Red Giant Software has released Magic Bullet Suite 11, which introduces a new version of Looks and adds another component, Cosmo. The nine-plugin suite is priced at $799, with upgrade pricing available at $199 if you own MBS 10, or $399 if you own any other two Magic Bullet Products -- which if you do the math is a steal. The Red Giant folks have released a number of informative videos to go along with the new release, starting with a launch trailer:
The brand-new product to the suite is the appropriately-named Cosmo, which focuses on skin smoothing. I've found that dialing Colorista's "pop" slider to negative values (and masking the filter to faces) was effective at minimizing blemishes for a more commercial look, and Cosmo ($99 on its own) looks to be a more targeted tool for the job. I can imagine this will be a must for wedding videographers... The brief launch clip:
Meanwhile the larger addition is Looks 2, which is a redesigned and rewritten update to the original Looks. It's available as a standalone product for $399 ($99-$299 upgrade pricing). Here's what's new in the sequel:
Some important new features look to be the scopes pictured at left (especially in light of the fact that After Effects inexplicably lacks the built-in waveforms and vectorscopes of Premiere Pro), as well as the "one installer to rule them all" upgrade. Previous Magic Bullet suites required you to install and update each component separately, which always went smoothly for me but took a few extra steps.
Red Giant's products will be coming to Final Cut Pro X at some point in the future as a free update for current customers, though as Stu Maschwitz points out, FCP X isn't ready for pros yet and most of its users probably don't need extra plugins. Yet.
Stay tuned to this here site, as I'm going to try to wrangle y'all some sort of discount on a related Red Giant product (as I have in the past). If you're thinking about buying the full suite, or if you're upgrading, feel free to pull the trigger now, though -- it's unlikely I'll be able to get discounts for either of those situations. There are also free trial versions available for download at the link below.
Link: Magic Bullet Suite 11
