Magic Bullet PhotoLooks
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 12:23PM Yesterday Red Giant Software announced the release of Magic Bullet PhotoLooks. It’s the same Magic Bullet Looks you know and love, re-engineered for use on high resolution stills in Adobe Photoshop.
In case you don’t know, Looks, and now PhotoLooks, is a creative toolset for giving your images an overall cinematic look. It’s based on the model of an actual camera, with filters, lens characteristics, and film processing tricks. By accurately simulating the physics of light, glass, and celluloid, it creates a fun, creative environment for experimenting with your shots. Start with one of 100 presets, see how they’re put together, then modify them to taste—or design your own and share them with friends.
Longtime Magic Bullet Looks users will recognize the interface, presets, and tools—so much so that they might even wonder what’s new about this new version. A lot has changed under the hood, but all in ways designed not to be noticed. Here are some examples:
- That PhotoLooks is a native Photoshop plug-in means that not only can you use it directly from within Photoshop, but you can also use Photoshop’s Smart Layers to keep PhotoLooks as a non-destructive adjustment that you can tweak again and again, even after closing and re-opening the file. Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to do this in the above tutorial.
- PhotoLooks contains the beginnings of a Color Management solution, so that your color-managed Photoshop workflow will match what you see in the PhotoLooks UI. Future versions will refine and enhance this feature to work with any popular color space you might care to use for your photography workflow.
- The last one is the biggest change and hopefully the most invisible: The Looks rendering engine has been re-written completely to work on high-resolution stills. While working on your look, you get the fluid, GPU-accelerated experience Looks has always provided, but when you press OK, your look is rendered by the new CPU render engine that can handle the gigantic image sizes common to current-generation cameras. If you’ve used the “secret” stills feature of Magic Bullet Looks, you may have run up against limitations in resolution. That won’t happen with PhotoLooks.
PhotoLooks is $199, or $99 if you already have Magic Bullet Looks or Quick Looks.
What’s fun for me, as the guy who designed it, is to see a whole new legion of creative professionals exposed to the power and creativity of Magic Bullet Looks. Here are some of their impressions:
I am not exaggerating when I say that Magic Bullet PhotoLooks will re-invent the way people think about filters in Photoshop—I have never seen anything like it.
-Deke McClelland, award-winning Photoshop author, and trainer
Another favorite feature of mine is the Look Theater. I get creatively stumped with my photography occasionally, and it is so cool to be able to just sit and watch my photographs take on a new persona without me having to lift a finger.
-Justin Seeley, Photoshop trainer and graphic designer
Magic Bullet PhotoLooks is a fantastic tool, with absolutely no adoption curve.
-Thorsten Meyer, Photographer
To make a perfect look for a photo [using Photoshop’s built-in tools] can be an arduous process of changing levels, curves, diffusion, glows, spot exposure, color correction, vignetting, edge softness, etc. However, the thumbnail for each of the 100+ presets in Magic Bullet PhotoLooks instantly updates to show its effect on your photo making it really easy to compare the effect of each one.
-Jack Tunnicliffe, Java Post Production
You can read more testimonials here.
Reader Comments (40)
Hey Stu, this may be wishful thinking, but do you think MBL will ever have the ability to show a realtime preview (akin to Apple Color, which allows you to watch the changes you've made on the fly)? I think it's the only thing holding me back from the software, and because I'm not fluent in AE (which at least has it's sweet RAM preview) and don't have AutoDuck, I don't think I could use that version of the software.
-Mike
p.s. Looking forward to your thoughts of the Zacuto Camera Shootout today!
Mike, are you talking about realtime preview on an external video card? That is one of the most popular feature requests for Magic Bullet Looks.
>PhotoLooks contains the beginnings of a Color Management solution, so that your color-managed Photoshop workflow will match what you see in the PhotoLooks UI. Future versions will refine and enhance this feature to work with any popular color space you might care to use for your photography workflow.
Can you please elaborate (does it work fine with aRGB in CS4)?
Yeah, that would be functional too, but I mean playback of unrendered footage that has been graded in MBL without having to render it out. As it stands, when you apply MBL if I recall correctly you're given a still frame from the shot in which you apply all your Looks to, but then when you go back into FCP or Premiere or AE, you can't playback that shot unless you render it (a big no-no as per the DV Rebel rules of engagement.)
For the overall Look this isn't a problem, but for effects like anamorphic flares (which I love, but obviously can't afford the real deal) it's hard to tell what the ideal flare strength should be if the camera is moving (as the shot may end up with another light source in frame that happens to flare inappropriately.) In AE you could do a RAM preview (as it leaves your footage unrendered), but in FCP or Premiere it's a no go (it just plays the stock footage when you play it back.)
Actually, I'm kind of realizing that it probably wouldn't be possible (even in a low-res draft mode) simply because of what's being done. It'd make more sense for me to ask Apple/Adobe to include a RAM preview in FCP/Premiere...
...Or I could just learn AE.
thanks,
Mike
I see, so it's the ability to preview an entire moving clip in the LooksBuilder UI that you're after. That's another popular request.
As for realtime playback, it may or may not be feasible, depending on the complexity of the look. But being realtime or not does not have any effect on the DV Rebel rule of not re-compressing your footage. If you're working in your NLE, you have to render even realtime effects for any output. So the same rules apply — either use a less-destructive codec such as ProRes or Cineform, or when you render your final output, render to a non-destructive codec.
Of course, If you're mastering in the NLE, you're not really conforming to the DV Rebel rules! But following the above guidelines makes this less of a problem.
Uve, you nailed it — currently PhotoLooks only supports sRGB.
I always found the UI for Looks on Final Cut the most interesting I have seen from all the plug-ins I know (and I know many). Now having it for Photoshop makes even more fun.
The more challenging part is to learn the effects and what they can do for me. The general direction to create and store looks is very promising. The many existing presets help as a starting point. Using the different presets is an exploration process that lets me rethink my images. Lots of work, lots of fun ahead.
I love MBL! The ability to drag through the clip in the looks builder, like you can in AE as soon as you click ok, would be a big help for those flare and shutter streak effects as mentioned above. But I'm sure you're working on that Stu - otherwise brilliant.
Cool news, indeed.
So, will/could this work with other image editing applications such as Pixelmator? Or, is PhotoLooks "hooking-in" to specific PS code?
Thanks.
PhotoLooks is currently not supported in any host application besides Photoshop itself.
I agree with Mr SteinMueller; MBL's UI is an unsung part of what makes it fun to use. It's kind of like Gridiron Flow: it gets out of the way and lets you create.
So, here's what I think is exciting about PhotoLooks:
Let's say you have a friend (or a girlfriend, or an uncle, or somebody). That friend is a better photographer than you'll ever be, and you know he/she would make a great DP. That friend would also make a great colorist, because you've seen what she/he does in Aperture/Photoshop/Lightroom. So you let them play around with PhotoLooks, and she/he says "Ooh, this is fun!" Then you hand them your Canon 7D, and while they're messing around with the video features, you switch over from PhotoLooks in Photoshop to Looks in Final Cut or AE.
"Oooh, this is cool, you can do the same thing with video!"
Yeah, you can, with that camera, the one you're holding right now.
"Really?!?"
And now you've recruited-- no, seduced-- a fellow Rebel. Now, if I could pull the same trick with a sound guy...
Stu,
A very exciting development... but I have largely abandoned photoshop these days in favour of non-destructive editing in Lightroom/Aperture. I will probably get the new plugin anyway (so used to MBL's way of working for all my video work that I'd really like to have it on stills) but it would be significantly more use to me as a Lightroom or Aperture plugin, even if it has to use the clunky round trip via TIFF route. Best of all would be a proper non-destructive plugin with live editable settings stored in the metadata, but I don't think LR/Ap support that in their architecture as yet.
Oh... and pro-photoRGB colour space is kinda mandatory for my workflow these days...
Great to see the MBL technology getting wider and wider application, it is absolutely the best tool out there for creating cinematic looks, whatever your original.
Hywel, I hear you on all points. I too use Photoshop increasingly rarely thanks to Lightroom.
Give us mojo! for lightroom
This will save me a lot of time from exporting still frames out of After Effects to achieve the same effect! Thanks for another great product!
Is there some sort of histogram (best of course all channel view)?
I'm hoping this new CPU Render Engine gets MBL past the frame size limit it had for Video when we get an update to Looks. So soon we'll be able to pass anything through it color managed and hopefully with control surface possibilites. Stoked on the continued advancements of the RedGiant Team and you Stu.
Uwe, there is the RGB Parade scope and the slice graph, both of which are different than a histogram and in a way more powerful. But of course we know that a histgram is a familiar tool to photographers and is something we should consider for future versions.
Jason, it's a natural assumption that the new CPU render engine should help us deal with the increasing resolutions of footage people are trying to deal with in motion as well. Again, future versions.
I think what is also impressive to mention is the support for HDR files :
The Power of HDR
HDR processing and 32-bit support yield true-to-life results and ensure that extreme values are not clipped
Auto-Shoulder Feature
Sophisticated tone mapping compresses the bright values of HDR images to make them viewable or printable
I did have a couple questions also :
I see this has a standalone feature for the program w/out using Photoshop. Stu, being you also use the 5d mark ii... does this allow native Canon raw files to be imported into the standalone program (no conversion)?
Thanks,
- Matt
Matt, thanks for pointing out the HDR features. The entire app works in 32 bit floating point color.
Unfortunately we don't support direct import of raw files. Decoding raw files for optimum quality is something that top minds at Adobe and elsewhere have been working on for years, and I'm not sure I want to go toe-to-toe with them.
But expect tutorials on optimal raw pre-processing for use with PhotoLooks.
i use cs3 and haven't updated in a long time as i'm an aperture user. does it work on cs3? any aperture plug-ins coming?
Hi Chris, yes it does work on CS3. There's a "compatibility" link on the right hand side of ever RGS product page where you can see which host apps and versions are supported.
You are not the only one who would like an Aperture version!
>and I'm not sure I want to go toe-to-toe with them.
You can spend your time much better in your core domain. See too many people working with RAW.
Any good tutorial how to best read scopes?
For the Realtime Preview Problem, what about a Timeline that lets you chose the frame you are looking at without the Effects and that just adds the Effects when you have chosen it? Like klicking, dragging to the frame that you think could be a problem, letting lose and bam (imagina a Steve Jobs here fore a strange reason) you get the Frame with the look you've done.
You wouldn't need realtime playback, but could check the clip without closing looks and rendering the Stuff out...
May be a Idea?
Colorista for Aperture would get a sale from me!
thanks so much for letting me know. magic bullet looks for fcp is the next piece of gear i'm buying.
thanks also for everything else you've written. you've already helped this still photographer more than you could ever know. there have been things i wondered, read something on your site and didn't end up having to test on location.
that being said ... lets get aperture compatibility ... chop-chop. ;)
Like the nice mood of light you can create. This was shot at noon in California with mild overcast:
http://outbackphoto.smugmug.com/Images2010/March2010/1003550D1463MissionPLLRELRE/819712595_2U2CU-O.jpg
Looks less boring than the original shot.
This is interesting because I've edited photos in Magic Bullet Looks before and thought to myself "wow this is pretty snazzy for photos, wish there was like a plugin to use this stuff on Photoshop or LR". Funny the way the world works sometimes LOL.Good work Stu.
this might be off topic but looks for apple color would be nice. it doesn't quite look like color supports custom user interfaces from the currently available effects and maybe breaking the node concept is a bad idea in the long run, but it's a drag having to render twice if you want to apply looks after you've graded in color.
Thanks Mattias—but I'm more likely to put my effort into making Looks and/or Colorista powerful enough that you no longer feel the need for Apple Color.
Hey Stu,
I recently came across your blog and your flickr portfolio and I appreciate it a lot! Also, I must confess that the way you treat color in your images has a tremendous impact on my own photography.
Although knowing that a huge part of your work is devoted to video, I (and probably a lot of folks out there) would be dying to get to know your start-to-finish workflow with still images. While the six minutes LR video was nice to watch, I would enjoy to learn about your use of white balance, split toning and external tools (e.g. MBL).
Just wanted to let you know ;)
yeah stu that makes sense but if it was just power i needed i'd use colorista all the time, i prefer it to color both when it comes to performance and results, it's just that there are workflow limitations in fcp when it comes to adding grades and effects to multiple clips, copying them back and forth, saving them and so on, that i think it's hard for a plugin to get around, if at all desireable. i still do all my music videos and commercials in colorista/looks but the two features i've graded and most of the shorts i felt i had to use color or go crazy in the process. oh, and looks is already more powerful than color, which is exactly why i want them to marry. :-)
[somewhat OT?} Any chance for an iPhone/iPad version of Looks Builder? It would come in handy working with Storyboard and Artemis.
If you haven't seen this I thought you might like to take a look at this brief but glowing review from Scott Bourne over at photofocus.com
http://photofocus.com/2010/04/02/magic-bullet-photolooks-plugin-mini-review/
I've been playing around with Photolooks for the last couple days, and I really like it, but one seemingly trivial aspect of the UI is really bugging me - the auto-hide menus.
Say I've got a medium close-up portrait, and my subject is in the left portion of my shot. The Looks quickdrawer completely covers his face. I have to click on a look, move away so the drawer closes, examine it, move back to the quickdrawer, try another, close it again, look at the image again, etc. The same thing happens with the Tools quickdrawer, though it's not quite so large.
If the quickdrawers could open into their own panel (and not cover over my image), this would be much more convenient.
Also, I've got a Google-taskbar on the left side of my screen. Whenever I mouse to the far left, it opens both the Looks quickdrawer, and then the Google taskbar on top of it. Very annoying.
I really DO like the general UI, I just wish it were slightly customizable. Perhaps in a future version?...
- David
Hi David, good comments. One thing you might want to try is Looks Theater for an unobscured full-screen preview of the various presets.
Hi, a bit unrelated, but could anyone introduce a good book for learning Photoshop? Thank you.
Hi,
just tried the demo version but I think it's not useable for me. I got a color management problem: I'm using a 2231w Eizo wide gamut monitor and loaded a color profile generated by my Spyder 3. When I open up a photo in Photoshop my color profile is used an skin tones a looking right nice, when I use Photolooks the skin tones all getting really red.
When I now change the colors in Photolooks to a nice look and go back in Photoshop the skin tones are to much desaturated and the colors are awful.
Will there be future versions with a working color management that uses the same loaded profile as Photoshop, because without that it doesn't really make sense to me, or do I get something wrong?
Yes, we know about this issue and will fix in a free update.
> Yes, we know about this issue and will fix in a free update.
Thumbs up! :O)