Plugin Newsletter - April 2000 - 1

CONTENTS
========

- PEOPLE'S BEST LIKED IMAGE EDITING TOOL

- NEW POLL: YOUR FAVOURITE WEB SITE FOR FREE PLUGINS

- EDGE & FRAME GALAXY CD-ROM AVAILABLE

- NEW EDGE & FRAME TUTORIALS

- NEW FREE PLUGINS

- FREEWARE TOOL OF THE MONTH: HARM'S TILE

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your participation in the Application Poll. Almost 700 people
entered their vote. As usual the full results can be seen on the Know
How/Poll Results page at http://pico.i-us.com.

The best image editing applications in the voters' opinion are:

1. Photoshop (39%)
2. Paintshop Pro (38%)
3. Corel PhotoPaint (8.5%)

Unfortunately one of the applications (PhotoImpact) that took part in
the poll was actively pushed. What made me suspicious was that it
received 80 votes within one day, while Photoshop and Paintshop Pro got
only a few one. Then I discovered that some guys from a message board at
http://www.homepagetools.com/bulletinboard/stephanie/Forum2/HTML/000923.html

started a "campaign" to push PhotoImpact on the first place. That's why
its value isn't representative. I estimate that it would have only got 2
or 3% under normal conditions.

The rest of the applications in the poll were below the 2% margin.

The new poll I already started was suggested by Gary Savelli, a reader
of this newsletter. He wanted to know "Which is your favorite web site
for freeware plugin software?" So I started this poll with 10 web site.
I didn't wanted to add my own site, Plugin Com HQ, to the poll at first,
but Gary insisted on it. Please don't vote for it if it isn't really
your favorite web site for freeware plugins. You can place your vote at
http://thepluginsite.com or http://pico.i-us.com

If you know a good question for a new poll or want to know people's
opinion on a graphical topic, please email me and I'd be glad to do such
a pool.

EDGE & FRAME GALAXY CD-ROM AVAILABLE

After Volume 1 & 2 of the successful Edge & Frame Galaxy download
products, I finally released the Edge & Frame Galaxy CD-ROM. It contains
the first two volumes (which are still available separately at
www.i-us.com) and a third volume of almost 700 new edges and frames at
high resolution (300 dpi).

The CD includes over 1400 edges and 150 colored frames in over 120
distinct categories. You can use them to give your photos a personal
touch, as backgrounds for titles and credits, to design greeting cards,
post cards, CD booklets and labels, to create specially shaped buttons,
animations and special video effects.

The edges and frames can be used in many image, animation or video
applications under Windows including Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paint Shop
Pro, Extensis PhotoFrame, Auto F/X Photo/Graphic Edges, Corel
Photo-Paint, Ulead PhotoImpact, Micrografx Picture Publisher,
Metacreations Painter, Megalux Ultimate Paint, Adobe Premiere, Adobe
After Effects and Ulead Media Studio Pro. Tutorials are included for
using Edge and Frame Galaxy with all these applications. The CD also
contains goodies like actions for Photoshop, freeware edges and tools.
Grab the free demo version with over 50 sample edges and frames at

http://pico.i-us.com

NEW EDGE & FRAME TUTORIALS

I updated two edge tutorials and added two new ones to the Other Effects
/ Edges & Frames page. The Tutorial for Paintshop Pro was extended with
a new and very quick method for applying edges to photos by using the
Arithmetic filter. The Tutorial for PhotoPaint has new instructions for
applying edges with PhotoPaint 9's new Frame filter.

A new tutorial for applying edges in PhotoImpact was added. Also a page
with some advanced tips on creating special edge effects like shadow,
bevel, transparency, soft edge and inner border with Photoshop and
Paintshop Pro.

http://pico.i-us.com

NEW FREE PLUGINS

This issue's free plugins come from Cybia and Flaming Pear.

Cybia alias Steve Upham opened a new site for his freeware resources. He
recompiled his large filter collection and added a few new filters. The
filters are now available in six formats: Filter Factory, Deluxe (Filter
Formula), as FFL-Files, Macintosh Photoshop, Premiere 4.2 and Premiere
5. The effects were rated with two stars.

http://cybia.co.uk

Flaming Pear released two new freebie plugins called Tachyon and Chroma
Solarize that produce simple solarisation and negative effects. The
plugins don't have a dialog and therefore have no settings. Macintosh
versions are available, too. These two plugins come with 6 other filters
that produce simple color and transparency effects. Only one star for
this set.

http://www.flamingpear.com/download.htm

FREEWARE TOOL OF THE MONTH: HARM'S TILE

This is a new section I want to continue in future issues of this
newsletters. I will introduce some useful graphical freeware tools here.

Harm's Tile 99 seems to be the best free tool around for producing
attractive seamless textures. It has two functions for making textures
seamless, a gradient tool, a simple pen tool, some one-shot filter
effects and basic image editing functions. You can even preview the
finished tile full screen to test if the texture is really seamless.

Harms Tile is a nice addition to your toolkit, especially if you often
create some tiles. As the filter effects aren't adjustable, it isn't
that good for creating many texture variations tough.

http://www.users.uswest.net/~sharman1/

Have a nice week,
Harald Heim
The Plugin Site -
Your guide to image and video effects
http://ThePluginSite.de

Back to the News Page