Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - July/August 2020
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL: Camera Raw 12.3 & Raw Converters
HARRYS FILTERS 4.11 FOR WINDOWS:
Affinity Photo & Blurry Painting Fixes, Enhanced Installation
ELEMENTSXXL 7.04 FOR WINDOWS: Faster Rendering, Improved Adjustments Panel, Bug Fixes
LAYERSHOP 2.01 FOR WINDOWS: Layer Group Style Support, Zoom key support, Automatic Transparency Removal
ADJUSTSHOP 1.04 FOR WINDOWS: Faster Rendering, LayerShop 2 Support, Bug Fixes
CAMERAXXL 1.08 FOR WINDOWS: Camera Raw 12.2.1 Support
POLL RESULTS: What do you do with Photoshop (Elements)?
NEW POLL: Which tool(s) do you regularly use for raw conversion?
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: RealLookLongShadow, Metadata CC Lite / Stock Search, Palette Mapper AE, PhotoGIMP
GRAPHICS NEWS: Boris FX Optics
Dear Reader,
Adobe completely revamped the UI of Camera Raw with version 12.3 to match it with the UI of their mobile and other software. This type of UI may work great for touch devices, but it is less fluent to use on the desktop. So I am not really a fan of this UI change. Even worse, it has broken our CameraXXL plugin, which does not work anymore with the new Camera Raw UI. But the latest CameraXXL 1.08 fixes this problem for now by installing the latest working Camera Raw plugin. A CameraXXL update is already in the works, which will support Camera Raw 12.3 and future versions.
I recently had a look at freeware raw conversion tools like DarkTable and RawTherapee. Unfortunately they are still no alternatives to commercial raw conversion tools for everyone. They are not user friendly enough, slow or are overcrowded with too many non-standard features. So really only something for nerds. I can not imagine using them as they are now. Gives me headaches. Reminds me of a past experience with a Photoshop Elements tool, which was one of the reasons for developing ElementsXXL.
I never developed much enthusiasm for enhancing photos in raw conversion tools like Lightroom. I only found them quite useful when processing hundreds of similar photos, e.g. from weddings. When editing unique photos I still consider Photoshop and Photoshop Elements the better alternative as they provide unlimited possibilities. But of course it also requires more know-how as well. Luckily this also lets me bypass the photo management overhead in Lightroom.
Anyway, check out the raw conversion poll below!
Kind regards,
Harald Heim
HARRYS FILTERS 4.11 FOR WINDOWS
Affinity Photo & Blurry Painting Fixes, Enhanced Installation
Version 4.11 of our free Harrys Filters plugin fixes transparency problems with the Blurry Painting effect and dialog resizing problems in Affinity Photo. The installation was also updated to support newer versions of PaintShop Pro and MS Store versions of Photoshop Elements.
For more information visit the
Harrys Filters Page
ELEMENTSXXL 7.04 FOR WINDOWS
Faster Rendering, Improved Adjustments Panel, Bug Fixes
Photo Credits: Opolja & Chunhahca/Dreamstime
ElementsXXL 7.04 makes three filters render faster, fixes UI problems of the Adjustments panel and offers many other bug fixes. So do not miss this update!
ElementsXXL adds up to 1300 powerful features to Photoshop Elements for Windows that were previously only available in Photoshop. These features are included as 320 new menu items, 80 dialogs, 40 icons, 30 key shortcuts, 8 panels and 3 drop-down buttons. ElementsXXL greatly enhances the image editing experience in Photoshop Elements.
For more information and a trial version visit the
ElementsXXL Page
LAYERSHOP 2.01 FOR WINDOWS
Layer Group Style Support, Zoom key support, Automatic Transparency Removal
Photo Credits: Gerd Dollhopf & ffotograff65/pixmac
LayerShop 2.01 allows the Style Settings dialog to be applied to layer groups, but some advanced blending features are not available in this case. After running the "Open As Layers" or "Place Documents as Layers" features, the Remove Transparency feature is now automatically launched by default. Various dialogs now allow using the zoom key shortcuts while displayed, which helps to see the effect better.
LayerShop offers up to 300 photo and design features for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for Windows. It provides tools for performing the many image enhancement tasks with multiple image files, like HDR, denoising or panorama creation, and offers layer composition and layer style features. LayerShop upgrades Photoshop Elements with features of Photoshop and also adds many new features to Photoshop.
For more information and a trial version visit the
LayerShop Page
ADJUSTSHOP 1.04 FOR WINDOWS
Faster Rendering, LayerShop 2 Support, Bug Fixes
Photo Credits: studio10artur/Pond5
AdjustShop 1.04 makes three filters render faster (just like ElementsXXL 7.04) and removes a superfluous menu item if LayerShop 2 is installed. Apart from that several minor bugs were fixed.
AdjustShop adds up to 400 new features to Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. It includes 700 presets, 24 new filters, 10 new fill layers and 11 new adjustment layers. The features are included as new menu items and dialogs, so they seamlessly integrate into the user interface. AdjustShop can be used in Photoshop CS2-CS6, CC and higher as well as Photoshop Elements 11 and higher.
For more information and a trial version visit the
AdjustShop Page
CAMERAXXL 1.08 FOR WINDOWS
Camera Raw 12.2.1 Support
CameraXXL 1.08 supports Camera Raw 12.2.1 and lets you overwrite Camera Raw 12.3 (and higher) during installation, because CameraXXL does not support it yet. We are working on supporting Camera Raw 12.3 and higher with CameraXXL, but it may still take some time.
CameraXXL adds up to 100 new features to Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements. It allows applying Adobe Camera Raw as a filter in Photoshop Elements. CameraXXL additionally enables users of Photoshop Elements to install a newer version of Camera Raw than provided by the Photoshop Elements update mechanism.
For more information and a trial version visit the
CameraXXL Page
POLL RESULTS
What do you do with Photoshop (Elements)?
Here are the results of the previous poll about patterns of plugin usage:
Photo enhancement 79%
General image editing 68%
Graphics design 34%
Video editing 13%
Other 13%
3D graphics 10%
Printing 10%
Scientific usage 3%
Web design 0%
App design 0%
As expected this poll got little attention, but it shows clearly that most of our readers use Photoshop (Elements) for photo enhancement or other types of image editing tasks. One third also does graphics design and rather few do video editing or 3D graphics. Using it for science, web or app design is very uncommon.
For more poll results visit the
Resources section
NEW POLL
Which tool(s) do you regularly use for raw conversion?
The latest poll asks you about your preferred raw conversion tool. A similar poll was conducted more than 2 years ago, so lets see if some shifts have occurred in the raw conversion landscape.
You are welcome to participate in this poll by voting at
Main page...
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
RealLookLongShadow, Metadata CC Lite / Stock Search, Palette Mapper AE, PhotoGIMP
The RealLookLongShadow panel (for Photoshop CC 2018 and higher, Win/Mac) creates long shadows as a separate layer and allows adjusting the density, direction, length and color of the shadow.
Visit
website...
Metadata CC Lite is a free extension for Photoshop CC 2018 and higher (for Win/Mac), which reads out the embedded metadata of a document, adds it to the clipboard or inserts it as a text layer. The same developer also offers the Free Stock Search panel for searching and downloading stock photos into various Adobe applications. There are also commercial pro versions of both tools.
Visit website...
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Palette Mapper (for Windows) is an Adobe After Effects plugin (for Windows) that extracts the color palette from videos on a frame-by-frame basis thus creating a vertical lines effect. It can also be used as an analytical tool for studying color grading in film, video and animation.
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PhotoGIMP is a patch for GIMP 2.10+ (for Win/Mac/Linux), which makes the GIMP UI more similar to Photoshop, including menus, tool bar and key shortcuts. The installation has to be performed manually.
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For more free plugins and tools, please visit the
Resources section
GRAPHICS NEWS
Boris FX Optics
After Digital Film Tools was acquired by Boris FX their effects were reworked into a new Photoshop/Lightroom plugin and called Boris FX Optics (for Win/Mac). It offers 160 filters and thousands of presets grouped into 9 categories named Color, Diffusion/Blurs, Film Lab, Grads/Tints, Image, Lens, Light, Render and Stylize.
Visit website...
