Kubota's Artistic Tools (starterkit 1/2007)

With the advance of photographic technology in recent years, portrait and wedding photographers have been freed from the expense and delays they endured as a result of relying on a film-based workflow. Now having switched to digital, they face another set of problems: Correcting, enhancing and presenting all of their digital images! Not to mention the learning curve involved in the transition.

The folks at Kubota ImageTools provide solutions to these new problems. They are led by Kevin Kubota, who has successfully educated thousands photographers in the critical skills necessary to make professional digital photography profitable, enjoyable, and beautiful. If you can arrange to attend one of Kevin's popular workshops, great! If not, you can still get your hands on the technology he uses to create his outstanding images while streamlining and automating his workflow. And the fact that these solutions are Photoshop actions means your work will be automated as much as possible, saving you time and effort.

In this review we are concentrating on just a portion of the Kubota software product line, the Artistic Tools actions. Currently available in two volumes (with a third nearing release), the Artistic Tools actions enable you to enhance and modify your images to maximize sales.

Volume 1 includes over 50 actions, with specific ones for improving portraiture, enhancing and adjusting color, fixing lighting, converting to monochrome, adding grain and more. For instance, KPD Hollywood intensity simulates the black fishnet-over-the-lens trick but with more color enhancement. Romantic effects are achieved with the Kubota light GlowSoft action group, while the x-process actions are great for fashion images with a cross-processed look.

Volume 2 is more playful and advanced, both in action names and the variety of effects generated. The Daily Multi-Vitamin action is great for all of your images, adding punch and color depth. As examples, Lord of the Rings EVERYDAY gives you (you guessed it!) the deep romantic feel of the Lord Of The Rings movie effects, while Angel Glow provides heavenly light.

For my examples here, I had both volumes of Kubota Artistic Tools actions loaded in my Photoshop Actions palette, and selected freely from among the many choices as I experimented. The portrait of the model ended up with entirely different moods depending on which groups of actions I used. For one variation, I used Vibrant glow, Sunglow 2 and Select-A-Toner one after the other and ended up with a soft 1940s sepia effect. When I used Singing the Blues and Digital Fill Flash, the effect looks more like a toned print. And Angel Glow, Mid Puller, Edge Blur More with Chocolate syrup makes the portrait jump out of the frame.

For the landscape image I used Smoothner with B&W InfraKev 1 and got an other-worldly monochrome scene, complete with glowing rocks and out-of-focus clouds. Lord of the Rings EVERYDAY gave a similar effect but in color. Adding the Sloppy Border action made the image ready to be printed and mounted, and offered for sale!

You can read more about the Kubota Artistic Tools (as well as the rest of the Kubota product line) and see sample images and screenshots at the Plugs 'N Pixels website (http://www.plugsandpixels.com/kubotaartistic.html). Kubota products are available separately or in sets.

by Mike Bedford