The Plugin Site Forum

I just returned from Photoshop World (Las Vegas) where I made the rounds of the Tech Expo and paid visits to several popular plug-in developers. You can see the photos I took of them and their booths here.

I just pass on what I'm told .

And yes, PhotoWiz products have an incredible amount of control over the results, so you indeed offer a great selection of software at decent prices.

Yes, ICT is consciously focusing on the high-end wedding and portrait studio market, who have already expressed interest in the upgrade. And LucisArt's developer is a one-person business, so she's got to recoup her development costs, which I understand are pretty steep. At the same time, the pro-lev...

Turns out the old LucisArt 2 will be around at least until the end of this month. The latest development regarding LucisArt 3 (planned for late September) is that there will be two different versions (Enhance Detail and Special Effects). See more details at the top of the page and under the blue hea...

If you are doing this digitally, perhaps you can create the vintage effect on the image end (on the computer) and simply print the results on any appropriate paper. See the section entitled "B&W Conversion" in the table here for some plug-in options for creating various vintage black-and-white effec...

If you already have a Windows installer CD, you can use Apple's free Boot Camp to add Windows to your new Mac at no cost!

See this website for a large list of plug-ins and related information.

I got a chance to play with PhotoWiz's new ContrastMaster today, and posted some examples here.

It did wonders for my hazy from-the-airplane photo, and is yet another contender for creating LucisArt-like effects, should you desire them.

Their website now forwards to Amazon.com...

I've got it (see examples here) and the first thing I noticed was that it can pretty closely duplicate a couple of LucisArt's sought-after effects. Plus, it does some other effects such as HDR and image repair.

I just got word from the developer of LucisArt that the classic (ie, less expensive) version of the plug-in will again be offered for sale starting this Thursday (July 27, 2008)! Heavy response to its discontinuation and the fact that the upcoming Lucis Pro 6.0 only runs on Intel and not PPC Macs (b...

The Mac version of Adjust just came out today. I played with it some more and it does indeed mimic the most popular LucisArt HDR effects.

The developer of buZZ, Don McCrae, has an online gallery of his buZZ-treated work here [WARNING: NUDES].

He seems to have set this and other similar galleries up circa-2005, though he doesn't seem to be active with these either.

Issue #12 of Plugs 'N Pixels is now available! This issue focuses on using image management apps and plug-ins to work with old family photos as part of a genealogy project, along with other digital imaging product news.

Harald, I gave Filter>Stylize>Diffuse a try (nice find!) and it's a step in the right direction. Apply some Unsharp Mask afterwards and it further tightens the effect (not too much, or image noise is exaggerated). But again, the Vivacity plug-in does a better job with much more flexibility and clari...

I usually do a simple Levels tweak... Pull up the whites or mids.

I think some of their software requires internet activation, in which case one is out of luck there. I have the Mac version of buZZ.X, which just needs the serial, thankfully.

PS: I would prefer a USB dongle over internet activation of software-!

Word is just out that the new name for the upgrade will be "Lucis Pro 6.0".

Thanks Harald! Hope things get better soon.

Hi Harald,

I'm wondering if your email address has changed because I haven't gotten email replies from you for some time.

I took a look and got it to display in Safari (Mac), even via dialup. I separated out the 27 frames of the GIF using Canvas X and here's what it looks like. It seems the background is one frame while transparent GIF pieces move across it. This keeps file size down, but I wonder if the moving piece i...