The Plugin Site - Plugin Newsletter

After delaying the topic of redesigning The Plugin Site in favor of product development for quite some time, it now started quite spontaneously more or less over night. Although it may look as if the biggest part of the work was put into the main page, most of the time was consumed by batch processing the old html code of 1000+ files. The redesign will be an ongoing process and is far from over, but I hope you already like the result so far. See below for more information and let us know your opinion about it.

Apart from the web site redesign, there are two other big projects currently running at The Plugin Site: Major PhotoWiz updates and a totally new plugin for Photoshop Elements will be put on the market in 2017. Stay tuned!

I wish you all a nice holiday season, a Merry Christmas and a great start into the new year!

Kind regards,
Harald Heim

The Plugin Site

NEW WEB DESIGN FOR THE PLUGIN SITE

New look and support for mobile devices

The design of The Plugin Site was finally revised to give it a modern touch and to make it better viewable on mobile devices. So far only the main page was reworked and the remaining 1000+ pages were adjusted to the new style. The Gallery section and some other outdated pages were removed.

This is the second redesign of The Plugin Site since 2000. In 2009 the design was only slightly tweaked and adjusted for higher resolution monitors. This time it is planned to redesign almost all pages. As this is a very big task it will certainly take all of 2017 to finish it. A new logo will also follow soon. At the moment only a simplified logo is used at the top of each page.

We hope you already like the result so far. Please let us know.

Please participate in the poll about this topic on the
Main page

You can comment on the poll page or on the
Forum

ELEMENTSXXL 4.02 FOR WINDOWS

Improved look, Less slowdown, Linked Smart Object Enhancements, Smartfilter Support for FilterHub

ElementsXXL 4.02 provides an improved look of the icons on the tool bar and Layers panel as well as the drop-down button on the top bar. In Photoshop Elements 13-15 it avoids slowdowns for ElementsXXL filters and adjustment layers while the crop tool is active. Several improvements for linked smart object are also included as well as some bug fixes. Additionally ElementsXXL 4.02 now allows FilterHub to apply smart filters in Photoshop Elements.

ElementsXXL adds up to 640 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, dialogs and controls, so they seamlessly integrate into the user interface of Photoshop Elements.

For more information and a 14-day trial versions visit
ElementsXXL Product Page

FILTERHUB 1.50 FOR WINDOWS

ElementsXXL integration & Support for multiple monitors

FilterHub 1.50 now offers support for multiple monitors and the ability to install it into the common plugin folder of all Photoshop CC versions. Apart from some bug fixes most of the other new features come to play when using Photoshop Elements. FilterHub 1.50 finally offers all features, which were already available in Photoshop, in Photoshop Elements too - provided that ElementsXXL 4.02 (or higher) is also installed. FilterHub now allows applying filters as smart filters and is able to display the ElementsXXL versions of the Curves, Black & White and Shadows/Highlights filters. Additionally it can now launch the Color Balance, Exposure, Vibrance and Selective Color filters of ElementsXXL, the Dehaze filter of Photoshop Elements 14/15 and the Adjust Facial Features filters of Photoshop Elements 15.

FilterHub is a powerful replacement for the Filter menu of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and offers many advantages over it. It supports built-in filters (from the Filter, Adjustments and Enhance menus), filter plugins and third-party automation plugins.

For more information and a 14-day trial versions visit the
FilterHub Product Page

ACTIONSXXL 1.03 FOR WINDOWS

Support for multiple monitors and bug fixes

ActionsXXL 1.03 supports multiple monitors, avoids recording useless events in Photoshop Elements 15 and is able to record the PhotoMerge menu items in Photoshop Elements 11/12. The "Insert > Adjustment Layer" menu item now records the blend mode and opacity of the adjustment layer. The Actions panel (with ActionsXXL docked to it) is also not automatically displayed anymore after starting Photoshop Elements.

ActionsXXL empowers Photoshop Elements users to create, record, play and save Photoshop actions. ActionsXXL also offers a Batch feature for automatically processing multiple documents or image files with actions, scripts and other features.

For more information and a 14-day trial versions visit
ActionsXXL Product Page

HTML SHRINKER PRO FOR WINDOWS

Available for free now

HTML Shrinker has been available as a free Light version as well as a Personal and Commercial Pro version previously. Now the Commercial Pro version, which was sold for $50, is now made available as freeware. With internet connections becoming faster and faster, there is less demand for shrinking html code and less reason to offer this software commercially. So go on and grab yourself a free copy. HTML Shrinker cannot only be used to reduce the size of html, css and javascript files, but can clean up old html code by defining rules. That is what we used it for when adjusting the html code of our old web site design to the new one.

For more information and a free download go to
HTML Shrinker Product Page

PLUGIN GALAXY AE

Product discontinued because of 32-bit limitation

As there were no plans to create a 64-bit version of Plugin Galaxy AE and After Effects as well as Premiere Pro have been 64-bit only since CS5, it made not much sense to continue offering this product. You can still use the regular version of Plugin Galaxy to apply these effects on videos in Photoshop.

For more information see the
Plugin Galaxy AE Product Page

REVIEW

Dynamic Auto Painter 5

Kay Michael Kuhnlein once again indulges in his passion for painting software, this time revisiting version 5 of the software he already reviewed in 2009: Dynamic Auto Painter. He puts it through its paces by testing it on landscape and portrait photos, already processed photos and clip arts. His mantra seems to be "Everyone can be an artist provided he has taste and is able to choose the right presets."

Have fun viewing the full review on the
DAP 5 Review page

Have fun reading all reviews in the
Reviews section

POLL RESULTS

Which is your favorite application for batch processing dozens or hundreds of photos?

130 people voted in the previous poll about batch processing applications. Here are the results:

1. Photoshop 16%
Lightroom 16%
2. IrfanView 14%
3. Paint Shop Pro 13%
4. Other 10%

5. ACDSee 7%
6. DxO Optics 5%
7. Photoshop Elements 3%
XnView 3%
FastStone 3%

8. Adobe Bridge 2.5%
9. CaptureOne 2%
    Canon Photo Professional 2%
    Thumbs Plus 2%
10. Alienskin Exposure 1%
     AfterShot Pro 1%
     Nikon Capture (NX) 1%
     Zoner Photo Studio 1%

Photoshop and Lightroom both made it to number 1. Both are clearly suited for very different batch processing tasks. IrfanView has fewer batch processing features, but as freeware it still made it into the top 3, closely followed by Paint Shop Pro. Photoshop Elements with its limited batch capabilities is only middle class and Adobe Bridge is even less favored in this area.

For more poll results visit the
Resources section

NEW POLL

How do you like the new look of The Plugin Site?

This time we are asking you to vote for the new design of The Plugin Site. You can choose between three positive, two neutral and three negative statements. You are also welcome to leave your comments about it on the poll page or on the forum (see above).

Please participate in this poll by visiting the
Main page...

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS

Here are the latest interesting posts from The Plugin Site Forums:

New Web Design

HaraldHeim wrote: "The Plugin Site received a new web design ... Please let us know how you like the new design, what you dislike and what could be improved!"
Read More...

8-bit/16-bit Workflow

astronut80920 wrote: "I have been playing with 16-bit rendering and prepare 8-bit document in Elements XXL. The way I have been tackling it is this: Start in Lightroom to perform major edits on raw image, go to Elements. ... This seems complicated, so what I ask is, since I have already done the major edits in Lightroom in 16-bit, would I lose any image quality then going into Elements in 8-bit mode and then doing Smart Filter edits using NIK or other filters. I'm thinking no, but would like to hear any opinions from other users.."
Read More...

Feel free to post comments or start a discussion topic at
The Plugin Site Forum

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS

Perfect Exposure, Fontea, Mobirise

Perfect Exposure is a plugin (for Win/Mac) for fixing the exposure of digital photos. It offers 8 presets as well as a few simple controls for adjusting the exposure, depth and overall opacity. You can also save your own presets and use a split view option. Perfect Exposure does not let you adjust any color problems tough. It works in Photoshop Elements, Lightroom and PSP. Perfect Exposure was sold for $39 previously, but is free now.
Visit website...

Fontea is a free extension (for Win/Mac) which lets you assign up to 800 Google web fonts in Photoshop CC 2014 and higher. You simply select a text layer in the Layers panel and click on the font item in Fontea to assign it. You can search for a font as well as have favorites.
Visit website...

Mobirise is a free application (for Win/Mac/Android) for creating mobile-friendly web sites. It lets you easily build web pages from different design components and visually edit them. It is meant for designing web sites with only a dozen pages or less. Mobirise seems to finance itself by selling more specialized components, e.g. a Paypal cart, while offering the design tool itself for free. The generated web site files can be exported to a folder or directly transferred to your web space.
Visit website...

For more free plugins and tools, please visit the
Resources section

GRAPHICS NEWS

Photoshop CC 2017, Affinity Photo 1.5, Filter Forge 6

The latest Photoshop CC 2017 release (for Win/Max) offers touch bar support for MacBook Pro, in-app search, an enhanced Properties panel, performance improvements, e.g. a faster Liquify tool & Surface Blur, as well as many enhancements of already available features. On the other hand the Design Space (Preview) was removed, layer styles can no longer be applied to artboards and Mac OS X 10.9 is no longer supported.
Visit website...

Affinity Photo 1.5 (for Win/Mac) is the first cross-platform release of this image editing application. While already available on the Mac since last year, the final Windows release is out now. The new release offers full HDR merge support, 360° image editing, recordable macros, batch processing, focus merge, a tone mapping workspace, lens profiles, 32-bit editing and more.
Visit website...

Filter Forge 6 (for Win/Mac), available as a standalone and a Photoshop plugin, features full 64-bit support, the ability to rearrange filter presets and updates for 33 components which make their inputs mappable. Its library now contains 11902 effects.
Visit website...

Back to the News Page

News

Still got questions ?