The Mehdi Plugins are a freeware collection of 26 Photoshop-compatible filter plugins and were first released in 2004. In the meantime a few new plugins have been added and some older ones have been updated. If you want to get them, you have to download 26 separate .zip files, which is a bit inconvenient. The Mehdi Plugins offer a non-resizable dialog with a more or less small preview. Most plugins only provide a few sliders, so they are fairly easy to use. A few plugins are more sophisticated and also let you pick colors from the preview or from a color dialog and let you manipulate objects in the preview. Most plugins offer a Reset button for restoring the original settings, but only a few of them also offer a feature for saving the filter settings as preset files. You can find various effect types in this collection. There are pattern generating plugins called Blots, Julia World, Kaleidoscope and Vibrations, distortion plugins like Fur, Melt, Wavy Lab and Weaver, color effects like Absolute Color, Color Mega Mix and Gradient Smithy, artistic effect like Edges FX, Posterizer and Sorting Tiles. Additionally you can also find tools like Eraser, Projection and Seamless Border as well as photo enhancement plugins like Contrast Balance, Curves, Equalizer and HSL Plus. Not to forget the Grain Natural, Local Equalization and Quick Mirror plugins, whose names indicate what they do. The plugins for enhancing photos imitate features that can be found in a more or less similar way in graphics applications, so they don't offer something really special. The two Eraser plugins are nice for photo composition jobs and the Grain Natural is a great for simulating film grain. Other than that, the Mehdi Plugins are best used for special effects. Nevertheless, the tutorials below show you how to achieve special photographic effects. | | Info & Download |