Today Phase One presented three new style packs developed by well-known photographers and retouchers: Michael Woloszynowicz, Marie Bärsch, and Pratik Naik.
Each pack contains 7 styles, so, in effect, they are making 21 styles in total.
I had a chance to test them a bit and here is my first impression:
The new styles look really nice! As any other styles, these can’t be used universally, but they fit pretty well many of my portrait images.
I don’t expect styles to work perfectly on any given photograph; rather I use styles as a source of inspiration. So it’s great to have the ability to get some color correction ideas from Marie, Michael, and Pratik’s developments.
Each style pack has a unique look and it’s quite difficult to pick a favorite one. For some images, Marie Bärsch styles fit best and I appreciate her focus on a gentle correction.
Michael Woloszynowicz and Pratik Naik styles give striking color correction ideas. Plus, keep in mind that you can always decrease the style effect by applying it to a layer and thus have a full control over style opacity.
The good thing is that you can save $34 by buying all the new packs in a bundle.
Basically, you’re getting 2 packs for a price of 3 and that’s a nice deal for sure.
I like that most of the adjustments in styles are made by “fundamental” tools such as Curves, Color Editor, and Color Balance. Although, some styles use sliders (Contrast, HDR) and a few styles are even affecting input black and white points of Levels – a thing which I would avoid to use in any preset.
But again – I don’t recommend you to rely on any styles blindly. There is always a room for adjusting a style to your particular image.
All in all, I think Editorial Color Grading Styles are worth buying: they would give you color correction ideas, plus that’s a great chance to support photographers who contributed a lot to Capture One community.
