Product overview: onOne Software's PhotoTools Professional Edition 2.5 is included with their Plug-In Suite 5, or can be purchased on its own as a separate plug-in. From the description on the box: "PhotoTools is the fastest way to add a professional look to your photos. You get hundreds of professional-grade photographic effects in an easy-to-use interface making this the fastest and easiest way to make your photos stand out from the crowd." Plugs 'N Pixels takes a hands-on look at PhotoTools and reports the results below.
		Considering its wide range of included effects (over 200) and masking, layering and fading controls, onOne's PhotoTools Pro 2.5 can be considered a "desert-island" plug-in (ie, if you were to be stranded on a desert island with only one piece of software, PhotoTools would be on your short list). It's incredibly easy to open an image in Photoshop (PhotoTools is also compatible with Aperture and Lightroom) and get right to work exploring the almost endless possibilities for creative post-processing. The Library is where you find the 17 Categories and their subset Results offered by PhotoTools (created by onOne as well as industry heavy-hitters Kevin Kubota and Jack Davis). Many effects feature onOne's new MaskingBug for advanced control over the placement of those effects in round or square vignetted areas. The Library categories are as follows: •Basic Brushes (used for manually painting in any of nine different color and contrast effects) •Image Optimize contains 31 effects for adjusting color, tonal range, sharpness and more •Landscape Enhance offers 16 ways to improve your scenics by adjusting tone and sharpness, adding natural effects such as fog, drizzle, rain, snow and more, or applying tints and gradients •Portrait Enhance does just that, with 34 enhancement effects to choose from (ranging from glows to skin smoothers to color and B&W treatments) •Color and Black & White Treatments are also offered in their own categories, with seven color and 10 black & white effects available, including antique and reduced colors as well as grainy, chrome and other grayscale conversion types •Tinting Treatments (six results are available) come in color, blue and brown sets with edge options •Lighting Effects provides four means of adjusting your image's lighting after the shoot, including adding light and shadow and treating existing highlights •Photo Filters (30 are included) are software versions of popular glass photographic filters that affect color temperature, gradation, ND and more •Camera Tricks offers five ways to add lens flare, pan, zoom and other lighting and motion effects •Film & Darkroom (28 results) is a group of creative effects that emulate alternative photographic and development methods and tonering processes •Stylized Effects is the motherlode with 47 different image-altering settings ranging from historical time periods through glows, color punches, vignettes and vibrance •One-Click Art brings out the artist in you with 11 drawing, painting and halftone effects •Type & Graphics (11 results) is largely filled with Jack Davis WOW! effects for adding various kinds of stylization to text •Overlay Effects are perhaps the coolest way to add texture and grunge to your image, with a choice of 19 types of overlays ranging from paper to paint, rust and scratches •Edge Treatments offers seven vignettes and fades to enhance the outer area of your images •Frame Treatments are an additional nine ways to set your image apart with ghosted, inline and pinline frames For your convenience, PhotoTools arranges a large number of its presets (separate from the Library Categories) in a list that can be accessed from the onOne>PhotoTools menu (see screenshot summarizing these preset categories at lower right). The onOne Panel (bottom right) is another approach, which you access from the Window>Extensions menu. While these are the quickest approaches to adding PhotoTools effects, there are no previews via these methods, so I found myself more creatively fulfilled by manually working through and experimenting with the options as offered in PhotoTools' main interface. However, the menu list and Panel options give you a way of shortcutting the entire process and applying your favorite known PhotoTools effects without leaving Photoshop and launching the plug-in, so once you know what you want, this is the best way to go. My approach when working with PhotoTools is to make educated guesses as to which treatments, filters and effects would most likely be appropriate for a particular image. I then test drive and apply them individually (or stack them in up to 16 editable layers for unique results, such as in the screenshot above where five different effects were used on a single image) until I am satisfied with the results. This process is actually quicker than it sounds (the wide range of examples on this page took only a short while to create; the original is shown in the screenshot above), and you'll probably find yourself with more acceptible final options than you'll be able to use in your project. PhotoTools is supported in Mac OS-X 10.5 or 6 (on G5 or Intel hardware), and Windows XP through 7 (on Pentium 4 or better hardware). Wacom tablet users have even more control over PhotoTools masking settings, with brush size and opacity adjustments supported.
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