Exposure Software, formerly known as Alien Skin Software, today announced the release of Exposure X6, the newest version of their award-winning RAW photo editor for creative photographers. Exposure is a standalone image editor that handles a full photography workflow. It includes plug-in support that enables Exposure’s advanced editing and creative effects in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

Exposure began in 2005 as a film simulation plug-in for Photoshop, and was immediately embraced by digital photographers of all genres seeking to recapture the organic look of film. Over the years, Exposure became a legend among plug-ins, and evolved into a standalone full-featured editing and organizing solution for creative photographers.

“The introduction of GPU support in Exposure X6 enabled us to achieve amazing speed and image processing quality improvements,” said Finley Lee, CEO of Exposure Software. “This further advances our goal of making Exposure the best available image editor for creative photography.”

New in Exposure X6 is advanced GPU optimization, which dramatically speeds up image processing. GPU support works in concert with Exposure’s existing multi-core optimization to enable Exposure to leverage the full power of modern computer hardware. Many frequently used editing operations have been sped up by a factor of three on typical GPU hardware. This improved performance enables editing at greatly improved speeds, reducing distraction so photographers can focus on creativity.

New automatic adjustments select optimized values for the most frequently used controls in a single click, freeing time for creative editing. They can even be applied in batch to significantly ease the time spent editing large photoshoots. Exposure’s new automatic adjustments include the following:

• Auto White Balance adjusts white balance based on camera metadata. Corrects for tungsten, artificial, shade, and sunlight illuminant scenes.
• Auto Exposure sets image exposure for both under and overexposed images.
• Auto Haze Level changes the level of atmospheric haze present in the image. This is particularly useful for backlit subjects and images shot into the sun.
• Auto Dynamic Contrast lowers and raises the overall image contrast without changing saturation or hue.
• Auto Tone sets values for Blacks, Shadows, Highlights, and Whites sliders that affect overall image tone.

Using an innovative tonal-zone approach, Exposure’s redesigned shadows and highlights controls are more reliable, consistent, and accurate. These intuitive controls are particularly adept at recovering lost details in the highlight and shadow areas. The adjustments are applied intelligently to prevent unwanted color casts or hue shifts. They are exceptionally well-suited in preserving high or low key scenes.

Exposure’s new profile guided noise reduction capability reduces noise based on camera sensor characteristics, ISO, and estimated electronic noise. Luminance and chrominance noise can be reduced independently. The smoothing option applies an adaptive noise-sensitive algorithm which preserves sharp edges while further reducing noise.

The new Advanced Color Editor builds on Exposure’s innovative 3D color masking to enable vastly greater control of color modifications. For example, a model’s blue dress can be changed to red in just a few clicks. Photographers can select source and target colors based on luminance, hue, and saturation attributes. It is even possible to select multiple color replacement mappings and save them as a preset to be reused.

• Additional enhancements to Exposure include the following:
• Updated user interface provides a refined, modern aesthetic
• New haze level slider, for counteracting the decrease in contrast caused by atmospheric haze. It can also add haze as a creative effect.
• Customization of the hue and opacity of the selection mask overlay.
• Optional black background for the mask to view selected pixels without distraction.
• Optional luminance or saturation background for the selection mask, which helps visualize the mask region when adjusting luminance or saturation constraints.
• DNG converter integration enables conversion of RAW photos to DNG format using Adobe’s DNG Converter software. Conversion can be performed automatically when copying photos from a camera card, or manually invoked from a photo’s thumbnail view.

Exposure X6 is available for download at $119. If you are an Exposure X5’s user after July 15th 2020 your upgrade will be free, and those who bought it before that, and users of previous versions, can upgrade for $89.

More info on Exposure’s website.