Ok, so the sale's on for another few hours, and I've already dropped about $600 on software, which, to be honest, is $600 more than I can really afford, particularly at this time of year.

Spent a few hours today looking into all the products more carefully. Came across this tutorial on "fairytale lighting", which I thought was an eye-opener: Red Giant QuickTip #39: Fairytale Lighting in After Effects on Vimeo . Involves Shine + Particular + Knoll Light Factory.

Anyway, at least one product I haven't bought which I'm thinking might be useful in a wedding context -- Magic Bullet Cosmo. So, do any of you guys use this? How have you found it?

I'm a little skeptical, to be honest. The examples seem to blur out the skin and eyes too much, and to do something strange to the colours...

MB Cosmo is included with the full Magic Bullet Suite. I know that Alice has used it on occasion in our videos where a shot of the mother of the bride was a little too high definition for the MoB's liking.

I think I've managed to talk myself out of spending on this one... until the next sale comes around anyway.

Factors that swayed me were:

1. The fact that there's other methods of desharpening and of blemish removal, albeit much more tedious than applying MB Cosmo and adjusting a slider. One of Andrew Kramer's first AE tutorials was about this (VIDEO COPILOT | After Effects Tutorials, Plug-ins and Stock Footage for Post Production Professionals (http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/blemish_removal/)).

2. The fact that I just spent more than I spent on the software sale at a restaurant for my partner's birthday (perhaps worth it -- was the best dessert I've had):