As the artificial intelligence race intensify between photography software companies, Boris FX is filling a completely different niche with their Optics editing software. With the latest release, Optics users now have access to Particle illusion generator, which can create thousands of explosions, smoke, fire, and other particle effects. Today, we take a look at this new release and how it can help your work.
As a photographer who creates images in a variety of genres including weddings, commercials, commercials, portraits and portraits, and works on social media for all platforms at Fstoppers, I’m always looking for new software that can help me achieve the final product quickly and easily. If you follow Youtube channel Fstoppers, I’m constantly trying out new software and testing out new features as they’re released. By far, most of the editing software we’ve tested has focused on trying to improve on what other software companies have been doing for decades. This includes processing raw files, manipulating exposures, retouching skins, and simplifying complex mask selections. Now and then, we run through a piece of software that tries to solve a single problem and Boris FX Optics is one of those programs.
What is optics?
Optics is a relatively new program that was released just over a year ago (you can check out my original review video below). Boris FX, the parent company of Optics, is a respected leader in the worlds of video and special effects. At Fstoppers we used their video effects software Continuity since we first started our YouTube channel in 2010. When Optics was announced, Boris FX was looking to make more of the same video effects available to photographers so they could easily create effects, colors and image content quickly and easily.
Some of the effects that Optics has brought to photographers since the software was first released include:
- More than 600 historical film stores and film looks
- 126 optical lens flares found in the Boris FX Sapphire collection
- 800 types of lighting and gobo . projection
- Masking tools including EZ . mask
- Lighting effects include flash, lightning generator, super light, and light leak
- Text and graphic design effects
- Stylized overlays and grunge effects
- Blur and defocus effect
Of course, Optics can be used to process your camera’s raw files as well as make basic color and exposure adjustments, but overall, this software aims to give You have a ton of creative tools that simply aren’t available anywhere else.
New Particle Illusion Tool
By far the coolest new feature found in the newly released Optics 2022 update is the Particle Illusion generator. This effects processor is a small piece of the overall Optics software, but I think it can be one of the most interesting and powerful tools in the entire suite.
If you click on the Particle Illusion category in Optics, you get access to more than 1,7000 grainy presets that you can modify and apply to your images. Some of the most useful effects are smoke, fire, water, explosion, dust, sparkles, and some pretty crazy sci-fi effects. When using these effects myself, Optics has done an amazing job of allowing you to manipulate these effects easily with the Parameters field on the right side of the effect, but if you If you want to dig deeper and change every aspect of the particles, you can click the Launch Particle Illusion button and open a sub-editor containing every tweakable element of the effect.
In the image above, I was able to add some mist on top of the shot of Lake Matheson in New Zealand. If you follow us Behind-the-scenes photography of the world, you may remember we walked an hour to this location 4 days in a row trying to capture the mountains, the stars, and the reflections on the still water. Elia Locardi was hoping to also be able to capture the cool fog we saw on day 2 but by the fourth attempt we were able to capture all elements except the fog. Optics make it easy to add smoke, fog, and fanciful fog to your images.
In the example above, I shot a scene that already had snow and added both out-of-focus snow and small snow, blizzard type. I also added some haze in the background to give it a more intense blizzard feel.
All of these effects can be rendered in real time, which means that each adjustment you make will be unique to your image and not duplicated in someone else’s work. Also, unlike buying and incorporating archived images into your work, these custom render particles are added non-destructively, which means you can always open Optics and fine-tune. content in your projects at any time.
My experience using Optics 2022
As I mentioned above, I find myself creating all kinds of images. Some of them, like my wedding photos, don’t require any kind of special effects or rendering elements in them at all. However, at times, I find myself adding splashes of light paint, dust, snow, debris, sweat, and other “grainy” elements to my work, especially with commercials, branding, and advertising. trade and ideas. For these types of images, I find Optics to be a worthwhile plugin to have in my workflow. Over the past year using Optics, it has saved me a lot of time and saved me money from having to buy high resolution images.
The software is quite powerful, and at times, I have to admit, it can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t know exactly which direction you want to go with your edits. I spent a lot of time learning all of the effects and understanding the capabilities of the Optics, but with that said, I know that the time I spent digging into the effects has also made the software easier to use and navigate, especially when I need to go back and edit an effect that I used before.
The pricing model for Optics isn’t bad either. With Optics, you have two different pricing options: you can pay immediately for the software for $149, or you can pay a subscription fee of $99 per year or $9 per month. I like to buy the software right away and pay those fees upfront, but I like that you have one of two options. If you purchased Optics last year, you can also upgrade to Optics 2022 and get free access to the Particle Illusions tool.
Speaking of pricing, since we have a working relationship with Optics (and many other software companies), all of our readers can use the discount code”fstoppers-optical22” because Boris FX Optical Website arrive save 20% on your download.
The only major complaint I have with Optics is that depending on how deep you dig into the software, some tweaks can be slow to load. We have all used photo editing software that is extremely slow to render and use, Optics is not that display, but it may take 5-10 seconds for certain effects to load or to launch the particle illusion editor. Considering I use Optics as a plugin in Photoshop and usually only spend 5-10 minutes of my editing in Optics on any given photo, I don’t see it as a big deal, but I wanted to mention it. because sometimes, it is noticeable.
