Retro looks and visual emphasis on tap

Two different companies have announced new plug-ins for Final Cut Pro X and related products that offer, respectively, rich historical photographic film stock looks and an easy way to call attention to specific items on-screen. Digital Film Tools is offering its Film Stocks plug-in for both Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5, and also offers a version that works on photos as well as other video editors. Ripple Training's Callouts are available through FxFactory.

As the name suggests, Digital Film Tools' Film Stocks ($195) offers 288 analog photographic film presets, representing many historical color and black-and-white film stocks from high-end Ilford to "toy camera" Lomo effects. Every preset offers customized controls and can also be layered, allowing users to create and save their own individual looks based on a preferred film stock that can be applied to other projects or shared with colleagues.

The video version is compatible with Final Cut (6, 7 and X) as well as Adobe's After Effects and Premiere Pro CS5 and later, and Avid Symphony, Media Composer, Newscutter and Xpress Pro. A separate version for still images ($95) is available which works with Apple's Aperture (v3 and later) and Adobe's Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom (CS3 and higher). Both versions require Intel Macs running OS X 10.6 or later.

Callouts from Ripple Training ($49) is a plug-in exclusively developed for Final Cut Pro X and works through Noise Industries' FxFactory add-on. Callouts comprises 10 different effects using shapes like circles, arrows, magnifiers, text effects and more, which can be combined to add emphasis or direct attention to a specific detail in a video.

Callouts is also highly customizable, with 30 parameters on every look, and the callouts can be connected to hold frames using three-point editing techniques. Users can mix and match callouts on a clip and move, rotate or shape them as desired. The callouts can also be animated on- and off-screen. Callouts will work with any system that can use Final Cut Pro X, which requires an Intel Mac using a Core 2 Duo or higher processor and a discrete graphics card or high-end Intel HD graphics chipset.

by MacNN Staff