I love software that is so intuitive and easy to use that before you know it, it's up and running on your computer and you're playing around with it and having a blast. Even better is if it's a program that's actually useful along with being fun. One of the niftiest imaging tools I've tried in recent months is a new plug-in from onOne Software called FocalPoint 1.0 which lets you easily add selective focus and vignetting to your images.

Of course, selective focus and vignetting are used so often in wedding, portrait and commercial photography these days—particularly food photography—they have almost become tiresome. Clients still love the sweet look you get with these effects which is why pricey selective focus and tilt-shift lenses, filters, and vignetting hoods continue to be hot accessories among photographers.

But what if you didn't have to carry all that extra stuff around? Or what if you brought your LensBaby, your f/1.4 portrait lens, or your center spot filter to a wedding, and didn't have time to put it on at the opportune moment? While all things digital can be tweaked later in Photoshop, adding the necessary adjustment layers and masks is a time-consuming process. And I don't think even my most advanced Photoshop friends would consider this kind of work "fun."



GETTING TO THE POINT

After installing FocalPoint 1.0, the plug-in can be accessed under the onOne menu that's automatically been added to the top of the Photoshop workspace. (If you already have other onOne plug-ins installed, you'll be familiar with this menu selection.)

It may be a minor quibble but I don't know why onOne gets its own menu bar for all its plug-ins rather than having a folder under the Filter section where all my other plug-ins live. This may sound a bit anal but with a program as large and complicated as Photoshop, it's nice to have everything in one place.

Once you have opened an image you want to add selective focus and/or vignetting to, launch FocalPoint and you'll be given a choice of whether you want a round or planar aperture for your image. You'll then see the FocusBug, which is the main adjustment area in FocalPoint. The FocusBug is so named because it sort of resembles a ladybug—albeit in a connect-the-dots kind of way—with a circle in the center to define the sweet spot, three "legs" for resizing it, and two "antenna" which let you make your adjustments. The set-up actually reminds me a lot of the adjustment posts on the front of a LensBaby 3G selective focus lens which is, I think, intentional.

Move the FocusBug around until the sweet spot is over the area you want—such as a face or the center of a flower—and adjust the size by pulling on the various legs. An overlaying grid will let you see what size and shape you are creating.



BUGGING OUT

After the sweet spot is set, you can adjust the amount of blur by pulling and pushing the right antenna. Feathering—i.e. controlling the transition between the in focus and out of focus areas—is done by adjusting the angle of the right hand antenna. The angle of the left hand antenna controls the type of blur effect you want with a smooth Gaussian type blur created by pulling down on the antenna, and a more dramatic, motion-type blur created by angling the left antenna up. You can also add some blur to the sweet spot by pushing in on the left antenna.

FocalPoint can be made to simulate a tilt-shift lens when you hold down the option key on a Mac (alt key on Windows) and drag the center of the FocusBug to tilt the plane of focus.

Vignetting is added through Lightness and Midpoint sliders on the right side of the workspace to lighten or darken the vignette and control its size. When you have your image the way you want it, just press the apply button and your results will become a new layer in the image in Photoshop.

If you like the effect you've created, you can save it as a preset for later use. You can also employ Photoshop actions to access a FocalPoint preset and batch process a folder full of images at once.

Keep in mind that the FocalPoint layer will add substantially to the size of your image. Several 25MB RAW files of a model we photographed in the studio became 110+MB PSD files after getting the selective focus and vignette treatment in FocalPoint. But the results were worth, turning rather ordinary looking headshots into glamorous portraits.

But herein lies the rub. With a plug-in that's as easy to use as FocalPoint, discretion and subtlety are important. Push some of your images too much and the results can be overkill. Use the selective focus in too many of your portrait or nature shots and the look can get tired fast. As always though, it's a matter of taste.



THE BOTTOM LINE

It's funny that after crowing about the great bokeh I got from the Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens in the previous review, I could simulate the effect so easily and so closely in just a couple of clicks in FocalPoint 1.0. Though it feels a bit like cheating—what kind of software doesn't though?—I really liked the fun, intuitive interface of FocalPoint and the striking results I got from this software. Though it's not as enjoyable as capturing dramatic, selectively focused images with a specialized lens, it comes pretty darn close.



FocalPoint 1.0

www.ononesoftware.com

Pros: Creates dramatic, selectively focused images in just a couple of clicks; fun and intuitive interface; vignettes are easy to add.

Cons: Effects produce huge Photoshop files; onOne plug-ins are organized in a dedicated menu bar not in the general filter section in Photoshop.

Price: $160