Plugin Newsletter - December 2000

EDITORIAL

PLUGIN COMMANDER 1.51 RELEASED

UPDATES OF THE PLUGIN SITE

REVIEWS

POLL RESULTS

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS

GRAPHICS NEWS

Hi everybody,

It has been an exciting year with a lot of new graphics software. But
like all good things, it ends some day. I enjoyed publishing this
newsletter and updating The Plugin Site very much this year. Expect me
to be around next year, too.

I want to thank everyone who helped me keeping up this newsletter and
the web site, whether it was by sending me feedback, tips or broken link
reports, sponsoring a contest, newsletter or the web site, placing a
link, purchasing one of my commercial products or something else.

It's time to forget the difficulties that accumulated during the last 12
months and to look only at the good sides of life. Therefore I wish you
great holidays, Merry Christmas and a healthy, successful new year!

See my visual greetings at
http://ThePluginSite.com/gallery/ownpictures/xmas2000.htm
(fully created with Photoshop 6 without any help from plugins)

Yours,
Harald Heim

PLUGIN COMMANDER 1.51 RELEASED

Version 1.51 of Plugin Commander is more or less a bug fix release. The
most remarkable change (in the Pro Edition) is the support of the
plugins included with Photoshop 6. Adobe made some basic changes to
these filter plugins with the effect that they can't be used in other
image applications. The only other application that can currently use
them beside Photoshop is Plugin Commander. Even Paintshop Pro 7 can't
apply them.

Here are the full details of the update:

Light & Pro Version:
--------------------
- Some icons were made transparent to adapt to different window colors
- Resizing the main window works correctly even if the window content is
displayed while dragging.
- Hidden files and system files are displayed in File View now
- Plugin List command works correctly again
- New and smaller Setup: the Light Version is only 3 MB large, the Pro
Edition 4.5 MB.

Pro Edition:
------------
- The plugins included with Photoshop 6 can be executed, applied and
previewed now (with the exception of Liquify, Extract and Tonal Range)
- The plugins included with Photoshop 4, 5 and 5.5 work correctly now
even, if plugin.dll isn't present in your system folder
- Improved plugin crash protection: if a plugin should crash, you won't
need to restart Plugin Commander Pro anymore to be able to execute other
plugins.
- Bug removed that caused problems when previewing in FFL View
- 'Create FLL' and 'Convert' from FFL View work correctly again
- No crash anymore when working with the 'virtual filters' in Plugin
View in Photoshop Mode

Please download it from
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/picopro/

UPDATES OF THE PLUGIN SITE

The special offer concerning the Edge & Frame Galaxy CD is still valid
until 31st December 2000. Get 1600 edges and frames for $39.95, 20% off
the regular price.
http://thepluginsite.com/products/efgcd/

The Plugin Galaxy and Plugin Commander products have their own domains
now: http://plugingalaxy.com/ and http://thepluginsite.com/products/picopro/

Harry's Filters has a new setup. The file Msvcrt10.dll which is required
by all Filter Factory plugins is now included with the package and
automatically installed. This will prevent some installation trouble in
future.
http://thepluginsite.com/products/harrysfilters/

The Free Filters and Free Tools pages were finally updated with the
links of the previous three newsletters. The links of the Filter Factory
Plugins page were updated, too.
http://thepluginsite.com/resources/

Unfortunately many of these links to Filter Factory filters were broken.
They have been marked red. But some of the broken links could be
replaced by new ones. Here are the new links:

Balder Olrik (7 filters with various effects), FunHouse (37 filters for
distortion, blur and tile effects), Greg's Factory Output (24 filters
with different effects) and Kiwi's Oelfilter (10 filters for tile or
color effects) are available for download at (all of them for Windows)
http://hem.passagen.se/grafoman/plugtool/plugs.html

The Rorshack plugin (Win), a filter for creating an Old-TV-Effect can be
found at http://perso.club-internet.fr/gpl/html/rorshack.html

Get the Crescent Moon Filters (Win), 8 filters with various effects, at
http://perso.club-internet.fr/gpl/html/lindon_parker.html

The Neology collection (Win/Mac), 23 filters with some pattern and
distortion effects, is now located at
http://privat.schlund.de/f/filter-factory/

Astronomy Filters (a filter that simulate gravitational distortions)
http://leo.astronomy.cz/

REVIEWS

The latest version of Photoshop has been reviewed. The review focuses on
both the Windows and the Mac version. It is an extended review this time
with some screen shots and feature descriptions.

To quote the review summary: "If you can afford it and have a machine
with a fast processor and a lot of RAM, Photoshop 6 is a must. You won't
find a better tool for editing images and doing web graphics. Its tools
and features save you a lot of time when working on images."

The full review can be read at
http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/photoshop6.htm

For a demo version of Photoshop 6 go to
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/tryreg.html

POLL RESULTS

Last time you were asked to vote for the part of ThePluginSite.com you
like best. This poll will still remain until the end of the year and a
new poll will be created next year. So if you still want to place your
vote visit http://thepluginsite.com

Here are the results of The Plugin Site poll calculated from 200 votes:

1. Products - Freeware 28%
2. Resources - Adobe-compatible Plugins 18%
3. Resources - Premiere/AE/Other Plugins 17%

4. Resources - Tubes 6%
5. I like the whole site 6%
6. Resources - Graphic Tools 5%
Resources - Filter Factory Plugins 5%
7. Know-How - Tutorials 3%

Nr. 3 indicates that many of you are interested in plugins and effects
for Adobe Premiere and other applications. Much more than I thought. So
I will keep that in mind when adding more stuff to The Plugin Site next
year or preparing new issues of this newsletter. Thanks for your
feedback.

Previous poll results can be viewed at
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/

NEW PLUGINS AND TOOLS

Martijn W. van der Lee developed a plugin called SnowScape (Win) which
will add a thick layer of snow to semi-transparent images. The author
stated that it is a Christmas gift for all devote amateur and
professional graphicians. You can download this free plugin at
http://www.v-d-l.com/adrenaline_snowscape.html

Tile Maker 1.0 (Win) by Tim Lister is a simple, but free filter plugin
that ramps the edges of an image so that it will tile seamlessly. More
details
http://www.ozemail.com.au/%7Etal/Filters/index.html

Version 3.4 of the NVR Bordermania Pro plugins (Win) is available. The
Bordermania filters are designed to create a variety of basic borders
and buttons around images and are suited for creating buttons for Web
pages. BorderMania Pro is free for a 30 day evaluation period and after
that a license fee of $10 is required to use the enhanced features. If
you don't register them, the filters continue to work, but lack special
Pro features.
http://www.mediaco.com/nvr/bordermania/

The Cybia deluxe plug-in packs (Win/Mac) experienced a slight update.
They received a new interface that is more consistent with the website
design. Moreover there are 8 plugins from the "Mezzy" pack available
which are more or less unfinished and weren't officially released. These
basic grain/mezzo effect plugins can nevertheless be downloaded from
http://www.cybia.co.uk/zips/mz_del.zip
The official Cybia website is located at
http://www.cybia.co.uk/

Tatsuya has released some new filters lately. The Tatsuya Filters
collection (Win/Mac) now includes 100 filters for creating special black
and white or grayscale patterns. Unfortunately these filters are only
available in AFS format. This means that you need Plugin Commander
(http://thepluginsite.com/products/picopro/) or the original Filter
Factory plugin to use them or to compile them to Photoshop-compatible
plugins.
http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~takinami/tf/index.html

2D HyperClouds (Win) by Ivan Daunis is a filter plugin for generating
cloud textures and plasmas. It is based on Perlin's noise functions and
uses the background and foreground colors to make the clouds palette.
http://www.softseek.com/Graphics_and_Drawing/Adobe_Compatible_Plug_Ins/Review_49468_index.html

Philipp Spoeth has released three new Photoshop-compatible and After
Effects plugins for Windows lately. There's an After Effects version of
the "Sinedot Shader" which was already available as a
Photoshop-compatible plugin before. "Shear" does a simple shear effect
which means that you can specify a line along which the image is than
shifted. Last but not least, "Retrodots" places holes in a symmetrical
pattern on an image.
http://www.philipp-spoeth.de/

Gregory Paret has developed some Photoshop-compatible plugins for
Windows and Macintosh. "Grids" is a plugin for placing grids on your
image, "Polygons" draws N-sided polygons and a circle, "Color Counter"
counts the colors used in an image, "Selection Outliner and
Un-Featherer" finds the rectangular outline of a selection and has
options to remove feathering from a selection, while the "Gamma Filter"
tries to compensate the fact that the Photoshop Levels control does not
do an arithmetically consistent Gamma adjustment. Finally "HTML Color
Tags" which is only available for Windows displays the current
foreground and background in hexadecimal format.
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~gparet/photoshop/

GRAPHICS NEWS

If you are a real plugin freak, you shouldn't miss the new online course
"Filter Frenzy - An Unlimited Adventure" at lvsonline.com. Sally Beacham
& Sonja Shea will teach this six week course which begins with standard
preparation, installation and configuration for several popular image
editors, including basic storage and organization options. The following
five weeks cover Super Blade Pro, Eye Candy 4000, Av Bros, Kai's Power
Tools, Flaming Pear filters, a host of freeware filters and Plugin
Commander. Several projects will be assigned each week, along with
instruction for each filter. Links for commercial demo versions will be
provided, as well as freeware filters. Best of all this course only
costs you $15 which is very cheap compared to other courses that usually
cost hundreds of dollars.
http://www.lvsonline.com/courses.html

Enter the PIXEL ARENA for the Interface Design contest on Pinoy7's web
site! 109 entries have already been submitted, but you can still send in
your interface designs by December 31, 2000. Prizes from Alien Skin,
Jasc and Muska & Lipman are awaiting.
http://www.pinoy7.com/pixelarena/default.cfm

The Third Edition of the book "Paint Shop Pro Web Graphics" by Andy
Shafran and Lori J. Davis has been published. The full-color book
teaches you how to create Web graphics with version 7 of Paintshop Pro.
The book targets web-specific applications of Paint Shop Pro, including
modifying existing logos and graphics, building graphics of your own and
creating complex button bars, navigational schemes and site design.
http://www.muskalipman.com/webgraphics/

Adobe announced Premiere 6.0 which is intended to comfortably close the
DV to Web gap while extending the software's position on the market.
With new support for DV on the Windows platform and cross-platform
support for all of the leading web video formats, Premiere integrates a
variety of new features and functions.
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/

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