DigiEffects Web Euphoria 1.8; Add Real, or Surreal, Effects To Your Images

By Howard Millard • Posted: Jul 1, 2004

Web Euphoria package.

Are you ready to ramp up your photos with striking special effects? Web Euphoria (I love the name) offers more than 20 effects that you access from 19 plug-ins within Photoshop compatible programs such as Adobe Photoshop (Versions 2.5 through CS) and Elements, Corel Draw and Painter, Director, Canvas, and DeBabelizer. Want to add a look of aged and scratched film that's particularly trendy right now? How about scattering some realistic looking snow over one of your landscapes, or making it a foggy day in London town. Rain, smoke, and stars round out the organically realistic effects, while surreal offerings include light blasts, thermography, Sabbatier effect (solarization), specular lighting, and retinal bloom.

Presets And Variations
Each plug-in has a custom user interface that allows you to vary the effect through many different parameters. At first, these may seem overwhelming, but once you play with them a while you'll see what each can do. Many require a lot of time and experimentation. Out of the box, there are over 300 presets, and you can save your own settings as well. An interactive preview window shows the changes you make at selectable fixed magnifications. For print size files, though, redrawing the preview each time you make an adjustment can be slow.

There is a reason that "Web" is in the title. These effects were originally developed for video and have been ported over to work with still image-editing software. As a result of this and their inherent design, they work best on lower resolution images, such as 72dpi for use on the web or in multimedia presentations. You can apply them to higher resolution files for ink jet printing, but as the files get bigger, your Euphoria can turn to exasperation because the rendering times become so long. However, all the examples shown here are high-resolution 300dpi files necessary for reproduction in a magazine or book, but they are rather small, at about 3.3MB. Originally I tried applying the Euphoria filters to 6MB files. Even with 1.37GB of RAM on my computer, some of them took a really long time (several minutes).

Here's the bottom line: if you're working with web images only, you'll be fine. However, if your final objective is 8.5x11" or larger prints, you need to have lots of RAM and lots of patience. For some of you, it may be worth it. The plug-ins are unusual and some are unique. Download the trial software and see if they ring your chimes or only rattle your cage.

At press time, the program was available for the Mac, with a Windows version in the works. Check the website below for a free trial download, system requirements, availability, and examples of the effects and their interfaces. Current price from the website is $195. A printed black and white manual is included.

Contact
DigiEffects
(888) 344-4339
www.digieffects.com

Original image of model/actress Tanya Perez, 3.3MB file size at 300dpi for printed reproduction.
Photos © 2004 Howard Millard, All Rights Reserved

aDay for Night
Web Euphoria's Day for Night filter interface shows the myriad controls available and the preview window at a lower magnification setting. First, you adjust the parameters to get the effect you want in the preview. Then click OK at the lower right and the filter will render the effect. This doesn't take long with 72dpi images, but for large print files, you'll need patience.

Web Euphoria's Day for night filter with a three-step gradient.

Changing the dialog box parameters can drastically change the look of an image, even within the same filter. While this is the same Day for Night filter shown above, I changed the pixel mode (like Blend mode in Photoshop) to "Bitwise XOR." No, I don't know what it means, either, but
I like the effect.

Aged Film
One of the easier Web Euphoria filters to use, Aged Film simulates old photo prints or movie frames, complete with variable amounts of grain, dust, hair, and scratches.

Fog Bank
The FogBank filter simulates a rolling bank of fog or smoke. You have control over three banks of fog (Closest, Farther and Farthest), where each can have a different seed, scale, position, blend and brightness values.

Sabbatier
For a solarization like photographic effect, try the Sabbatier filter. It offers control over contrast, brightness, and grain, with the option to invert the image for a negative look.

Posterize
Web Euphoria's Selective RGB Posterize filter allows you to posterize an image through the red, green and blue channels with independent control of the weighing of each.