A plug-in for the camera RAW image processing program Bibble.
Author: Sean Puckett (seanmpuckett@gmail.com).

What does Foxy do?

Foxy is a collection of special effects that allow you to add various "bells and whistles" to your image. While Foxy is a single product, each effect appears on its own plug-in window so you can just call up the one(s) you need when you need them. Effects can be stacked -- you can have one instance of each.

Download Freeware Now

Foxy Freeware features the Vignette effect, and is available for download now.
Windows, Linux and Mac versions included in the same download. Read the Foxy Release Notes, then access the download area.
You'll find installation instructions as INSTALL.txt in the zipfile.
Please provide feedback at the email address above.

Purchase FoxyPRO Professional Version Now

Windows, Linux and Mac versions included in the same download. FoxyPRO is now available for Windows, Macintosh (Intel and PPC), and Linux. FoxyPRO includes the Focal Blur effect.

FoxyPRO: $10 USD

Already purchased, but need an upgrade? Click Here.

Sample Output

Simple vignette enhancing the face; and a pseudo-frame vignette.

Foxy - Simple Info

Foxy - White Frame Info

Focal blur with chromatic abberation; and a simulated bokeh shot with dissolve-like chukiness.

Foxy Blur Sample 1 Info

foxyblur2 Info

Foxy Effects

Vignette

Vignetting allows you to darken/lighten the image surrounding a selected area. Foxy's vignette selector allows you to create vignettes that are round, elliptical, diamond-shaped, rectangular and pointed star. The selection can be small or large, and can be centred anywhere in the image. The boundary between no-effect and full-effect is adjustable both in width and in what formula is used to effect the transition to full power.

Focal Blur (FoxyPRO)

Focal Blur allows you to blur areas of the image surrounding a selected area. The blur selector operates like the vignette selector, allowing a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The blur can be made minimal to mild to intense. Chromatic abberation related to the amount of blur can also be added, and the effect can be changed from a pixellated "dissolve" to a very smooth true blur. By default, the blur is based on the Gaussian kernel, but you can select an alternate "bokeh" kernel which simulates the circular blurring of an out-of-focus lens.

Vignette User Interface

Open the tool "Foxy-Vignette" to access the vignetting effect.

Foxy Vignette 1.0 Info

Enable Checkbox

When checked, the plug-in can affect the image. When unchecked, disables the plug-in.

Reset Button

Resets all vignetting values to startup defaults. Useful for getting back to a sane place after experimenting wildly.

? Button

Reveal the plug-in version number, author and homepage.

Location Group

These settings control the centre point and shape of the vignette effect.

Locate Checkbox

When checked, shows the area of effect of the vignette. The centre area, unaffected by the vignette, is shown unchanged. The transition area which is subject to the Profile setting, is shown at half brightness. The outer area, which is fully affected by the vignette Luminance, is shown in black.

To see clearly what the various sliders in the Location group do, tick this checkbox and adjust them. The centre image below shows the "location" effect.

Foxy - Starter Image Info

Foxy - Locator Info

Foxy - Simple Info

Right and Down Sliders

Adjust the centre of the effect. 0,0 is the centre of the image.

Radius Slider

Adjusts the size of the centre of the effect -- the part of the image that is not modified by the vignette.

Margin Slider

Adjusts the width of the transition area -- the part of the vignette that graduates from no effect to full effect.

Wide Slider

Adjusts the aspect ratio of the vignette. Positive values make the vignette wider and shorter. Note that the margin changes in aspect ratio as the vignette itself does.

Square Slider

Changes the shape of the vignette by altering the profile of each quadrant around the centre point. As a rough guide to available shapes, setting the Square value to the following values:

• -0.95 -- Flare Star
• -0.75 -- Curtain Opening (when partly off screen)
• -0.55 -- Curved Diamond
• -0.50 -- Straight Diamond
• -0.40 -- Fat Diamond
• 0.0 -- Perfect Ellipse/Circle
• 0.50 -- Fat Circle
• 0.80 -- Rounded Square
• 1.0 -- Square (except for extreme corners)

Many of these shapes look different when their aspect is adjusted with the Wide slider. Experiment!

Changes Group

These sliders control the visual appearance of the vignette effect itself.

Luminance Slider

The vignette effect draws image values closer to black (for negative Luminance) or white (for positive). The close to -1 or +1 the Luminance slider is set, the more strongly the image will be affected.

Profile Slider

Controls how the vignette effect changes as it crosses the Margin between centre and outer area. A setting of 0 is a straight linear change of luminance. Settings closer to -1 change luminance more rapidly at the inner edge of the margin. Settings closer to 1 make the change more rapid towards the outer edge of the margin.

Focal Blur UI

Foxy Blur UI Info

The focal blur selector functions identically to the vignette selector, so those fields will not be covered again here.

Blur Group

These options control the blur effect.

Bokeh Checkbox

When checked, the blur algorithm proceeds according to a mathematical simulation of lens blur, or "bokeh" which distributes light evenly around a single point source. When unchecked, uses the traditional Gaussian blur kernel which produces softer transitions between hard edges.

Size Slider

Adjusts the maximum size of the blur function, as a power of two. Therefore, a setting of 8 is 2^8 or 256 pixels. Note that the blur is at 0 within the selection radius and ramps up to this size within the margin. Outside the margin, the blur is constant at this size. The ramp algorithm is based on an exponent and follows a pleasant curve that approximates an image going out of focus.

Chromatic Slider

Adds chromatic (colour) aberration a.k.a. colour smearing to the blur effect. The amount of smearing is factored by the selection; unblurred areas will not be smeared either. The smearing algorithm is fairly trivial as it just scales the R,G and B channels. It does not take into account the coma effect of crappy lenses; sorry -- this is just too compute intensive for a plug-in.

Method Slider

Chooses between a pixel dispersal algorithm and a true blur kernel. Pixel dispersal output looks like flecks of confetti; a blur kernel looks smooth and soft. You can blend these two algorithms using this slider for interesting effects. Note that the more "blur" you choose, the slower the plug-in runs. Also note that for preview purposes, the method slider is internally restricted to about 0.4 for fast redraws of zoomed out views. 100% zooms and your final Bibble output will always be full resolution.

Important Notes

Focal Blur can be SLOW

This is the slowest plug-in I've ever developed; even slower than SharpiePRO. It's doing a huge amount of work when it blends 10 megapixels in a 256 pixel diameter kernel. Use a lower Method to speed it up if you wish (Method 0.5 is far faster and just a little bit chunkier than Method 1.0), or just be patient. I've seen times of over two minutes for final output of a D200 image at Size=8 and Method=1.0. That's why we have batch queues, right? Remember: It's not locked up -- it's just very, very busy.

Redraw Errors

If you are zoomed in on a portion of your image, Bibble will draw the vignette effect incorrectly, as if the preview was the entire image. Ignore this, if you can. The vignette will be drawn properly in the final image, and when you zoom back out to full size. This is an artifact of the way Bibble works, and there's nothing I can do about it as a plug-in developer.

No Crop Binding

Even though Bibble's built-in vignetting can be sensitive to the crop area, Foxy is not. (They can do things in the main program I can't do with a plug-in.) You should choose a crop before getting too involved in using Foxy, otherwise you may find yourself going back and forth between Foxy adjustments and the crop settings.