What is ScatterLight Lenses? Andromeda makes ScatterLight Lenses™, which is a powerful tool for enhancing photographic images, which has been created specifically for use by analog and digital camera enthusiasts.
The ScatterLight Lenses produce a broad scope of realistic patterned and diffusion lens effects ranging from subtle soft focus effects most often seen in professional portraiture and landscapes, to more dramatic effects that scatter and focus light over the brightest areas of an image.
ScatterLight Lenses allow the user to apply and manipulate professional lens effects using templates supplied within the Filter. The templates define the patterns used to scatter or focus the light from the image creating effects which are normally achieved using high quality specialty camera lenses or filters.
ScatterLight Lenses comes with a large assortment of filter effects that mimic photographic lens effects.
Andromeda ScatterLight Lenses has 4 distinct effects categories:
All parameters can be adjusted - glow amount, blurring, coarse to fine rendering, size and more. The effect is dependent upon the brightness areas of the image, and the relative contrast of adjacent areas. Presets settings are available, as is the ability to save your custom settings and recall them at any time.
My impressions of ScatterLight Lenses is that you have far greater control of light effects now, compared to the equivalent in the real-world screw-in glass filters. With those, the effect of star-cross, or soft diffuse, etc, are of only one setting, which is whatever specifications the glass filter has been made to, and its effect is often tied to the f/ stop setting on the camera lens. Quite often, I wish I had a particular glass filter, or used one I had, to enhance a photo I was taking. With ScatterLight Lenses, I can add the effect, to whatever extent I want, after I've developed the photo. More than once. And more effects than just one glass filter effect per photo taken. For many of ScatterLight Lenses effects, you'd have to combine more than one filter on your lens to get the same effect - not a good idea, since stacking glass filters will cut down the amount of light reaching the film, introduce reflections, edge interference and reduce sharpness. The cost of ScatterLight Lenses as a plugin is far cheaper than buying the equivalent in glass screw-in filters for your camera. I like the effects I was getting with all the settings, and there are many variations to choose from. There are certainly more effects and adjustments available than what I show here.
Here are examples of only some of the preset effects:
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Original Image |
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Dream Equivalent to a Spot Soft-Focus glass filter. |
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Fog Equivalent to a Diffuse glass filter. |
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Multiple Equivalent to a Multiple Image glass filter, which only has one setting - whatever the glass was ground to. |
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Portrait Equivalent to a Spot Vignette, or central highlight, glass filter |
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Rays Equivalent to a Star-Cross glass filter - but a glass filter depends on a bright point of light for its effect. |
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Star There is no glass filter equivalent. |
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Streak Equivalent to an adjustable Star-Cross glass filter and a Spot Vignette combined. |
Interface of Scatterlight Lenses
