I’ve not been shy about my love of the Topaz plugins. They are powerful, fun and offer some of the very best values for the buck. Right now, Topaz is offering their entire bundle (which includes Adjust, DeNoise, B&W Effects, ReMask, Lens Effects, Detail, Simplify, Clean, InFocus and DeJPEG – 10 Plugins!) compatible with Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture, (at a savings of $350 off of the per plugin price) for $199 (normally $299) if you use the code “july4” when checking out here at Topazlabs.com.
While I wish that they would include the recently announced and released Clarity (click to see my review) in the bundle, it is still an amazing value with all of the other tools included. (I’d strongly suggest checking out Clarity with or without the bundle, it’s rad)
I personally use and LOVE DeNoise which I feel is the best noise reduction plugin currently available, Adjust (haven’t reviewed this one yet but use it often), Clean which is a really cool plugin for skin retouching and Fractalius like effects, and even like to dabble with the newly updated B&W Effects which is a great, affordable black and white conversion plugin. I’ve yet to use many of the others, but I am very curious about ReMask, Lens Effects and DeJPEG for their specific skill sets. Perhaps I’ll try them out myself and report back 😉
You can check out, buy or download free trials of any of these, or any other plugins Topaz offers at the Topaz Website HERE. Remember to use the code “july4” to get the 33% discount off of the bundle if you do choose to buy!
Topaz offers really good sales on their plugins often. Sometimes its a bundle discount like this, or sometimes it is an individual or more general discount. I keep up with their sales, so if you’re waiting for a particular plugin to go on sale, feel free to subscribe via email (at the top right of the page) or on Facebook or Twitter to keep track of them if you’d like. 🙂
Happy Summer, have fun, thanks for the read and happy shooting!
Tyson
Tyson Robichaud Photo-blography 
It’s a shame that Topaz plug ins are not compatible with anything earlier than CS3. At present I still use V7.0 which as yet has not stepped up to the mark (I have a copy of CS2 which I purchased a long time ago yet so far have had no need to install.
So come on Topaz, support earlier versions.
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Hi Geoff,
Yeah, I wish that there was a better approach to backwards compatibility, but as technology advances, I can see where software support is abandoned at a point. Adobe is even offering CS2 for free now as they’ve used the break between it and CS3 to pretty much cut all ties with support. I’m sure CS3 (and probably the entirety of the CS line) is next with their dumpsterfire that they’ve created with CC, forcing those of us who would like to pay them for goods and services to sign up for a monthly bill. I think, at a certain point, software companies have to cut bait as there is such a depleted demand and it wouldn’t make financial sense to dedicate the resources necessary to write, maintain and support plugins for discontinued versions of host programs. I really hope that we as a community are able to make enough of a statement to Adobe to squelch this movement to a subscription based model… Could you imagine needing to have paid $20/month for the last 10 years (or however long it has been since PS v7 came out?). Sure, you’d have had whatever upgrades and features they chose to include in updates, but that is a huge sum to pay to use software, and I’m venturing a guess that we won’t see the advancement in Photoshop in the next 10 years that we’ve seen in the past 10.
Thanks for the comment, and if you can, I’d certainly suggest looking for a license for CS4, 5, or 6 before they go away. I use CS6, and it is a huge difference from CS3 (for instance). I’m really happy with it, and will need to be for the foreseeable future it seems 🙂
Cheers,
Tyson
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