Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - March/April 2013
CONTENTS
ELEMENTSXXL 1.0 FOR WINDOWS: 120 Photoshop Features
for Photoshop Elements
PHOTOWIZ BUNDLE OFFER: Save $70-90, 33% price reduction
REVIEW: Filter Forge 3 reviewed by
Kay Michael Kuhnlein
POLL RESULT: Which operating system do you mainly use for processing images?
NEW POLL: Will you upgrade to Photoshop CS7 when it comes out?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Acid
Waterfall, Eliminate/Kill White, AAA Filters Problem
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: C3C Plugins, Paddy & Knobroom, Photo Sense Lite, AutoHDR, Open with Photoshop
GRAPHICS NEWS: No more Boxed Versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop Source Code Released, Google Pulls the Plug on Snapseed
Dear Reader,
After three months of development our latest ElementsXXL product is finally ready. I hope it will make many people, who cannot afford Photoshop, happy as it adds up to 120 Photoshop features to Photoshop Elements for Windows. ElementsXXL is the first Photoshop plugin that fully integrates itself into the UI of its host application, so it appears more like an upgrade to Photoshop Elements than a plugin. It was quite a challenge and also a lot of fun to develop something that various people probably considered impossible before. See below for more information about ElementsXXL.
When following the news about nik Software you could get the impression that Google is slowly dismantling what used to be one of the most popular Photoshop plugin companies. nik Snapseed for Mac and Windows was recently discontinued and its iOS and Android version became free. And now all plugins were merged into a bundle called "nik Collection" at a reduced price, which seems to be the beginning of a sell-out. This reminds me of the similar-named "KPT Collection", which consists of the best selling plugins of the 90s and does not work with the latest operating systems and Photoshop versions anymore, although still on sale. Even if the nik plugins will be supported for some time, they are a small, decorative and non-essential project of Google, so there is a high chance that it will be abandoned like numerous similar cases in the past have shown.
Because of the price reduction by Google we are now offering a special price for our PhotoWiz Bundle for the next 16 days. See below.
Kind
regards,
Harald Heim
ELEMENTSXXL 1.0 FOR WINDOWS
120 Photoshop Features for Photoshop Elements
ElementsXXL adds up to 120 powerful features to Photoshop Elements for Windows that were previously only available in Photoshop. These features are included as new menu items, icons, buttons, key shortcuts and dialogs, so they seamlessly integrate into the user interface of Photoshop Elements. ElementsXXL bridges the gap between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop and greatly enhances the image editing experience in Photoshop Elements.
With ElementsXXL it is possible to work with actions, scripts, smart objects, smart filters, layer groups, image channels, quick masks, vector masks and layer masks in Photoshop Elements. ElementsXXL provides up to 10 new filters and 7 new adjustment layers, e.g. Curves, Exposure, Vibrance, Color Balance, Channel Mixer, Black & White and Selective Color.
The new Auto-Align/Auto-Blend Layers features let you recompose portraits, create panoramas and increase the depth of macro shots. A new Soft Proof option shows how an image looks on a certain device or printer. Furthermore, there are new text layer features, a Fill Opacity option, Fade and Trim commands, custom pixel aspect ratio and many other possibilities.
ElementsXXL enhances 16-bit image processing with various features. It allows
you to switch between 8-bit and 16-bit mode, so you can use tools that only
work in 8-bit mode and return to 16-bit mode afterwards. The Quick Mask Mode
of ElementsXXL enables sophisticated masking for 16-bit images.
For more information and a 14-day trial see
ElementsXXL
Product Page
PHOTOWIZ BUNDLE OFFER
Save $70-90, 33% price reduction
Following the price reduction by Google we are now offering our PhotoWiz Bundle for $80 less, which means a 33% reduction of its base price. This special offer lasts until April 20, 2013.
The PhotoWiz Bundle (for Win/Mac) consists of up to seven products for correcting, enhancing and restoring digital images. Each products includes unique possibilities for making the best out of your photos, from color correction, sharpening, shadow/highlight, contrast effects to noise reduction as well as b&w and color effects.
For more information about the PhotoWiz Bundle and
its products see
PhotoWiz
Bundle Page
For ordering the PhotoWiz Bundle visit
Order Page
REVIEW
Filter Forge 3 reviewed by Kay Michael Kuhnlein
After Roberto Muscia reviewed a previous version of Filter Forge in 2009, our other reviewer Kay Michael Kuhnlein wanted to check out Version 3 of Filter Forge. As usual, this review is also spiced up with some bold irony. For example, he concludes that it would take a full month without a break (meaning 24 hours each day without sleeping) to check out all filters of Filter Forge.
You can read the review at the
Filter
Forge Review Page
For more reviews see the
Reviews Section
POLL RESULT
Which operating system do you mainly use for processing images?
364 people voted in the last poll about which OS they use for image editing. Here are the results:
1. Windows 7 55.5%
2. Windows XP 15.1%
3. Windows 8 8.8%
4. MacOS X 10.8 Mountain Lion 6.3%
5. Windows Vista 5.5%
6. MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard 4.7%
7. MacOS X 10.7 Lion 2.5%
8. Linux 0.8% 3
9. Windows 2000 0.3%
MacOS X 10.5 Leopard 0.3%
Other 0.3%
A lot more people seem to use Windows 7 and XP than the new Window 8. MacOS X 10.6 seems to be used more often than 10.7. No votes were received for iOS, Android, Windows 98/ME and MacOS X 10.3/10.4. Additionally hardly anyone still uses Windows 2000 or MacOS X up to 10.5.
Compared to a similar poll in June 2011 the votes for Windows 7 increased by 9.5%, XP decreased by 11% and Vista decreased by 3.5%. The percentage of MacOS votes decreased from 16.8% to 13.8%.
For more poll results please visit the
Resources section
NEW POLL
Will you upgrade to Photoshop CS7 when it comes out?
Our new poll asks you about your plans for Photoshop CS7. Here are the 8 options you can choose from:
Please participate in this poll by visiting
the
Main page...
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
Acid Waterfall, Eliminate/Kill White, AAA Filters Problem
Here are the latest interesting posts from The Plugin Site Forums:
Acid Waterfall
shazam wrote: "Does anyone know where I could find the ancient PS6 plugin
Acidwaterfall? I recently lost the HD that contained all my old (and great)
PS6 filters and this is the one that I kept my Dual G4 running with PS6 for.
I know Unplugged-X makes one for Windows, but doesn't intend to write it for
a Mac at this point. Please can anyone help?!"
Read
More...
Eliminate/Kill White
Paul of Chester wrote: "Filter just won't appear. I have been battling
this issue for over a year now. Each time I need a filter & try to get
it installed It just won’t appear in the filters list. For years I have
been using one of a couple of filters called “Eliminate White” or “Kill
White” to strip out the white background giving me gradients in Alpha.
I can’t say enough about how nice having that ability is. In Photoshop
5.1 in the 5.5 Web Suite I can’t get one to work..."
Read
More...
AAA Filters Problem
gagesgranny wrote: "I have windows Vista and am using PSP 9. I'm trying
to use my AAA filters. They are installed and showing but when I try to use
certain ones they cause my program to stop working. The one's that won't work
are color blur, granularity and the three midian filters. Anyone got any ideas?"
Read
More...
Feel free to post comments or start a discussion topic
at
The Plugin Site Forum
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
C3C Plugins, Paddy & Knobroom,
Photo Sense Lite, AutoHDR, Open with Photoshop
Sergey Sverdlov offers several
free Photoshop plugins (for Windows) under the name C3C on
his Russian web site. The ColorWizard plugin offers various color and
brightness correction options whereas the dozen of other plugins do
not have a dialog and automatically apply various image adjustment
effects. The plugins are available as 32-bit and 64-bit version and
have to be installed manually. Unfortunately there is no English version
of his web site.
Visit
website...
Paddy is a tool (for Windows) that
provides key mapping for Adobe Lightroom in order to use external keyboards
and midi controllers with it. It also lets you create macros and scripts
for Lightroom. Paddy is donationware, so you are requested to donate
something if you use and like it. A similar tool for Mac called Knobroom is
also available.
Visit
website...
Photo Sense Lite (for MacOS & iOS)
is a free image editing tool. It offers automatic as well as manual tools
for basic photo enhancement. The free Lite version provides many features
of the commercial application except batch and fine-tuning options.
Visit
website...
AutoHDR is a simple tool (for Windows)
that adds a pseudo-HDR effect to single images. It offers a few simple
options for adjusting the image effect and a histogram. It also provides
resizing, watermarking and file naming features.
Visit website...
The add-on "Open with Photoshop" allows
you to open images displayed in the Firefox web browser directly in Photoshop.
After installing it all you need to do is to right click an image on
a web site and choose "Open with Photoshop". It also places
a Photoshop icon in Firefox that launches Photoshop. The options dialog
of this add-on lets you select the Photoshop version and a folder where
the selected image will be stored temporarily.
Visit
website...
For more free plugins and tool, please visit the
Resources
section
GRAPHICS NEWS
No more Boxed Versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop Source Code Released, Google Pulls the Plug on Snapseed
No more Boxed Versions of the Adobe Creative
Suite
Starting May 1, 2013, the Adobe Creative Suite and its applications will only
be available via download. There will be no more retail box sales, but you
will be able to buy it as a download in various online stores. So in future
you have to back them up on DVD or other media yourself.
Visit
website...
Photoshop Source Code
Released
This is no April joke! Adobe released the source code of Photoshop 1.0 for
Mac at computerhistory.org. It was written in 1989/1990 in Pascal and Assembler
by Thomas and John Knoll. Photoshop users will undoubtedly find many familiar
features on the Photoshop 1.0 screenshots. Plugin developers will notice that
some basic structures in the source code are still the same today.
Visit
website...
Google Pulls the Plug on Snapseed
Google did a so-called "spring cleaning" and discontinued the Windows
and Mac version of Snapseed, whichcame into their hands after acquiring nik
Software. The Snapseed mobile app for iOS and Android, which is now available
for free, is still continued.
Visit
website...
