Macphun, maker of elegantly powerful photo editing tools including Tonality, Noiseless, and FX Photo Studio, has announced the impending release of Creative Kit 2016 — a bundle of 6 of the company’s Pro apps for a discounted price of $150. Creative Kit 2016 includes:
Noiseless CK (reviewed here) and Tonality CK (reviewed here), separately capable of eliminating various types of noise from images, and converting color images into beautiful black and white versions — both highly impressive, as our reviews discuss;
FX Photo Studio CK, a filter, frame, and brush-based photo editing tool that lets you convert simple photos into pieces of art; and
Snapheal CK, Focus CK, and Intensify CK, apps to erase unwanted items from photos, add lens effects such as blurs, or enhance subtle details in your images, respectively…
All of the CK versions are renamed from Macphun’s earlier “Pro” versions, and include features above and beyond their predecessors. For instance, batch processing is now available in Noiseless, Tonality, Intensify, and FX Photo Studio, along with seamless sharing of edited images across all six apps, and a unified installer. The apps can be used as plug-ins for OS X Photos, Aperture, Adobe Photoshop, or Adobe Lightroom, as well as in standalone form.
The Creative Kit 2016 pre-order bundle includes a duplicate photo-finding app called Snapselect, two eBooks, a photography training video, and additional textures for three of the apps. A demonstration of the tools can be seen here, and we’ve reviewed Creative Kit 2016 here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Personally I’d like to do all my ‘enhancement’ in camera: time best spend is with your camera and take a good photo in the first place, not fiddling with a photo afterwards. So these plugins aren’t for me. But I do look out for any plugins that can close a hole Apple created when I switched from Aperture to Photos. For instance, the Smart Folders are seriously lacking in options. Then again, Photos isn’t meant as a replacement for Aperture.
good luck capturing a HDR photo with just your camera… if we could capture all great photos with just the camera alone, you wouldn’t need Aperture or any other editing software now would you?
I don’t care for HDR; I find the outcome to look artificial. The thought of combining three photographs, under exposed, properly exposed and over exposed, makes me shrunk. Of course, it isn’t something new. I think Gustave Le Gray was one of the earliest photographers to use this method. Nowadays there are more ways to HDR than simply combining 3 different ‘shots’. It makes for interesting effects, discussion and techniques. At the same time it’s not something I want to explore in depth.
As for Aperture, I don’t use the adjustments much. I think it’s fantastic DAM software, and love things like Smart Albums. To have an album of a single person, all portrait shots for instance is something I love to use. Makes it easy to gift a printed album, in portrait orientation, which people don’t often receive.
The versatility of Aperture is sorely missed in Photos, but again, I weans expecting as much.
Wow, I don’t know any serious photographers that doesn’t at least tweak their photos afterwards. Even in the days when I processed my own prints in the darkroom I would do some dodging and burning.
I should’ve elaborated: dodging and burning is something I think can enhance a photo, and I have done that a few times. But in general I like to take a photo the best way I know how. I’ll wait for the light to be just right. And I don’t like to work on them afterwards. For me, it’s more of a hobby, the photo taking, than looking at them afterwards. Well, I look at them, and may show them to friends, biut I don’t go back to them afterwards unless I want a printed album.
You should really try these apps before saying that. Composition is a really critical element in photography, but Macphun’s apps do a great job of improving upon whatever your camera is natively capable of doing. Noiseless and Tonality (reviews linked above) have become go-to apps for me since I tested them earlier this year, and Tonality (for black and white photography) is a great example of offering meaningful fine-degree image processing that would be inconceivable in even the best camera ever made. I’m currently testing the rest of the suite.
You always write good articles on photography. So with that, I’ll take a look at these software offerings. Hopefully there’s a trial version for 2 or 3 plug-ins. Spending a good chunk of a rainy Sunday should give me a taste of what is possible.
So these plugins aren’t for me. But I do look out for any plugins that can close a hole Apple created when I switched from Aperture to Photos.
That’s not going to happen. There will be a bazillion plugins for Photos, but nothing that fills the gap of lack of proper management tools that Aperture was best at. :(
Will this Creative Kit 2016 truly be featuring plugins for Apple’s Photos app as announced in the headline? Can such plugins be available/supported at all if applications are purchased outside the Mac App Store? So, when I get the pre-order bundle I understand that I am paying for “standalone” (ie non-Mac App Store) apps. True or false? If true, then with or without Photos plugin support?
From their bloc post it appears so, once the new versions ship.
http://macphun.com/blog/creative-kit-2016-macphun
“Creative Kit 2016 now sports 6 incredible apps that will have your photos singing for joy! You get award-winning Pro versions of: Snapheal, Intensify, Noiseless, Tonality, Focus and FX Photo Studio. Use them as standalone apps or as plug-ins to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, and Apple Aperture and new Photos for Mac (part of Apple’s El Capitan OS X release).”
Yup, just got a confirmation by MacPhun support itself. I’ve just preordered the kit. Looking forward to the release date.
Yeah, thinking of doing the same. Noiseless would be really handy in particular I think for any late night shots, and a few of those others look nice too.
I’m certainly not a professional but gimp (for example) appears particularly difficult to me. i had nice experience with this photo editor for mac http://macphun.com and it does the job for me. it also have user-friendly interface
I purchased this plug-in suite yesterday after upgrading to El Capitan. It continually crashes when launched with PS.
Wow there, that’s not good. Have you tried any basic troubleshooting routine?If Macphun is selling software that can’t run how’s one to try it out?
@paulfran2014 – Please contact our support team at support@macphun.com. Obviously that’s not expected behavior! I’m running the suite on a late 2013 Macbook Pro.
Creative Kit 2016 will include extensions support for Photos. ;-)
Cheers, Kevin (from Macphun)
I really like Macphun’s Creative Kit, especially the Intensify Pro app. It provides such a great variety of presets and effect to enhance pictures with style.
For Mac I also recommend BatchPhoto. It’s great if you have to resize, watermark, convert or rename dozens of photos at once.
batchphoto.com
Hi Radu – thanks for the kind words. Make sure you’re on the latest version of Intensify, as it includes a batch processing feature built in.