Not sure about you, but I think this set of plug-ins is sweet. Not tried the demo yet though.
What do you think about using software enhanced lighting? Seems to me you could save thousands of dollars in equipment this way. I'm quite impressed from what I've seen.
Here's my opinion on all these plugins, and it's only my opinion:
There are useful plugins, to fix noise, sharpening, etc. These other ones which manipulate the photo are really fun and cool sometimes to play around with, but I often feel that they are a crutch to try and "make" a good photo that wasn't a good photo to begin with. Does that make sense? You can get real artistic with many of these plugins, and if you have the time, that's fine. But I keep telling myself that if I have to play with and/or manipulate the photo to "make" it good, it wasn't that good to start with.
The one AutoFX thing I do use occasionally is AutoEye. Sometimes it really works to make a photo pop, but I;m still concerned that I should learn to make that photo its best a manual way.
Ya, I think plugins can be crutches. In my case, I'm interested in getting a picture in a barn with light rays shining in and on my subject. I just don't think its going to be practical to find just such a barn with the perfect holes at just the right angles etc. So, a plugin like this could fill the gap.
It all depends on if you want to consider yourself a photographer, a graphic designer, a content provider, a computer artist, an imaging specialist, a creationist (wait, what does religion have to do with this?), or whatever you want to term yourself. There's room for it all and the only thing that matters is the results to the person you're doing it to please, whether it be yourself, a client, an art collector, or a friend. I would also like to remind people that even the traditional photographers of olden times manipulated photos after capture, they just did it in the darkroom, not on a computer.
That said, I've used those plug-ins and they are really cool. Would I use them in my commercial photography? No. Would I use them in my graphic design? Sure, why not if it called for it.
They aren't crutches for bad photography, they are tools to create interesting art.
One thing I noticed, the samples are all well lit subjects. It looks like this plug in is similar to the lighting effects render engine built in to Photoshop. It can deliver some great effects but can't do anything about the dimension you get from a properly llit photograph.
Lighting effects are located under Filter>Render>Lighting Effects. It's been there since PS v. 4 at least, probably longer. They are quite handy and can do some nice effects when combined with masks, which is similar to how Mystic Lighting works in the first place.
BTW- I've found all of AutoFX's software to be horribly SLOOOOOW, even on a Dual 2Ghz G5 Mac and a Dual Xeon 2.3Ghz PC.
