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Plugin Newsletter - January 2001
CONTENT
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EDITORIAL
SPECIAL OFFERS AT THE PLUGIN SITE
GRAPHICS GALAXY UPDATE
REVIEWS: Paint Shop Pro, Eye Candy 4000, PSP Web Graphics
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
GRAPHICS NEWS
Welcome to a new issue of The Plugin Newsletter!
This issue includes a special offer and a new product from The Plugin
Site as well as news about the Graphics Galaxy Search Engine which has
been online for almost two months. You will also find summaries of the
reviews of three great products, links to recently released freeware
plugins and graphics tools and the latest news from the digital graphics
world.
Wishing you a nice time,
Harald Heim
http://thepluginsite.com/
SPECIAL OFFERS AT THE PLUGIN SITE
The Windows version of our Plugin Galaxy product, a set of 20 plugins
with 129 effects, can now be ordered for $39.95. This is 20% off the
regular price of $49.95. This special offer is only available for two
weeks until the 4th February. For more information and a demo version
including two free plugin please visit
Due to many requests we decided to make a download version of Edge &
Frame Galaxy available again. The EFG download is an updated version of
Volume 1 which was previously sold by i-us.com. The 15 MB download
contains 400 edges and 50 colored frames in JPG format and can be used
within a wide range of applications. It costs $19.95.
http://thepluginsite.com/products/efgcd/
GRAPHICS GALAXY UPDATE
The Graphics Galaxy Search Engine which can be queried for specific
image effects has been updated. A few links were corrected in the
plugins database, 1800 new PSP tutorials were added to the tutorials
database and a new dingbat database with 250 links was uploaded. The
tubes database was completely reconstructed, because many of the items
had corrupted URLs.
Finally several submission forms have been created for feeding the
search engine. If you created or know great tutorials, plugins or other
image effects and want them to be added to the search engine, please use
one of the new web forms to submit them. Thanks.
http://thepluginsite.com/search/graphicsgalaxy.htm
REVIEWS: Paint Shop Pro, Eye Candy 4000, PSP Web Graphics
This time three products have been reviewed in the Review section of The
Plugin Site. Here are the summaries:
JASC Paint Shop Pro 7 (Rating: 3 Stars)
"Paintshop Pro is a tool that lets you do most of your regular image
tasks conveniently and also offers plenty of features for professional
users. You won't get a better functionality and more features for your
money elsewhere. Updating Version 6 to Version 7 is highly recommended."
Eye Candy 4000 from Alien Skin (Rating: 3 Stars)
"Eye Candy 4000 is a set of spectacular filters for the production of a
large variety of effects. Although some effects may look a bit
artificial, they are so versatile that you can even use them for other
purposes than the filter name would suggest. This product is highly
recommended to all people who want to be inspired in their image
creations or just need a good looking effect from time to time."
Paint Shop Pro Web Graphics (3rd Edition) by Andy Shafran and Lori J.
Davis (Rating: 3 Stars)
"The book teaches the basics of doing web graphics in an easy-to-learn
manner. It is intended for absolute beginners, although some useful
hints may still be found by people that just started creating web pages.
Nevertheless a chapter with advices and rules about creating
professional looking designs was missed."
To see the full reviews or other product reviews please go to
http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
Serif Photoplus 5 (Win) is a free and sophisticated image editing
application. Some of the professional features are layer management with
pop-up preview and masking support, several fully customizable selection
shapes, some basic effect filters, pressure-sensitive graphics tablets
support, RGB, CMYK, HSV, and Grayscale color modes and CMYK separation.
As far as web graphics are concerned Photoplus offers an image export
optimizer, image slicing and mapping tools as well as features for
creating web animation. If you don't own a professional image editing or
web graphics package yet, you should definitely have a look at this
tool.
http://www.serif.com/photoplus5/
Johann's Filters 2.0 (Win) are 21 free Photoshop-compatible plugins.
Most of them are pattern creation filters, but there are also some
special effects like Aged Film, Watercolor, Barcode and Focal Blur.
http://62.16.147.51/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Johann.woa/4/wo/gB5M2g5OqqcF2xK3ppeKaxBKv94/2.0.7.0.0.3
The free Adaptive Equalization plugin (Win/Mac) performs adaptive
histogram equalization. It can even be used on images with 16 bits per
channel.
http://members.aol.com/IPTK/AdaptEq.htm
Visibone Swatch Collection (Win/Mac) consists of Web-safe color swatch
collections for Fireworks, ImageReady, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro,
Illustrator and Painter. All 216 universal browser-safe colors are
arranged symmetrically by hue in a color wheel. The original open airy
collection and a more compact collection is included.
http://www.visibone.com/swatches/
NovaMatic 2000 (Win) is freeware and allows you to create supernovas,
rays and globulars on existing bitmap images. The effects are created by
clicking somewhere on the image. Unfortunately the program only
supports BMP files.
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/8762/
RAD Video Tools (Win) are free to download and include Smacker, a 256-
color video compressor, and Bink, a true-color video compressor. Bink
produces higher quality than MPEG-II and is up to three times faster
than other software decoders. The RAD Video Tools contains the
compressors, a sound mixer, a player, a graphics processor and a sound
processor. They can even compile the files into an EXE file for
self-running videos.
GRAPHICS NEWS
Ulead announced the 'DESIGN A SITE AND WIN' Contest. The title of the
contest almost states what you have to do. You have to use Ulead
PhotoImpact 6 to design a site in either the personal or business
contest category. The top prize is US $1,500 cash, but there are some
other prizes awaiting, too.
http://www.asiapac.ulead.com/events/contest/pi6contest.htm
The January contest at Pinoy 7 is called "PSP Tutorial Creative Writing
Contest" and asks participants to create graphics tutorials for PSP. The
prizes are donated by Alien Skin, Jasc and Muska & Lipman.
http://www.pinoy7.com/pixelarena/default.cfm
The Corel® Painter 6.1 Update Path is finally available. It is free for
users of Painter 6.0 and includes an interesting palette of new
features, enhancements and fixes. In addition to the enhancements made
to the Soften, Sharpen and Highpass features, the new Woodcut effect
lets users convert a photo into what appears to be a hand-rendered
woodblock print.
http://www.corel.com/support/ftpsite/pub/painter/6.1/index.htm
Adobe is shipping Adobe Premiere 6.0, the latest version of the famous
digital video editing software. It allows you to edit digital video and
to publish it to the web in multiple formats including RealMedia,
WindowsMedia and QuickTime. Premiere offers an enhanced user interface,
new professional editing tools and seamless integration with other Adobe
applications. In addition, Adobe Premiere 6.0 offers several new audio
features including a sophisticated audio mixer and SmartSound
QuickTracks for creating custom length soundtracks inside Adobe
Premiere.
The final release version of Hollywood FX 4.1 for Windows is now
available. All versions of this new release has an improved user
interface with easier licensing and registration, full Adobe Premiere
6.0 support, higher quality and faster rendering, and is more reliable
than ever. Hollywood FX Bronze adds 23 new effects and now contains a
complete superset of Copper effects. Hollywood FX Silver adds numerous
filters (like Blur and Directional Wipe) and 3D warps (including Peel,
Ripple and Explode) that can be attached to any object to customize and
effect.
Corel made beta previews of Bryce® 4.1.1 (33 MB terrain-generation
software) and KnockOut 1.5.1 (29 MB masking tool) available for
Macintosh. These betas let you explore and sue all new features, but
won't let you save anything.
http://www.corel.com/support/ftpsite/pub/Bryce/carbon/index.htm
http://www.corel.com/support/ftpsite/pub/knockout/carbon/index.htm
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