Wednesday, July 22nd, 2020 Posted by Jim Thacker

Boris FX’s new Optics app gives ‘VFX for photographers’


Boris FX has released Optics, an image-editing toolkit that promises “visual effects for photographers”.

The new product is a renamed version of Digital Film Tools’ DFT, which Boris FX acquired last year, now expanded with filters from Boris FX’s Sapphire library of effects plugins for compositing and editing software.

Optics is available as a plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom and as a standalone application for Windows and macOS, all available through a single licence.

Use Sapphire filters in Photoshop and Lightroom as well as compositing software
Optics makes 75 of Sapphire’s most popular filters – including glow, lens flare, light leaks, blur, defocus and digital damage effects – available for still image editing and photo retouching.

The toolset comprises 160 filters in total, with Boris FX describing it as “the only Photoshop filter set that specifically simulates optical camera filters”.

Users also get over 85 colour grading presets based on those used for movie work and a gobo library with over 750 lighting effects.

The software also includes a built-in layer system and masking tools, plus variation and seed generators to automatically generate variant looks for an image based on filter parameters.

The Photoshop plugin makes it possible to apply changes non-destructively as Smart Filters.

The standalone edition makes it possible to preview the result of edits side-by-side with the source image, and to batch-process large sets of images.

Pricing and system requirements
Optics 2021 is available as a plugin for Photoshop CC and up, Photoshop Elements 2018+ and Lightroom Classic, and as a standalone application for Windows 10 and macOS 10.13+.

A new perpetual licence costs $149; rental costs $9/month or $99/year. A single licence provides access to both the plugins and the standalone editions. DFT itself is still available for compositing and editing apps.


Find a full list of features in Optics on Boris FX’s website

Read Boris FX’s FAQs for Optics