Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - December/January 2019/2020
CONTENTS
ELEMENTSXXL 7.01 FOR WINDOWS:
Improved Pen Pro tool, Renewed Trial Period
ADJUSTSHOP 1.02 FOR WINDOWS: Improved Frame feature, Bug Fixes
CAMERAXXL 1.07 FOR WINDOWS: Support for Camera Raw 12
ACTIONSXXL 1.10 FOR WINDOWS: BMP file support, Enhanced Batch option
METARAW 3.07 FOR WIN/MAC: Support for New Camera Models and DNG Converter 12
REVIEW: Luminar 4
POLL RESULTS: Which versions of these image editing applications do you use?
NEW POLL: Which was the last Photoshop (Elements) version that offered essential new features to you?
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Texture Anarchy, Wordroom, GANPaint Studio, DaVinci Resolve 16
GRAPHICS NEWS: Photoshop 2020, Filter Forge 9, AKVIS Explosion
Dear Reader,
We are currently working on three product upgrades at the same time, which will very likely be released in the course of this year. Developing no totally new product, unlike in most previous years, means more time for upgrading and improving existing plugins.
Surprisingly, the latest Photoshop CC finally received a few interesting new features. I am still waiting for that to happen to Photoshop Elements. For me the latest useful feature were layer groups in Photoshop Elements 15. Speed improvements and a dark UI option would be great. But I guess Adobe does not want to make Photoshop Elements a competitor to Photoshop. So we can only pimp it up ourselves with plugins. Check out the poll below for voting which your last Photoshop (Elements) version with an essential new feature was.
As usual I hope you enjoy this edition of the Plugin Newsletter. Thanks for your time!
Kind regards,
Harald Heim
ELEMENTSXXL 7.01 FOR WINDOWS
Improved Pen Pro tool, Renewed Trial Period
Photo Credits: Opolja & Chunhahca/Dreamstime
Version 7.01 offers a highly improved Pen Pro tool, which is now usable for more complex path creation and editing tasks. Previously the OK and Cancel buttons were usable while some filters were still rendering, which caused some side-effects, which has been resolved. An Auto Saturation crash was fixed, some high-res icons were added and other smaller bugs removed. The trial version can be used for another 14 days even if the previous trial version already expired.
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
ADJUSTSHOP 1.02 FOR WINDOWS
Improved Frame feature, Bug Fixes
Photo Credits: studio10artur/Pond5
AdjustShop 1.02 improves the performance of the Frame feature greatly. In Photoshop you can now use the Split Layer features on 16-bit/channel images. In the previous version the Prefs dialog did not work correctly, which was repaired again. Version 1.02 also fixes the Auto Saturation and OK/Cancel issues mentioned above.
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 1.07 FOR WINDOWS
Support for Camera Raw 12
CameraXXL 1.07 now supports the new Camera Raw 12. Its installer adds Camera Raw 12 to Photoshop Elements 2019 and 2020. A crash problem after exiting Photoshop Elements 2020 was also fixed.
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 visit the
CameraXXL Page
ACTIONSXXL 1.10 FOR WINDOWS
BMP file support, Enhanced Batch option
ActionsXXL 1.10 now allows saving BMP files (with RLE compression) during Batch processing. The "Keep Folder Structure" check box on the Batch dialog was improved to avoid problems under certain conditions and work more reliably.
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 visit the
ActionsXXL Page
METARAW 3.07 FOR WIN/MAC
Support for New Camera Models and DNG Converter 12
MetaRaw 3.07 supports DNG Converter 12.0 now. The built-in MetaRaw Converter work with 15 new camera models. It correctly crops certain raw files and renders better colors for others.
MetaRaw extends the functionality of the Adobe Camera Raw plugin in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. It lets you open camera raw files with Adobe Camera Raw, which are normally not supported by it, and allows applying Adobe Camera Raw to image layers.
For more information visit the
MetaRaw Page
REVIEW
Luminar 4
After writing a review about Luminar 3 last year, Kay Michael Kuhnlein now concentrated on version 4. As in the past he spices up the review with jokes at my expense (which made me laugh too) while putting the AI features of Luminar through their paces.
Read the full review here
Luminar 4 review
POLL RESULTS
Which versions of these image editing applications do you use?
The latest poll asked about the image editing apps that people use. Over 360 people with more than 470 votes participated with the following results:
Combined Results:
1. Photoshop 28.3%
2. PaintShop Pro 27.4%
3. Photoshop Elements 22.8%
4. Affinity Photo 21.5%
Photoshop Only:
1. Photoshop CS: 58.2%
2. Photoshop CC: 38.1%
3. Photoshop 1-7: 3.7%
Favorite Versions:
1. Affinity Photo 1.7: 35.4%
2. PaintShop Pro 2020: 20.2%
3. Photoshop CS6: 15.5%
4. Photoshop CC 2019: 14.8%
5. Photoshop Elements 2020: 14.1%
Photoshop Versions:
1. Photoshop CS6: 32.1%
2. Photoshop CC 2019: 30.6%
3. Photoshop CS5: 12%
4. Photoshop CS3/CS4: 8.2%
5. Photoshop CS/CS2: 6%
6. Photoshop 7 (or older): 3.7%
Photoshop CC 2018: 3.7%
7. Photoshop CC 2017: 2.2%
8. Photoshop CC 2013-2015.5: 1.5%
PaintShop Pro Versions:
1. PaintShop Pro 2020: 43%
2. PaintShop Pro 2019: 25.4%
3. PaintShop Pro 2018: 10.8%
4. PaintShop Pro 9 or older: 7.7%
5. PaintShop Pro X9: 6.9%
6. PaintShop Pro 10-X8: 6.2%
Photoshop Elements Versions:
1. Photoshop Elements 2020: 36%
2. Photoshop Elements 15: 18.5%
3. Photoshop Elements 2019: 13.9%
4. Photoshop Elements 14: 10.2%
5. Photoshop Elements 2018: 7.4%
Photoshop Elements 10 or older: 7.4%
6. Photoshop Elements 11/12: 5.6%
7. Photoshop Elements 13: 0.9%
Affinity Photo Versions:
1. Affinity Photo 1.7: 96%
2. Affinity Photo 1.5: 2%
3. Affinity Photo 1.6: 1%
Affinity Photo 1.0: 1%
Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements and Affinity Photo received a very similar amount of votes around 25%. Much less variation between them than ever in our previous polls. Two years ago the latest CC version received 50% more votes than Photoshop CS6, but this time Photoshop C6 is slightly on top again.
There is a tenancy of using the latest 3-4 versions of Photoshop Elements and PaintShop Pro. The users of both applications upgrade more often to newer versions than in the past. This cannot be said for Photoshop. Most Photoshop users still use a CS version. Half of all Photoshop CS users use Photoshop CS6. Concerning Photoshop CC and Affinity Photo only the latest version seems to be used by almost all, because upgrading is free.
For more poll results visit the
Resources section
NEW POLL
Which was the last Photoshop (Elements) version that offered essential new features to you?
Some upgrades of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements include a lot of useful, but small and gradual improvements but nothing breath-taking. So it would be great to hear from you which was the last version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements that provided you with at least one feature that you do not want to miss anymore.
You are welcome to participate in this poll by voting at
Main page...
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
Texture Anarchy, Wordroom, GANPaint Studio, DaVinci Resolve 16
Texture Anarchy is a set of 3 Photoshop filter plugins (for Win/Mac) for creating textures and borders. Once commercial it is now free.
Visit
website...
Wordroom is a Lightroom keyword plugin (for Win/Mac) that automatically adds keywords to images in Lightroom with the help of an AI.
Visit website...
GANPaint Studio is the prototype of an online image editor, which lets you use a brush to draw in new image elements like trees, clouds, grass, doors, bricks etc. into existing images. Not really professionally usable, but fun to play with.
Visit website...
DaVinci Resolve 16 (for Win/Mac/Linux) is the free version of the professional DaVinci Resolve Studio video editor. It offers visual effects, motion graphics, color correction and audio editing capabilities. The free version does not support HDR, 8K timelines, faster GPUs rendering and also misses some video effects. There is a 444 page "Beginner's Guide" PDF in the Training section.
Visit website...
For more free plugins and tools, please visit the
Resources section
GRAPHICS NEWS
Photoshop 2020, Filter Forge 9, AKVIS Explosion
Released last year Photoshop 2020 (Where did the "CC" go?) offers an enhanced Select Subject command, a new Object Selection tool (as in Photoshop Elements 2018), a Quick Selection brush on the Select and Mask dialog, an enhanced Properties panel, a more flexible Warp feature, new panels for patterns, gradients & shapes, new Context-Aware Fill options, Animated GIF support and many other improvements.
Visit
website...
Filter Forge 9 (for Win/Mac) offers a new method of texture shading and rendering called PBR. It lets you assign notes to filter presets and includes a new Note component. Filter Forge allows applying over 12900 textures and effects and creating own filter effects.
Visit website...
AKVIS Explosion is a new plugin/standalone (for Win/Mac) that adds destruction effects as well as dust and sand particles to photos.
Visit website...
