I used a couple of filters long ago. About 2 years ago, there was a post on Webaperture that they gone out of business. That is, somebody paid them, but never got the working version by email. They didn't reply to email either.

I used a couple of filters long ago. About 2 years ago, there was a post on Webaperture that they gone out of business. That is, somebody paid them, but never got the working version by email. They didn't reply to email either.

Okay. Thanks for the advice Eco. And they're not out of business.

I bought Velvia Vision and almost immediately had a problem with it. I work with a French-language version of Photoshop which (I've now discovered) uses a different filing system to the English one. And when I installed the Velvia plug-in it didn't work.

I e-mailed Fred Miranda (on a Sunday evening) and got a reply within the hour.

All's hunky-dory now, I've played with it a little and it looks to be a great addition.

An update from my experiences ...

I had some problems installing it because I run a French version of Photoshop which has a different folder structure. But I got a helpful response to my query and it's up and running now.

I haven't noticed the banding in uniform areas, but I have noticed that it puts quite a noticeable wide halo around certain objects if you use the 'Add Dynamic Range' option too vigorously.

Otherwise, it's great. I'm well satisfied. Used carefully it can add a beautiful depth and tone to otherwise slightly flat images. I'd recommend it.

(And, on a side note, it was reviewed last month in the UK magazine 'Photography Monthly'. It got a 'silver' rating and was only beaten by another program costing nearly 10 times as much.)

The program that came out top was Alien Skin Exposure 2.

Apparently, in UK it costs �130, whereas Fred Miranda's plugin costs �15

It seems that the Alien Skin program got top marks because you can simulate all sorts of film stock ... Kodachrome, Polaroid, and even Daguerrotypes. You can also add grain if you want.

I'm happy with the Fred Miranda one. I've no desire to pretend my photographs are Daguerrotypes or are grainy. If I tried that they'd probably get rejected by the microstocks for over-filtering or too much noise 

sounds intriguing.. do alien skin have demo version or trial?

Basically what Alien Skin Exposure2 does is really simple. It's nothing else than a contrast curve together with some color filters added to mimick the behaviour of the various films.

So it doesn't add any noise or banding in itself BUT it could if the shots isn't properly exposed or lacks some dynamic range just the same as it could happen when you use curves, blending layers, levels etc.

For example I processed a shot of an orange with the velvia setting and it came out with the red channel bleeding everywhere, I switched to Astia and it was fine.