Auto FX Mystical Tint Tone & Colour

Auto FX has been releasing Photoshop plug-ins like it's going out of fashion over the last year, and Mystical Tint Tone & Colour, its latest offering, is a follow-up to the rather average Mystical Lighting, released earlier this year.

The tool has a typical Auto FX look and feel, sporting the company's now familiar, although a little non-standard interface - complete with bubble-shaped tooltips and menus. The program aims to offer photographers a quick and easy way to apply colour effects, either globally or using a brush-based system, and runs as either a standalone app or Photoshop plug-in.

Before we start delving into the main toolset, there's one thing you may be curious about: Can you achieve the effects on offer here in Photoshop with a little colour- adjustment? Well, yes and no. We doubt the true Photoshop expert will have any need for Mystical Tint Tone & Colour - that said, it does offer a speedier way to achieve photographic effects. Certainly, the beginner and intermediate user will appreciate the range of colour- enhancing and tweaking effects on offer here, as well as the speed at which you can apply them.

The effects range from exposure controls to sharpening and subtle tinting, and can be applied in a number of ways - either globally or using an effects brush. As you add an effect, it automatically appears in the Layers palette, making it easy to adjust the opacity of the effect on your image. You then continue to add effects from the Special Effects menu on the left-hand side of the interface (this can also be accessed from the Layers palette), adjusting the opacity of each until you're happy with the composition of effects. Essentially, effects are applied as layers on top of your original image. You can also add masking layers to limit effects to certain regions if required.

Each effect provides a plethora of presets, giving you a variety of starting points for your tonal, tint and colour changes. These are shown as thumbnails in the Layer Preset dialog, making it easy to see exactly how the effect will look. You can also control the effects individually by means of a variety of sliders and checkboxes; these appear contextually on the left-hand side of the interface as you apply or switch between effects. The range of controls is excellent, and the plug-in updates the changes in the effect as you alter the settings. In previous Auto FX plug-ins, this made the software slow to work with, but not here.

Mystical Tint Tone & Colour is extremely snappy - thanks to the app using a proxy of the image - with the effect updating almost immediately on our Dual 867 G4 test machine. The more RAM you have the better, of course. Even with 512MB, it crashed frequently when working on 50MB+ images. Mystical Tint Tone & Colour supports the major file formats, too, although it has problems interpreting the colour in layered PSD files (but it will open them). Stick to single-layered documents when using it as a standalone app and everything's fine.

This is a good effort from Auto FX, and one that is much more useful than the decidedly lacklustre Mystical Lighting. At $179 (£107), it's a good-value tool for changing the appearance of digital images with speed and subtlety, particularly for new or mid-level Photoshop users.