Tiffen Dfx Filter Suite is a collection of image-enhancing filters that simulate a number of ‘traditional’ photography effects achieved using glass lenses and filters (Tiffen is a manufacturer of glass photographic filters), as well as various types of film stocks and photographic processing effects. There are 125 filters with thousands of individually configured variations or ‘presets’. The filters are available for use with a few popular image editing packages (listed at the end of this review) and there is also a standalone version available. I’ve been using Tiffen Dfx with Adobe PhotoShop.

The first thing that struck me about Tiffen Dfx is how easy it is to use. The second thing that struck me is its speed. It applies effects to an image almost instantly. It has its own self-contained environment from which you can select tabbed groups of filter-types. Each tab contains a row of thumbnails of the image you are currently editing with a specific type of filter applied. This makes it very easy to find and use an effect. For example, if you click the Special Effects tab you will see a set of thumbnails showing effects such as Infrared, Day For Night, Night Vision and Pencil. When you select one of these thumbnails a palette shows a number of pre-set variations on that theme. If you select Fog, for instance, the palette lets you quickly select precisely the desired density of fog. If you select Pencil you can transform the image into a ‘sketch’ with varying alternatives to sharpen or soften the outlines.

There are also some snazzy lighting effects to let you add fake shadows such as venetian blinds and windows, or even rainbows, flares and starbursts. And you can simulate a wide-angle lens and add elliptical or rectangular vignettes. You can also mask parts of the image using auto-masking tools to simplify the selection of similarly coloured areas so that filters may be applied only to specific portions of the image.

If none of the effects provides quite what you are looking for you can switch to a ‘Parameters’ tab and make fine adjustments to colours, brightness, blurs or whatever other attributes characterize the filter being used. With some filters, the parameters have just two or three simple sliders. With others there may be a couple of dozen parameters available. Once you’ve tinkered with a set of parameters you can save them as a new preset for easy re-use.

I have to say, I love this product. It has a great set of filters to make fine, artistic adjustments to your pictures. And it also has a really nice editing environment. When you are working on an image, you can preview it at full size or at a user-selectable magnification, you can view the image divided horizontally or vertically to see it both with and without the filters applied or you can even view two reduced scale images, one above the other, to see a ‘before and after’ preview.

Regular readers will know that I am a big fan of the filter packages from Alien Skin Software. To some extent Tiffen Dfx performs some tasks comparable to the image-enhancements available in Alien Skin’s http://www.alienskin.com/exposure/. The Alien Skin product tends to work on the assumption that the end user is a very experienced photographer who would instantly know what pictures taken with ‘Kodachrome 100G’ or ‘Fuji Reala - pushed 2 stops’ would look like and, accordingly, it provides specific options to emulate those films. The Tiffen product is (dare I say?) less geeky in that respect. It assumes you know the difference between a warm and a cold colour tone and have some idea of the effects of overexposure, film grain and high contrast but it then lets you mix and match those effects very fluidly. Personally, this is an approach I like a lot.

In spite of one or two more purely artistic effect such as ‘Pencil’ and ‘Color Shadow’, the Tiffen set doesn’t really stray far into the world of ‘natural art’ effects, however. So, if you want to add some drawn or painted pizazz to your images, I’d recommend the Alien Skin packages such as Snap Art and Eye Candy. But for simple, fast and effective photographic image processing, Tiffen 3 Dfx has definitely won me over.

Requirements: The Tiffen Dfx filters can be applied to still images editing in software including Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Apple Aperture if installed on the same machine. For film-makers there is another package, Tiffen Dfx v3 video/film plug-in ($599.95) which provides filters for use with Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro 6/7, and Avid Editing Systems. Alternatively there is a standalone version of Tiffen Dfx ($169.95) which lets you apply the filters to images even if you don’t own one of the host applications mentioned above.