Review by Jerry Saperstein

I’ve been a serious photographer for more than fifty years. Back in the day, using filters was expensive, inconvenient, unpredictable and irreversible. You could practically win an award at a photo show for any successful creative use of filters in your print.

I started using this package when it was first developed by another company. I’ve continued to use it through the present day - and I also use its primary competitor from Nik Software.

Am I nuts? No. I use both programs sparingly and only when I want to a) achieve a very specific effect or 2) play.

Tiffen DFX has an interface that only a masochist could love, but after some tinkering and manual reading, it is usable. Ultimately - and you should know this going in - the learning curve is steep.

What you begin with are 125 individual filters, each of which can be manipulated with sets of parameters. In other words, the possibilities are infinite. I have never, ever been able to open this program, do what I intended to do and move on with my life. Instead, each and every time, I get caught up in playing with the endless variations that are possible. I am forever amazed at what you can do with an image, with a little tweak there and another here. Some addicted to Solitaire: I could be easily addicted to Tiffen DFX.

A program like this cannot really be described in words. Just in preparing to write this review, on a program that I have been using for years in various versions, I spent more than a half-hour just playing with some of the features.

There are other tools as well, particularly a masking tool from the original creators of the program.

If you’re serious about your photography - or just want to make Instagram effects look like pre-school exercises - you ought it to yourself to at least demo Tiffen DFX. It is available as both a plug-in for popular image editing programs or, as this, as standalone version.

Jerry