Introducing Fixel Detailizer 2 PS

I’m glad to announce the release on Adobe Add-ons of a powerful contrast booster for Photoshop: Fixel Detailizer 2 PS. Let’s see what is that all about!

Fixel Algorithms

I’ve recently started a partnership with Fixel Algorithms, a company founded by engineers and programmers specialized in Digital Image Processing - amazingly smart people. Fixel Algorithms has been creating Filters for Adobe After Effects (video processing), and Detailizer is our first shared effort porting to Photoshop their excellent work.

Detailizer at a glance

Detailizer 2 PS decomposes your image into discrete Frequency Ranges and allows you to separately control the Contrast Boost of each of them. It’s like Frequency Separation on steroids!

Before
After

Frequency explained

Do you need a primer on spacial frequency? Basically, it’s about the size of the detail in your pictures. For instance, say that you’ve shot a portrait - take a sample in:

  • the hair: there’s plenty of fine detail, pixel’s values (dark/bright) vary with a high frequency.
  • the lips: the variation is smoother compared to the hair, even if the transition between dark/bright values happens with a decent (say: middle-sized) frequency too.
  • the cheek: here the tonal variation is really smooth, and covers a larger area: in the sample things change on a lower rate (low frequency).

Frequency

It might not be the most accurate description of what a spacial frequency is, but you’ve probably got the idea. In the real world the distinction is fuzzier: every area is made with all frequencies combined (within “low-freq” cheeks there is “high-freq” skin texture), the same way a complex signal such a sound or an electromagnetic wave is a combination of simpler signals:

Multi Frequency

Features

Fixel Detailizer 2 PS peculiar frequency decomposition (the filter’s core) is performed with a fast, proprietary Wavelets algorithm developed by Fixel. The interface lets you boost separately 5 Frequency Ranges, in order to target precisely the detail level that you want.

Detailizer GUI

Fixel Detailizer 2 PS works on 8bit, 16bit and 32bit HDR files too! All the calculations are internally performed at 32bits to ensure the maximum precision.

How to get it

This Photoshop Filter available on CC-Extensions for USD 29.99 and supports Photoshop CC and newer on both Mac and Windows (64bit).