Does anybody use VSCO?

I've used the aperture set a bit, it's slightly cheaper than for Lightroom though. If you want quick nice analog looking results then I think it's well worth the money. If you would consider spending the money on film instead maybe that is a better choice. To me it depends on how you look at it, in my world for example just because you emulate film digitally doesn't mean you should rather shoot film. The two are not directly comparable as its totally different workflows. For others it might make sense to compare the two.
 
I use it quite a lot. I really like the portra presets. The Tri-X and HP5 preset is also decent but the preset in silverefex pro is better. It's definitely not a replacement for film but it's very convenient for PP. recommend that you know your way around Lightroom rather well first though, makes understanding how the preset works a little easier.
 
I've been to the page quite often, wanting to purchase it. I just haven't been able to pull the trigger. It seems costly, but that might be because I have been burned on plug-ins in the past. Well I have burned myself by purchasing them and then not using them.
 
I bought it a few months back. It's really just a bunch of presets, nothing you can't do on your own by adjusting some sliders. But it does provide an easy starting point.
 
I'm a big VSCO fan; I have both v1 and the new v2.

The B&Ws are really excellent - easily the equal of SEP2, though without the level of fine control that SEP2 gives. The colour emulsions are likewise great. I'm a huge fan of the Portra 800 emulation, which I think is very close to the real thing. The major advantage of VSCO vs. SEP2, Alien Skin, etc, etc is that VSCO works non-destructively on the Raw file, right inside of LR (or Aperture or ACR), rather than on a rendered TIFF.

A huge part of the VSCO look is the curves. For most emulsions, overall contrast is generally lower than you'd normally see (with the blacks shifted more or less towards the greys).
 
I personally think it's the best plugin for emulating film so far, but it's also quite distinctive. I can tell when a photo has a vsco plugin applied - and a LOT of people are using it at the moment.
 
Can you apply the presets in Lightroom in the same way as any other preset, that's to say could you apply the preset in batches. Thanks for any replies.
 
Can you apply the presets in Lightroom in the same way as any other preset, that's to say could you apply the preset in batches. Thanks for any replies.

Yes. It's done within the presets pane on the left of the develop panel in lightroom. Not a standalone plugin like silver efex etc.
 
Beyond the fact that it works non-destructively on the RAW file, an advantage in its own right, the Aperture version uses some trickery to blend in actual grain for an extremely convincing effect.

The Lightroom version, however, has access to the camera's profile settings for an even closer emulation to film (Aperture doesn't allow this). But because LR has a "grain engine," it uses that. It's just noise, of course, whereas in Aperture it's real grain.

I find the tool very useful -- maybe not in most circumstances, but in many. Enough to justify the purchase, certainly. And since my plugins like Nik and Alienskin and the like all take my files up to and over 100MB, anything to get a handle on that problem is welcome.
 
The non-destructive editing and ability to use it within Lightroom was the selling point for me. I hate going to external apps and having multiple copies of my image file take up space on my hard drive. I use the presets as a baseline which to give me images a certain look, then brush up my own edit from there.
 
I have both VSCO Film 01 and 02 and I loved using them.
Since I only shoot B&W now (don't have a choice) I don't use them much though, except the Tri-X and Fuji Neopan presets which I absolutely love for B&W.

It is so much more convenient to apply these filters in LR itself without having to export to TIFF (duplicate files, each TIFF takes like 300mb from the MM), etc.
 
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