Soul on Ice

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful." (Albert Camus)

Seen in Lensbaby  Flicker and DA

For the longest time I've resisted using the latest photo enhancing softwares.  Not because I'm such a technological Ludite.  I am not even a purist.  I'm just cheap. 

I've been using one of the earliest version of Photoshop Elements, which I got as a freebie when we acquired our PC decades ago.  It worked fine.  It still does.  I used it for tweaking the saturation and the levels.  But the PC I was using was on its last legs.  So when I got a new Dell Studio, I decided to load it up with the bundle I got from Wacom tablet. It came with the Color Efex Pro and the Silver Efex Pro.  I used the softwares as plug-ins for the Corel Paintshop Pro X2 -- which imo is the poor man's Photoshop CS3.  More on Corel later -- I'll reserve it for my next blog.  

Upon using the Silver Efex Pro, I realized what I was missing.  Below is the same image used with the early Elements.  The difference is huge.  I have tried the Color Efex and will post my comment later.