| Plugin Newsletter - September 2001
Contents
========
EDITORIAL THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES
POLL RESULTS: Your favorite digital camera manufacturer FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
GRAPHICS NEWS PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE
THE PLUGIN SITE MAP
Hi,
I wanted to send out this newsletter yesterday, but the events in New York
and Washington deeply grieved me, just like most people here in Germany.
I' like to express my deepest sympathy for the United States and
especially everyone who lost relatives or friends in these unprecedented
horrible terror attacks. But as there was no August issue of the Plugin
Newsletter because of the holiday season, I don't want to cancel this
finished September issue, too, although I concidered it. Today was the
only possible day to send it out. There was a mistake in the July issue: the Ultra-Sharpen plugin isn't
freeware anymore. I also didn't find a download link of the older freeware
version, otherwise I would have supplied it in this issue. Also, the Plugin Newsletter has just been moved from the free Topica
service to a commercial newsletter hosting service called Sparklist. This
is a step that was already planned, but unexpectedly spurred by Topica's
change of policy. Hopefully this change will go by without too many
problems. There will also be several changes and larger updates of thepluginsite.com
until the end of the year. So stay tuned. Yours,
Harald Heim
----------------------------
The Plugin Site - Your guide to image and video effects
http://ThePluginSite.com
THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES
------------------------------------------------
A German Macintosh Version of the Edge & Frame Galaxy CD is now available
at Arktis.de, our German distributor. They also offer the English Version
of Plugin Galaxy for Macintosh. So if you are a Mac user from Germany,
Austria or Switzerland have a look at http://www.arktis.de/shop/produkte/102766.html
http://www.arktis.de/shop/produkte/102767.html
A new tutorial about Photoshop-compatible plugins called "Introduction to
Plugins for Beginners" has been uploaded. It contains explanations and
hints about downloading, installing, accessing and managing your plugins.
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/tutorials/introduction/introduction.htm
The broken link for downloading Harry's Transitions for Premiere is
working again.
http://thepluginsite.com/products/harrystransitions/
POLL RESULTS: Your favorite digital camera manufacturer
------------------------------------------------
More than 230 people placed their votes in the Digital Camera Poll for
electing their favorite digital camera manufacturer. Here are the results: 1. Sony 25%
2. Olympus 20%
3. Nikon 15.5% 4. Canon 11%
5. Fuji 8%
6. Kodak 5% Obviously over 50% of all voters seem to prefer the top 3 camera
manufacturers. Here are three comments that were posted on the poll's
message board: "My only pointer is you get what you pay for & dont expect to get quality
until you get up to around the $500 price rage or above. And what ever you
do if it says polaroid & it's digital run away as fast as you can!" "If you want a camera, you have to start with a manufacturer thats been
making cameras since day dot. These aboritions that are made by other
computer companies ... are a waste of money. You would be better off
pissing on your money." "I, too, had to research long and hard before investing in a digital
camera because I knew I would not be able to buy another any time soon." Previous poll results can be viewed at
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
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Pobelly's Plugins (Windows) contain four free Photoshop-compatible plugins
that still look a bit experimental. The "Eliminate Whatever" plugin will
change opacity based on color or brightness. "Whack and Blight" converts
color images to monotone or duotone while weighting of the RGB values.
"Meet the Neighbors" is a 7x7 convolution plugin for playing with
different operators. Finally, "Throbber Thinger" is though to make those
little animations in the corner of browser windows, therefore doing some
basic rotate, copy and fade operations to individual frames of an
animation. http://www.photo.net/users/pobelly/plugins/
The Yellownail collection (Macintosh only) consists of 32 Photoshop
plugins with the names: 13area, 1stImpact, 3DTile, Adjuster, Alchemist
Pro, Ancient Paintings, BambooCraft, Bedlam, Bokassher, ButColor,
ButtonMagic, ClassicalGold, CoolColor, CrazyTile, CuteMozaic,
CycloidDistortion, DeftMove, DemonishCell, DemonishSkin, Eloquency,
Embossher, Enhancer, EqualLevel, FillHarmony, FireWork, FlowerFrame,
FlushIt, FoolishStripe, Gingum. These plugins were created by a Japanese
programmer and offer some interesting effects you shouldn't miss. Some of
them apply directly to the image while other have a Japanese dialog.
Unfortunately getting these plugins can be a bit time consuming and
exhausting, because you have to download them individually and make your
way from the main web page to a description page and from there to the
download page. You have to do that for each of the 32 plugins and
everything is in Japanese language.
http://www.vector.co.jp/vpack/browse/person/an014196.html
Font Magic (Windows) is a free tool for creating 3D text. You can use any
TrueType font on your system and instantly create a three-dimensional
image with a variety of effects. It lets you apply material
characteristics and textures to text, change the size and orientation of
the text and use plain or shaded backgrounds. Font Magic offers wire frame
or fully textured image display and saves static images as well as
animations.
http://www.geocities.com/~macweb/fontmagic/
Zoner Draw 3 (Windows) is a free professional looking vector graphics
application for creating brochures, leaflets, illustrations, business
cards, price tags, letterheads, postcards, signs, blueprints, greeting
cards and more. Zoner Draw offers standard graphics tools, including stars
and polygons, a wizard for exporting vector animations to Web pages, a
View Manager, intelligent zoom, fitting text to curves, text styles,
object blending, transparency and bitmap editing functions. It even
supports Adobe plug-ins and various image formats (but not GIF and LZW
TIF).
http://www.zoner.com/draw3/overview.asp
Turbo Squid (Win/Mac) is a free software application used to buy and sell
digital assets online. Turbo Squid has a fast growing image bank of 2D and
3D assets. Using the PC or MAC web versions you can search for 3D models,
motion capture files and textures in multiple file formats and download
them instantly.
http://www.turbosquid.com/
GRAPHICS NEWS
------------------------------------------------
A new newsletter called Multimedia Spy Weekly has been started. It will
include resources of interest to multimedia students, freelancers and
entrepreneurs looking to author interactive multimedia projects on a
shoestring budget. You will find features that include free and low cost
software and utilities, resources for hardware upgrades as well as where
to go for the best prices for components to build your own systems. http://www.multimediaspy.com
Sapphire has just released "Innovations vol 4", an inexpensive plugin set
for Windows. It includes 20 new plugins containing blur effects, smear,
line and dotty effects, emboss and more.
http://www.sapphire-innovations.com
InterfaceImprovement.com offers small utilities for several professional
applications that turn all the secondary windows off. When the user
doesn't need them they are hidden leaving all the screen for designing.
Moving the mouse pointer to the edge of screen will make them appear
again. This functionality is offered for Photoshop, Dreamweaver,
Illustrator, Flash, ImageReady, Fireworks, InDesign, PageMaker, FreeHand,
QuarkXPress, Premiere and GoLive. Unfortunately there is not one big
utility for all of these applications. They offer separate utilities for
each of the mentioned applications.
http://www.interfaceimprovement.com/
Jasc has released the Paint Shop Pro 10th Anniversary Edition to celebrate
that PSP was first released 10 years ago. Besides Paint Shop Pro 7.04,
this special edition includes Media Center, a fully functional version of
Alien Skin's Eye Candy, more than 50 pages of tutorials, free tubes, a
coupon for a Kodak digital photography book etc. representing an $100
value in addition to PSP 7. This special version is only $10 to existing
licensed users of PSP version 7.
http://www.jasc.com/products/psp/aespecial.asp
If you don't need the Paint Shop Pro 10th Anniversary Edition you can
still update Paint Shop Pro to Version 7.04 which is now available at
http://www.jasc.com/patches.asp
Corel/procreate Painter 7 is now available and offers advanced
Natural-Media painting and image editing capabilities that make it
possible to produce images replicating the precision and artistic
possibilities of a true painting experience. New features include
watercolor technology that recreates the medium of natural watercolor with
more flexibility and control than ever before, Liquid Ink layer mimics the
viscosity of a thick and gluey medium like ink or paintull.
http://www.procreate.com/
Apple has updated Final Cut Pro, a high-end video editing system, to
version 2.0.2. It now works under Macintosh Manager, an integrated and
secure interface, designed to make AppleShare servers easy to use. With
the update, trimming numerically in the Trim Edit window no longer
stops playback. There are also various bug fixes.
http://www.apple.com/support/
Corel announced CorelDRAW ESSENTIALS for Windows, which combines CorelDRAW
9 and Corel PHOTO-PAINTER 9 in one package. Additionally it includes Corel
CAPTURE 9, Canto Cumulus Desktop LE 5.0, two PDF books, Human Software
Squizz!, CorelTUTOR and many graphic materials.
http://www.corel.com/
Ulead released Ulead MediaStudio Pro 6.5, a new version of their
professional video editing software. New technological advances for the
non-linear video editor include DVD authoring, variable bit-rate (VBR)
MPEG-2 encoding and limitless DV capture. Instant Playback, Storyboard
Layout and Automatic A/B Roll Layout are some of the new usability
features. For more information visit
http://www.ulead.com/
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