the shot and is available for both Windows or Macintosh users. This software is a selective version of Tiffen's professional award-winning Dfx Creative Digital Effects software. This latest edition to the Tiffen award-winning software line, gives digital camera owners the ability to explore their creative options with an easy to use application that includes a step-by-step on-screen tutorial with audio. Dfx Essentials compliments any digital camera and features a definitive selection of 37 specialized filters and effects with hundreds of built-in presets and the ability to create and save custom versions and custom setups to repeat favorite looks. Dfx Essentials offers the ability to easily create multiple filter and effect layers, color, clone and red-eye removal tools, with non-destructive crop, rotate and scaling. The intuitive filter palette with thumbnail previews makes it simple to evaluate effects before applying the filter to an image. Dfx Essentials is compatible with a wide range of file types including camera raw and final images can be saved in either tif or jpg formats.

Product Details

• Brand: Tiffen
• Model: DFXESS
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 2.00" h x 6.00" w x 8.00" l, 2.00 pounds

Features

• 37 filters with hundreds of presets
• On-screen tutorial with audio
• Preview allows you to see the effect before applying the filter
• Easy-to-use interface
• Works with Windows and Macintosh

Customer Reviews

Finally A Program That Works Like a Photographer
I have looked high and low for a program like this, one that can manipulate digital photographs the same way a photographer would use filters over the lens, and function exactly as we think. Only Tiffen, one of the better photographic filter manufacturers, could come up with a piece of software like this.

The broad brushstroke overview. The software reviewed is called Essentials (Version 1) as described on the Tiffen website. This is a fairly simple standalone photo editing and enhancing program. You load a digital image into the program (there is no organizer or chooser, you have to know where your files are), then apply filter effects one at a time. It's incredibly intuitive after the second or third try, you sort of screw on a new filter for each effect. The central image view can show either the end product preview, or side by side comparison to the original. I've posted a screen shot for clarity. Once you've applied all the filters you want, save the file out to your hard drive and you are finished. It's all pretty darn simple and intuitive.

There are around 40 different filter types to choose from - ganged in general effect categories: Film Lab, HFX Diffusion, HFX Grad/Tints, Image, Lens, Light, and Special Effects. Each category has their own set of presets, like the HFX series has a number range up to 6 for more intense effects. There is also the possibility to adjust the parameters for each filter. The split filters are a great example, you can change the rotation of the split field and tons of other things.

The software is also a fairly decent photo editor. Crop, rotate (90 and precise degrees), etc. It does significantly lack much ability to control printed output. The software isn't exactly as fully featured as other photoediting software, like Adobe Photoshop Elements (any version from 1 to 7 are all much fuller programs). However, there are some tools very deeply buried - not at all intuitive to find (a tech support call pointed me in this direction). There is the ability to PAINT, like other photo programs - paint a color, paint to fix red eye, and clone brush to clear up blemishes on a face or lint on a suit coat. The menu happens to be buried in the "Image" filter, and then you click on the "Paint" filter. Voila, up above brushes, selections and the like all appear at the top of the screen. This is counterintuitive in this software - all filters are adjusted in the right panel with presets or parameters. Paint works totally differently, you adjust in the toolbar at the top.

In use, I started by cleaning up my photographs in Photoshop Elements 7. Remove blemishes, custom rotate to make verticals vertical, adjust contrast, crop, clean up the backgrounds, etc. This is all pretty easy to do, straightforward. In principle, I could do all the same things in Dfx Essentials. What Photoshop doesn't do well and requires a ton of flick this switch, apply this thing, do that, etc. is what traditional photographers have done for years - add filters to the lens to adapt the photograph to the circumstances. For example, HFX filters to soften skin, use differnt ASA film for that particular grain and color balance effect, use warming or cooling filters, and a whole host of other simple techniques; that are just so darn complicated in Photoshop. Yes many will argue you can do all these things in Elements - but you have to first master Layers, then master how much to tweak which effect, etc. All this is in non-photographic terms. In the Tiffen product, want to soften a picture for glamour effect - click on HFX, select 1, 2, 3, 4 up to 6 for intensity of the effect. This is exactly like a bag full of add on filters.

This software thinks like a photographer, not a person sitting in front of a computer trying to tweak things and learn a whole new language. Don't like an effect, click on a button to remove that filter from the stack. Want to add another effect in addition, click the add button and choose your filters. Don't like the exact effect from a preset, tweak it with parameters. The names and settings are all Tiffen and photographer standards - not Adobe's idea of what we should do.

Do I love this program, you betcha! I've already spent a solid day working up graduation pictures with this lovely program.

Now what do I dislike? Small things:

Installation:
It is not the least bit intuitive. For XP and Vista 32 bit - yes it will install from the fabulous, beautiful flashmedia intro program. So you will be very happy. According to tech support, Vista 64 bit is supposed to install like any other OS. In my case, the installer did not work. I had to work my way through the folders on the CD to find the installer and it worked perfectly. By the way, this was accomplished as a web live support call by an excellent support person at Tiffen. They actually made sure I had properly installed the program.

The Bait and maybe you want to spend more money?:
There are in fact three programs on this disc. You purchase a license for only one of those programs - the version 1 or Essentials program. However, they include the version 2 program that has something like 100 different filters with a vast array of presets and tweaks. You can install this program for a 15 day trial, fairly easy to do. But if you want to keep these additional filters, along with a slightly enhanced version of the editor, you will have to pay more money. Frankly, it's probably well worth the expense, the additional filters are amazing.

The Third program is all these filters as a Plug-In for various photoediting programs, like Adobe Photoshop (officially CS4, and Photoshop Elements). This is actually the best way to go with this software. Use the standard Photoshop base to deliver photo editing, and have this vast array of fabulous Tiffen filters to apply like a photographer would.

The worst part - there are no real live minimum computer requirements listed anywhere. That problem might be resolved once the program becomes officially available. I am reviewing a pre-publication edition of this software.
April 29, 2009 update - There are no PC requirements listed because, well it will run on virtually any computer. I just installed this program on an Acer Aspire One Netbook - this is the lowliest of the low for processor speed, graphics and memory. Guess what, the program works perfectly! It's actually faster to load than Microsoft Paint. All the filters work. Editing works. Preview snap up immediately every time a filter is chosen. Oh this is so wonderful. I've just found the perfect portable photo editor!

My test bed for this software (it worked flawlessly). Quad core Q9550 2.85 GHz processor; Nvidia (EVGA) GTX260 / 219 core 890Mb graphics card; 8 Gb of memory; 22 inch LG monitor; and Vista 64 Bit. This is a very light computer use program - I run folding at home on all four cores (100% usage) and the graphics card simultaneously; had Photoshop Elements 7 running; and Internet Explorer 8 with about 12 tabs open. Dfx ran very quickly, never crashed once, and responded very fast to every single filter choice and command. Remember, I have a fairly heavy duty system.

This is an outstanding program. It responds exactly the way a photographer would want it to work. I love this software. Want more - step up to this program with a ton more filters and more controls within the software: Tiffen DFXCMPV2 Dfx Digital Filter Software V2 Stand-alone Version - Windows XP, VISTA or Macintosh v10.4.6 and higher. The only significant difference between these two - more filters and more control over those filter effects.

April 27 update - I had some difficulties with installation and understanding what the software could really do. An email to tech support yielded a phone call back during business hours. Every single question I had was answered. Tech support seems to be extremely competent.

May 9 update - Tried another computer running Vista 64 bit - the flash installer did not work on that computer either. You will have to dig in the folders to do your install in 64-bit, tech support was flat out wrong about this.
Posted a screenshot of the software. Please take a look, the interface is clean and simple to use.

Good at some specific things, but clunky user interface
Note: This review is for the Mac version of the Tiffen Dfc Essentials product. I am an avid novice photographer and I shoot a Canon 40D, using Aperture for most of my post-capture photo refinement. I shoot about 200 to 600 photos a week, and manage them all in an Aperture catalog, which stores all the EXIF and other meta data as well.

I do not use Photoshop or other "heavy duty" image editing applications, so I was hopeful that Dfx Essentials would be a nice addition to my basic Aperture workflow. If it was offered as a set of Aperture plug-ins, I think that the Tiffen Dfx Essentials tools would rate four or five stars. The filters and effects are extremely flexible and can easily achieve some very nice effects that are either not possible or much more difficult with Aperture. Some of the effects are just plain goofy, but for the most part the filters work very well and are very useful for portrait and still life photography (e.g. blurring, halos, highlighting, color enhancements, b&w effects and filters, etc.)

However, the Mac version of the application suffers from a very poorly designed user interface in my opinion. I'm not sure what the engineers were thinking, but they may have been trying to emulate the Mac experience without ever having actually used a Mac before. The colors are dark gray, and the file browsing menus are a weird cross between Windows and Mac, but are more confusing than either.

This interface causes the workflow to be much more difficult that it should be, in my opinion. For example, to edit an image in Tiffen Dfx that you are looking at in Aperture (my starting point for workflow), I have to save off a version of the file somewhere easy to find (like in a folder on my desktop) and then open Dfx up, use the terrible file browser to find and select the image (which must be done by memorizing the file name because it lacks thumbnail images), and then conduct the editing in Dfx. Once the image is finalized in Dfx, it must be imported BACK into Aperture as a separate file from the original master (thereby breaking the association to the original file).

After a couple of weeks of using Dfx, I found this process to be more of a hassle than I was willing to deal with for all but the most specific types of projects which Dfx does particularly well (like black & white effects and blurring backgrounds)

Overall, I believe it is a nice tool for those "special" photos that you want to retouch before having them printed, but the clumsy user interface (on a Mac) make it just too unpleasant to use frequently.

Not really worth it
This is a second tier effects package that quickly makes you wish you had sprung for the full set instead. The effects are ok, but overall its as if all the "good" stuff was left to the expensive version and the second rate effects dropped here. As a budget package its still rather expensive, there are better deals to be found.