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Exposure X6 Review and Demonstration | 4K
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Jul 19, 2023
Exposure Software X6 Demonstration and Review | Photographer Dustin Abbott demonstrates and reviews the latest version of one of his favorite pieces of software and highlights some of the new features. Get Exposure X6 by visiting this address: http://bit.ly/ExposureDA | Use the coupon code "dustinabbott" to get 10% off any purchases there. To get a shirt like Dustin's, visit https://intotheam.com/DUSTIN10 and get 10% off sitewide. Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/dustinabbott Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Make a donation via Paypal: paypal.me/dustinTWI Get a discount off all Skylum Editing Software (Luminar, Aurora HDR, AirMagic) by using code DUSTINHDR at checkout: http://bit.ly/LuminarDLA Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | Check me out on: Personal Website: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Google+: http://bit.ly/24PjMzv | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Twitter: http://bit.ly/1RyYxIH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu My filming setup: Sony a7R III: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2D6ibNO or Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CNxOvH | or | Sony a9 @ B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2HyWIyt or Amazon: https://amzn.to/2s1vYE0 Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 RXD @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2FA00la or Amazon https://amzn.to/2G2kaEr Lights: Rotolight AEOS @B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2IK7mqV | Genaray Contender @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/33HbGNM | and Aputure AL-MW: https://bhpho.to/2N3MtZV DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Keywords: Exposure Software, Exposure X6, Alien Skin, Review , Exposure X6 Review, Exposure Review, Exposure X6 Demonstration, Demonstration, Demo, Coupon Code, Dustin Abbott, Discount, Exposure Discount, X6 Discount, software, Software review, software demonstration, how to
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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to talk to you about the newest build of one of my favorite pieces of software, and that is Exposure Software's new X6 version
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I've been using exposure now for probably at least seven or eight generations of their development, and I have continued to
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be impressed by the way that they have evolved the program into a fully featured alternative
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to something like Lightroom, but while integrating a lot of the extra flexibility with layering
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and other features that Photoshop has, but Lightroom does not. And so for those of you that, you know, just really can't buy into the idea of not owning your
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software and being on a subscription, and you don't want to have to use multiple pieces of
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software exposure may be what you're looking for so today I'm going to demonstrate a
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little bit of how the software works why it remains one of my favorite pieces of
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software but also some of the new features that are a part of it so we're going to
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jump in take a look at that and I'll show you some photos along the way as we go
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let's jump in let's take a look exposure has continued to be one of my favorite
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pieces of software for editing now these days they have made it really a fully
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functional competitor to a program like Lightroom. I've used it since very early on for the plugins because it has an amazing
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amazing amount of various looks presets, in this case now more than 500 of them that just give
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you a huge amount of flexibility. But now we have fully featured library model, you know, all of those
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things. But I do want to just kind of highlight basically basic functionality, but then also some of the
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new features that we've got going here. So one of the things that I've always loved is the just
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vast amount of presets. And this includes the ability, as we're going to see in a moment
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to tweak and make your own presets, which I've over the years done a lot of. So I've got a lot of
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looks that I can, you know, play around with that I really, you know, that have consistently shown me that
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I like the look in certain situations. And of course, now what we do have is GPU acceleration
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So it really takes advantage of that. And so as you can see, you really get real-time feedback
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not just from a thumbnail, but real-time feedback as it actually renders the whole image
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So, I mean, we're going everything from different kind of faded, low-contrast kind of looks
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you know, that have the tongue curve pushed up. Then you've got film simulations of many kinds
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And so these are Fuji-type simulations. We've got a lot of Polaroid-type simulations
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And so, you know, some of those are a little bit more, can be more extreme
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You've got slide emulations, which can also be interesting. Some of these classic, you know, both Fuji looks
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but then also Kodak. And a lot of these I actually like as a baseline
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and then kind of tweak them to my own devices. One of the thing that I also like
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and it's one of these that I kind of, I really kind of prefer for this image, is actually up here where we have actually
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some various cinema looks. And some of these can really, provide some punch. And so in this case, I actually kind of like this technicolor look and or
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you know, either that, which is a little more vibrant or this faded look and then to kind of add my own
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tweaks. So on that front, moving over to the right side, we see that we have a massive amount
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very much a lightroom type interface, but some advantages that Lightroom doesn't have. And so
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first of all, we do have all the kind of basic things that Lightroom has in terms of
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you know, transforming the various basic precepts. There are a few different things here. The
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Den contrast is something that you don't see and it's what kind of enables you to really
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go crazy with some of the highlights on this. And so it can be intriguing if you're into that
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I really love haze filters You know you can add a hazy look to it but I actually kind of like it as a way of just giving you some pop S kind of pop And so you know clarity sliders vibrance saturation all of those things
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You have a typical sharpening, and so you have the ability to, you know, do all of those basic tweaks
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and then you can also create presets in all of this. I mean, with any of their presets, you can tweak it, then you can save it as your own preset
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which is something that I really, really love. Noise reduction. You can also use noise reduction based on your actual camera model. In this case, it's not popping up, but in many cases, that will be there. And so it's actually a smart noise reduction, which is something that is new in the X6 version that we're looking at here. Now, under color, we're going to come back to color in a bit. You've got all of the basic things that you're accustomed to here. A lot of ways for tweaking that, and also a lot of varying various color filters that you can also start at as a bit
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a base and then tweak down to less extreme levels and so I've I've spent a lot of time there in
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times past tone curve you know this is pretty much lightroom very similar and so if you're
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familiar with lightroom you're going to be familiar with that here's one of the advantages that
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we have though in this and that is the ability to add in a lut and so you can import your own luts
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so you say what's the value of that well maybe there's a specific look that you like for a film
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look that you want to also apply to photos. But more particularly, if you want to incorporate some
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both stills and video in a project to be able to utilize the same lookup table on both the video
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and the photos means you can get a real consistency of a look. And so a great feature there. Vignette
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you have all your typical manual vignette. No, in this case, what you do have that you don't have
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in lightroom is the ability to move the vignette area around in a more specific way. There's also
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a lot of various presets that you can utilize there and and of course again customize and tweak now
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because you do have layering capabilities which so you can add layers you can mix and match presets
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and this gives you the flexibility of also you know changing the amount of opacity for each one of
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these layers and so let's just say that I wanted to add a layer here and I'll go to kind of one of
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my basic um kind of you know presets that I go too often here and so
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So, and it's just, it's kind of a more subtle thing, and I tend to edit on a more subtle level
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But, you know, I have the ability to pull that, you know, whole level down on either one of these
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And so, you know, I could also pull it down here, you know, or differing levels of opacity throughout and determine what I like best
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But along with that layering capability, it also allows you to do other things
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You know, be that a variety of different, you know, borders, including if you
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if you're into like a Polaroid type look. And so you can tweak with borders
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You can also play with light effects, light leaks. And I've actually had a lot of fun with this
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and customized various of these effects in the times past to really give a look that I like
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that in some cases can really, really work. It's utilizing a light effect there
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that, you know, in like a lot of portrait situations look really, really great
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Now, in all of these, you have the ability to kind of tweak their performance
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You can zoom and so that you're getting a kind of a more drawn-out effect
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You can also change the opacity, and so you can make it stronger, you can make it lighter
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You can change the direction of it. All of those things obviously can be very, very useful
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And so a light effect is beneficial. You can also add texture
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That could be either, you know, dust if you're wanting to kind of age a photo, but it can also be
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also be if you want to kind of texturize different looks. You can also import your own textures
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into this, which can be really, really useful, again, depending on your project and what you're
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trying to accomplish. So all of this, the overlay area, is something that you just don't have
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obviously in a lightroom setting Similarly in focus now this allows you to because again because you can layer you can also go anywhere from like you know glamour times of shots We are actually adding some haze to varying sharpening presets
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So you can do it by preset. You can also just do a standard amount of sharpening
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And similar with the blurring, which, and, you know, you can add in some warping effects
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So there's more flexibility on that. Another area where exposure is great is when it comes to grain
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And a lot of this comes because they started off as a. film emulation, you know, processing company. So the byproduct of that is they've got a lot of
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really, really great, you know, features that you can do to tweaking the, you know, the quality of
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the grain and also the way that it behaves. And then, of course, all of that, let me go back
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to there, all of that can be tweaked in terms of the amount. You can even imitate, you know
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some other kind of film stocks as a part of that. So pretty cool. Another thing is infrared, which
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It's not going to look great with this kind of image necessarily. But there are situations where it can be a really intriguing effect
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and again, something that you don't really have to the same degree in Lightroom
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We're going to look at the bouquet with another image in just a moment. You do have a lens correction by profile that you can look up, you know, just like you can
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And you also have a little bit more flexibility in the amount of different kind of fringing that you can go after
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and that you can also, again, save as a preset maybe for a particular lens
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And so byproduct of this, there's a lot of flexibility you have to tweaking an image
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and, you know, kind of building it in the fashion that you would want
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So with this image, I want to look particularly at the bouquet. And obviously, you do have, you have an option of utilizing a lot of different looks here
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for creating bocah, and we'll look at one other image in a more kind of traditional way
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But one thing that some people really do like is, so here I've selected a mask that is a plain art style
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And so I'm going to kind of put it here in the middle of this. And this gives you an opportunity to do a little bit something like a tilt shift type look
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And so in this case, I'm going to expand the zone there a little bit more
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And so it just allows you to kind of feature in. Now, one thing I also like is you have control over the kind of the quality of the bowcat that you create
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And so in this case, I like a nice and creamy. You could even add zoom, and so you're, you know, if you want kind of a dynamic look
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So again, you're kind of incorporating some of the Photoshop features and with some of the lightroom features with some of these things
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But with a lightroom type interface that is really simple and easy to use
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Now, another feature that I really like for portraiture work is, so let's say this technicolor
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I really like the toning that it does to the side of the barn and to the
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the birch trees here. It's a cool effect. I like what it's done with these areas, but obviously I don't like
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the skin tones here. And so I can click on the brush here and there is, you know, the typical spot
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healing also. But on this brush, it obviously opens up a lot of possibilities here in masking
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Here I just want to do something simple and I just want to take down the, you know, the oversaturation of colors
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kind of the oranging of colors, but at the same time, I want to retain it everywhere else
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And so in this case, I've added a real warmth and a look to the tone curve that I like a lot
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while not impacting skin tones. And again, in just a few seconds there
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There's one other thing that I want to do to this portrait image in that this particular lens
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the area of the bocah over here, it's a little bit busy for my taste
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And so we're going to go back into bocaf for a moment, and this time I'm going to take a half-plane art
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So what that does is it's only going to affect one portion of the image
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And so what I'll do is I'll drag that over here. I'm going to limit the amount of feathering and so that I can retain the sharpness here
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And then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to add a little bit of bouquet
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We'll make it a little creamier there to the background. So let me give you a before and after
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You can see now in this case the before and after is also showing the toning change but focus just on the busyness here And so by that little subtle tweak again just a few seconds I got an image that is in my opinion is more pleasing in its totality
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than what it was before. And again, just a few minutes of really intuitive processing here
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Now, in this case, I just want to show you, again, the ability to select looks here. And this is one of
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my favorite things to do in this. Like this image, I shot a long exposure. This is with the new
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Canon EOS are 5 and so and I'd use some filters to get a long exposure around the rocks
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I like the image, but the colors, and I like the light, but the colors are just, eh
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And so in this case, I have the ability to really, you know, select different looks
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And some of these more kind of extravagant looks, they actually work well with, you know, certain images
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And so in this case, I'm really kind of liking some of like this look
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or somewhere right in here. And so let's just say I go with that. But then, of course, with all of these presets
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I have the ability to then come and to tweak with any of these other, you know
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sliders. And so I can add in saturation, a little bit of vibrance
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maybe some clarity here. I can do some work here, you know
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maybe if I wanted to play with that haze filter. And so make it just even a little bit more dynamic
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open up the shadows just a little bit, maybe pull those highlights of hair, not quite that much
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Let's go somewhere right in there and end up in just a few seconds with an image that is just so much more dynamic than what I started out with
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And so I really have always loved exposure for this reason, and I find that it is very, very rare that I can't take an image into exposure and have it come out looking better than what it went in
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So one final new feature that I want to highlight here is in the advanced color editor
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And so in this case, we've got an old red dump truck, which is cool
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But I just want to use this to illustrate what we can do. And so in this case, I have used the eyedropper to select that color
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Now, you could just play with the color wheel if you wanted. But what I'm going to do is I'm just going to make it simple
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And I'm just going to select the sample, the sky from the two color
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Now, we can see that everything is not quite perfect yet here, but it's really easy to just play with this just a little bit and just slide that down and make sure that we end up with a result that is nice and smooth here
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So we've gone in just a few seconds, we've gone from this to this. Now, you can see how many different applications there are for tweaking things around just to make an image a little bit more dynamic
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And so obviously just one more tool to give you more flexibility in your post-processing
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And it's this continual development of new features while retaining the stuff that I love in terms of these presets that really makes this one of my favorite pieces of editing software
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And so as you can see, there is a lot of features that are there
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There's both a lot of complexity if you're a more advanced user that wants to dive deeper, but also the massive amount of presets
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means that if you are, you know, maybe not as advanced a user
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there's tons of different looks there that can probably give you what you are looking for
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but then as you kind of grow the ability to go deeper and to edit more
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edit with more complexity. The reason why I'm releasing at this particular time
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I've been meaning to do this review for a while because of the new build, the X6 build, but at the moment there is a lot of discounts due to Black Friday
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and so it is a chance to get a discounted price on it
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And as always, if you use the code Dustin Abbott as one word
16:58
you will get an extra 10% off of your cart total. I'm Dustin Abbott, and I've got a link in the description down below
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if you want to explore exposure software a little bit more. There's also a linkage there to follow me on social media
17:11
to become a patron, to sign it from my newsletter, and if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube
17:17
Thanks for watching. Have a great day