Exposure 2 is the latest version of Alien Skin's stock simulator, and effects package. Exposure 2 is meant to allow digital photographers, and graphic artists to create images that mimic the look of film in their digital photos. It does this by emulating the grain, and color differences that different films produced.

Exposure 2 has over 300 presets that emulate the different characteristics of the different films. Some of the films include Kodachrome, Ektachrome, GAF 500, TRI-X, Illford, and even Polaroid films. It is installed as a plug-in, and will work with, Adobe Photoshop CS2 and greater, Photoshop Elements version 4 and greater, Fireworks CS3, and Corel Paintshop Pro version IX and greater. You will need a Pentium 4 processor with Windows XP or later, or a Mac using either a PowerPC, or Intel processor. You will also need a 1024x768 resolution monitor or greater.

Once installed, Exposure is listed on the filters menu with two options. One is for Black and White film and can be used on RGB, or Grayscale images. The other is for Color film and works on RGB images. Both can work with 8 or 16 bit/channel images. They can be used with Photoshop Actions to modify multiple images at once. They can function as a Smart Filter which means that you can apply them in a non-destructive manner on Smart Object Layers in Photoshop CS3.

As can be seen in the image at left, the interface is broken down in to several functional areas. On the left you have the set up area where, depending on the tab that you are on is where you will manipulate the settings. At the top of the left panel are the tabs. This is where you access the advanced controls for each filter. These include basic settings, color, tone, focus, and grain.

On the right, the main part of the screen is the analysis window. Here is where you see the effects to the image that your choices on left result in. On the top is the navigational thumbnail where you can maneuver what you want to display in the main window. You can also, as in the image above, split the window to see side by side what the effects are; there are a number of ways to split the screen.

You can totally customize your settings, use a formulated preset, or a combination of both. If you find one that you create useful, you can create a customized preset, and save it for later use. You can export, or email a user setting if you need to share.

Exposure has five tabs. The first is "Settings" and is the most basic of all of all. Here you choose a film style and it is applied to the preview. You can then stop there, and you will have the Alien Skins rendition of that type of film. It would appear that there are many hours of work that went into matching these film types, and as such, would be a perfectly good place to stop as well.