Users of Photoshop CSx, Elements and Paintshop Pro can all benefit from a cool filter from OprikverveLabs. Their VirtualPhotographer filter is available for nothing from their website. It has about 50 presets built in and lots of others you can grab from them. They’ve recently updated it to be compatible with Vista.

My favorite use for VirtualPhotographer is for the Black & White conversions. By clicking a few buttons you can emulate a red, green, blue, orange or yellow filters and add realistic looking grain. For those old school Tri-X shooters who are now digital, we can quickly make our digital images look like our old favorite B&W film.

There’s also lots of color controls, color swapping, soft and diffusion effects, contrast controls, grain effects (ISO 400, 800, 1600) and lots more. You could easily spend a few hours playing with all the controls available. Once you find something you like you can save it as a Preset to use later. By exploring the existing presets you can get a better idea of what this filter can really do.

One word of caution: VirtualPhotographer will apply the effect on the current layer (or selection). I’d suggest you duplicate your layer before applying the filter. That will give you more flexibility if you want to fade it or otherwise mask or control the effect.