Anyone using any of Noise Industries FX Factory Pro Effects already understands the value to their editing workflow that these plug-ins bring to the table. If you don't, and you are serious about the look of your footage, you should be looking at these products.

New from Noise Industries are 5 new Mac based plug-ins for FX Factory - PHYX Color

Included in this set is:

BleachBypass

GlowDark

SelectiveSat

ShiftSuppress

Techni2color

To access these you will need to download Noise industries FX Factory free plug-in management system that lets you install and try hundreds of plug-ins. Some plug-ins are absolutely free. Others are available in trial mode and may be purchased as needed. Here's a link to the download page: http://www.noiseindustries.com/fxfactory/download/

So lets take a looks at these one by one.

Bleach Bypass

So you know this look: "Saving Private Ryan" ... "Three Kings".... its pretty cool stuff and it was first used in Japanese filmmaker Kon Ichikawa's 1960 film Her Brother. Its the process of either the partial or complete skipping of the bleaching function during the processing of a color film. The result is a black and white image over a color image. PHYX's take on this effect offers a fully customizable set of controls to achieve the exact look that you are looking for. Here at NZVP, we found the ability to adjust highlights and crush the blacks gave us that extra bit of control over the picture adjustments.

Glowdark

Sometimes you just need the ability to be able to remove the harshness of edges in some darker areas of 3D or computer generated vision that you have created to offer a more realistic look. GlowDark allows you to diffuse selected areas to soften any over-sharp or edgy looking images. Much the same effect as dailling back the "Detail" level in many broadcast level video cameras to acheive a smoother, less digital look to the picture.

SelectiveSat

Selective Saturation lets you pick a colour and, as the name suggests, control the saturation levels. Whether you choose to de-saturate or over-saturate the colours, the selective colour eyedropper make this a simple and effective way to control a single colour. This plug-in offers a subtle yet effective way to highlight a particular colour range of your video.

ShiftSuppress

This plug-in is similar to Selective Sat but gives the ability to pick any particular colour and either shift its values to increase or decrease that colour information in the picture or you can choose to supress or remove that colour range from the picture which can add a pretty cool effect. Day for night is a prime example of how to effectively use this plug-in.

Techni2color

Heres a classic look that was developed by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation in the 1920's. Its was an extremely technical process that required that the camera lens exposed two frames of a single strip of black and white negative film simultaneously, one behind a red filter, the other behind a green filter. These images then needed to be re-aligned with the use of special projectors with operators having to constantly adjust the pictures. The Tecni2clolor plug-in takes the hard work out of all of this it to provide you with an easy to use, fully customized effect with plenty of room to change the parameters to achieve that classic look. Its a unique look that often produced some interesting and sometimes strange looking images as the picture tried to deal with the lack of blue information from the pictures resulting in odd looking skies. PHYX Color offers two way to set this look, Method A: which allows the introduction of a blue shif filter to make up for lost color information or Method B: which offers less control over the look but produces interesting pictures all the same.

Below is a quick overview from PHYX Color showing a brief explanation of these plug-ins.

We tested PHYX Color plug-ins on 3 of the programs that supported FX Factory. Thats Final Cut Pro - , Motion and After Effects.(Final Cut Express is also supported) The great thing here is that they all work seamlessly and intuitively on all platforms. Unlike some plug-in effects we found these to actually be useful. FxFactory is a free download with some great free effects and once you have download the plug-in software, there's a whole suite of effects to explore, some free and many worth purchasing.

So what do we think of it. As a set of tools for controlling the colour aspects of your footage they are great, easily accessible and part of awesome family of plug-ins that can only help you as an editor to make that difference and make your product stand out.

Check out www.phyxware.com for their full range of PHYX products.

Tim Lucas- NZVP.