Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - August 2007
Contents
========
EDITORIAL
THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES: Free Photoshop Plugins and Polls pages updated
POLL RESULTS: How often do you usually sharpen a photo that you want to
print?
NEW POLL: Do you prefer skinned or standard dialogs for Photoshop plugins?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Sketch/Line Drawing Plugin, Jump Through Effect, Lighting Effect, Ulead Plugin Problems
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Superrune Plugins, FlamingPear Zombie, Telegraphics
Plugins, 8bf Plugins, Xero Plugins Update, easyHDR Basic
GRAPHICS NEWS: VanDerLee Updates, DFT PowerMask & PowerStroke, CorelDRAW Unleashed Magazine, Fluid Mask 3, Photoshop Security Updates, Primatte 3, Strata 3D Plugins
PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE
ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE
Dear Reader,
August is probably going to be a quiet month as far as plugins and image applications are concerned, but September will hopefully bring a lot of new stuff. We also have some things in the pipeline, which did not make it this month, e.g. the Mac versions of the PhotoFreebies and B/W Styler 1.01. There will also be a bigger update of our Plugin Galaxy product for Windows, which should make it more attractive again.
Those of you who will leave for holiday or are already on holiday, I wish you a relaxing and entertaining time. Those of you who have to work, you can comfort yourself with the fact that we at The Plugin Site will not be able to relax either.
Kind regards,
Harald Heim
www.thepluginsite.com
THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES: Free Photoshop Plugins and Polls pages updated
------------------------------------------------
The Free Photoshop Plugins page has been updated with the information from recent newsletters. Now the total number of free plugins and plugin collections has increased to 124.
http://www.thepluginsite.com/resources/freeps.htm
The Polls 2006 and Polls 2007 pages were updated with the data from recent
polls.
http://www.thepluginsite.com/knowhow/index.htm
POLL RESULTS: How often do you usually sharpen a photo that you want to
print?
------------------------------------------------
More than 260 people voted on the question: "How often do you usually
sharpen a photo that you want to print?". Here are the results:
1. Only Once 64%
2. Twice 19%
3. Not at all 12%
4. More than three times 3%
5. Three Times 2%
So two thirds of all voters only sharpen once, probably as one of the last steps in their work flow. Almost 20% sharpen two times, probably one time the source image and a second time after resizing it to the final output size. 12% do not sharpen at all, either because they may like a soft look or may be satisfied with in-camera sharpening. Only 5% of all people sharpen three or more times. These people probably use sharpening for selectively achieving creative effects. There are certainly good reasons for each choice and it is a matter of taste or task requirement how to apply sharpening.
For more poll results, please visit the Know-How section
at
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/
NEW POLL: Do you prefer skinned or standard dialogs for Photoshop plugins?
------------------------------------------------
The new poll asks you if you prefer plugin dialogs with graphical skins
or with a standard OS look. Starting with Kai's Power Tools in the mid
90s many Photoshop plugins offered skinned dialogs. Now that normal OS
dialogs have begun to look fancy too, do you think we still need Photoshop
plugins with skinned interfaces?
You can cast your vote at the bottom of the page at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Sketch/Line Drawing Plugin,
Jump Through Effect, Lighting Effect, Ulead Plugin Problems
------------------------------------------------
Here are some of the latest posts on The Plugin Site Discussion Forums:
ray_goodwin wrote: "I need a plugin to convert
digital photos into black/white sketches or line drawings this is for
professional use so must be very good."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2711
petty wrote: "i am trying to create a car coming
through a checker flag, like it jump through,, is there a filter to do
this or a simple way.. any help is appreciated"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2705
D_Spider wrote: "I want to change the perceived
lighting on an image. It can be done with Photoshop "Lighting Effects"
but I use an old version of PSP and lots of plugins. I think I remember
using EyeCandy (v3 or 4) for this, but I can't locate the controls for
it now..."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2714
Lise wrote: "I have try to install Ulead Particle
- ... I dont find any files or anything in it, it complete installing
but nothing happens. Then I have try to install ulead texture - but Im
getting Unable to load APSmgart.dll. ... I dont get it in to my PSP8"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2722
For more interesting discussions and posting your own comments or questions
please visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Superrune Plugins, FlamingPear
Zombie, Telegraphics Plugins, 8bf Plugins, Xero Plugins Update, easyHDR
Basic
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The Superrune plugins (for Windows) offer plugins
for retouching spherical and equirectangular panoramas. The plugins will
map the panorama distortions to flat planes so that they are easily edited.
The retouched parts can also be converted back to spherical/equirectangular
to apply the edits to your original panorama.
http://www.superrune.com/technical/software_spheretocubic.php
The FlamingPear freebies (for Win/Mac) have been updated with the Zombie
plugin. It does not offer any control, but gives your images a touch of
horror. It works best with portraits that show eyes and teeth. The Mac
version is now also available as a Universal binary.
http://www.flamingpear.com/download.html#vitriol
Telegraphics released a few new freeware plugins (for Win/Mac) in the
meantime. The Photoshop File Extract/Recover plugin recovers image layers
from corrupted PSD and PSB files that Photoshop does not or only partially
open. The TIFFlib Format Plugin opens and saves TIFF files with a wider
variety of TIFF flavors and compression types than Photoshop itself. The
Scramble Filter breaks an image into square or rectangular blocks and
rearranges them randomly like a sliding block puzzle. The 8XI format plugin
reads bitmap images in 8XI format as used by TI-83 Plus devices. The DITABIS/DIBIS
"micron" plugin adds support for a file format that is used
by imaging equipment from Digital Biomedical Imaging Systems.
http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/
The 8bf Plugin collection (for Windows) was enhanced with two new plugins.
The Frame Works plugin adds a variety of frames to your images and the
Texture Frame plugin allows you to apply textures to frames created with
Frame Works or Foto Frame or to use it by itself. The Foto Frame and Transparent
Frame have been updated slightly.
http://8bf.net/
The Xero plugins (for Windows) were recently updated for Windows Vista
compatibility.
http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/freeware.htm
easyHDR Basic (for Windows) lets you blend a sequence of photos taken
at different exposure values into a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image. There
is also a commercial version with many more features.
http://www.easyhdr.com/
GRAPHICS NEWS: VanDerLee Updates, DFT PowerMask &
PowerStroke, CorelDRAW Unleashed Magazine, Fluid Mask 3, Photoshop Security
Updates, Primatte 3, Strata 3D Plugins
------------------------------------------------
VanDerLee.com updated its freeware as well as commercial plugins for Windows Vista compatibility. The UnPlugged-X plugin was also improved even further with a filter stack for applying several filters before pressing the OK button.
http://www.vanderlee.com/
Digital Film Tools released Power Mask and Power Stroke (for Win/Mac).
Power Mask is a real time, interactive masking plugin that asks you to
paint along the edges of the object that you want to cut out. It claims
to mask fine hair detail, smoke or reflections correctly. Power Stroke
is a stroke based color correction, colorization and special effects plug-in.
http://www.digitalfilmtools.com/
Foster D. Coburn III of the Graphics Unleashed web site launches a new
and free magazine called CorelDRAW Unleashed. Starting with October 2007
the magazine will appear every two months in PDF format. It is aimed at
CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT users and will also cover CorelDRAWings
and Corel Designer as well as general design topics and third-party products.
http://www.CorelDRAWUnleashed.com
Version 3 of Fluid Mask (for Win/Mac) allows more precise color-based
mask selections and its new hair blending algorithm claims to extract
adjacent dark and light hair from a neutral background. A new set of tools
allows you to isolate a difficult area and apply alternative edge finding
and blending techniques to that area. Additionally the number of mask
brushes has been increased.
http://www.vertustech.com/
Adobe offers Photoshop CS2 and CS3 security updates that prevent an attacker
from taking over your system after you opened a malicious BMP, DIB, RLE,
or PNG file in Photoshop.
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb07-13.html
Version 3 of the Primatte plugin (for Win/Mac) offers improved support
for processing large numbers of images using the AutoMask tool, which
automatically removes the background of an image. The Light Wrap tool
provides better spill suppression and better blending. Primatte 3 now
supports smart objects and video footage via the Photoshop CS3 timeline.
http://www.digitalanarchy.com/
Strata offers three plugins for Photoshop Extended (for Win/Mac) that
let you do 3D model construction from photos as well as real-time 3D output
for web page and PDF creation.
http://www.strata.com/strata3d_ps_plugins.asp
