Marco Paolini is a compositor and president of Digital Film Tools, a company that creates production proven plugins. Noteworthy for their digital simulation of optical filter, effects and camera effects, they also include a range of compositing tools developed in the firing line of feature film production at Digital Film Works. In this week’s podcast we talk to Paolini and review online the range of treatments that DFT offer from Photoshop to Flame.
Digital Film Tools [web site] is a set of powerful photographic plugins for Photoshop, Final Cut, Avid and Autodesk products. While some plugins tend to be ‘eye candy’, 55mm and the other DFT plugins simulate photographic effects and filtering extremely accurately. For example, you can grade by pointer light or apply accurate on-set filters digitally…matching perfectly the equvilent in camera filtering. The package is not flashy but it is one that your’re likely to actually use. It is stable, easy to use, and has the same UI between say Photoshop and Flame. Highly recommended.
One of the problems with sparks can be the ‘effecty’ nature of the result. While some plugins give great demo and produce fun eye candy – how often are you really going to use them? Digital film tools is a set of plugins that really aim to match things that you can do optically on set – but now do in post.
This image is the original photography.
One of the more popular grading plugins in the 55mm plugins from Digital Film Tools, this is “Bleach by-pass” that simulates skipping a path in the film processing and leaving extra silver in the film, making the image appear to have more contrast.
It can be great adding filters in post that match those you could use on set. This plugin matches an ND grad.
Not all the plugins just simulate filters, this plugin provides simulated night vision.
A digital polariser.
Here is another original image.
The 55mm package includes lens distortion tools, with a variable centre point for the distortion
One popular technique is to cross process film, matched here digitally
This is one of the most complex and powerful plug-ins it allows the user to grade through 11 zones – as invented by famous stills photograper Ansel Adams. While it is possible to mark off different luminance levels in most aps, this automated tool is fast and exremely powerful for detailed grading.
The digital filters are matched exactly to professional glass fliters, this is using a tobacco filter.
