Blow Up 3 is designed to work as an external editor for Exposure, Photoshop, or Lightroom. While not officially supported, this article shows how to set up and use Blow Up 3 in standalone mode.

The most important thing to remember when running Blow Up 3 in standalone mode:
Duplicate your files beforehand. The files will be overwritten when you apply the effect.

Note: Blow Up requires images to be in RGB color mode to work in standalone. CMYK or greyscale images will show an unsupported image format message.

How to open standalone on your Mac

The first thing to do is create an alias of the Blow Up 3 application. Open your Finder and browse to the application.

Mac: Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support > Alien Skin > Blow Up 3 > Alien Skin Blow Up 3.app

Right-click (or Control+click) on the file and choose "Make Alias." This will create a file linking to the Blow Up 3 application. Drag this alias to your desktop or Dock.

Click and drag the images you want to edit on top of the Blow Up 3 alias. Release your mouse button, and Blow Up 3 will open with all the selected images.

Opening Blow Up 3 with more than one image will enable batch processing. This means that you can edit one or more of your images at the same time. After applying the effect across multiple images, you can go back and tweak them individually.

Remember, when you click OK, these adjustments will be written directly to the image. If you do not duplicate your files before processing, you will lose your originals.

How to open standalone on your Windows PC

Let's start off by creating a shortcut to Blow Up 3 on the desktop. Browse to the application file for Blow Up 3. Choose the 64-bit option if available.

Windows 64-bit: C:\ > Program Files > Alien Skin > Blow Up 3 > Alien Skin Blow Up 3 x64.exe

Windows 32-bit: C:\ > Program Files (x86) > Alien Skin > Blow Up 3 > Alien Skin Blow Up 3.exe

Right click on the file and drag it to your desktop. Releasing the mouse button will cause a menu to pop up. Select the option to create a shortcut. Alternatively, you can right click the Blow Up 3, choose "Create Shortcut", and then drag that shortcut to your desktop. We do not want to move the Blow Up 3 application file. 

Click and drag the images you want to edit on top of the Blow Up 3 shortcut. Release your mouse button, and Blow Up 3 will open with all the selected images. 

Opening Blow Up 3 with more than one image will enable batch processing. This means that you can edit one or more of your images at the same time. After applying the effect across multiple images, you can go back and tweak them individually. 

Remember, when you click OK, these adjustments will be written directly to the image. If you do not duplicate your files before processing, you will lose your originals.