Plugin Newsletter - February/March 2017

 

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

SPECIAL OFFERS FOR WIN/MAC: PhotoWiz Collection, FocalBlade, ContrastMaster, Edge & Frame Galaxy with 30% to 60% discounts

PHOTOWIZ COLLECTION 2017 FOR WINDOWS: ColorWasher 3, LightMachine 2, Skin feature, 3200% zoom, Windows 10 fixes, Improved installation

ELEMENTSXXL 4.03 FOR WINDOWS: Renewed trial period, 14 new smart filters, Filter menu fix, Huion graphics tablet support, Improved installation

HARRYSFILTERS 4.10 & PHOTOFREEBIES 2.10 FOR WINDOW: Support for tile processing and 2GB+ images, Support for Affinity Photo, Improved installation

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

NEW POLL: Photoshop plugins of which companies do you regularly use?

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Expanding a selection randomly, Paint Shop Pro 9 suddenly not working in Windows 10, Xero plugin crashes Paint Shop Pro X9

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Auto FX free plugins, Mehdi Plugins 64-bit, Image Analyzer Plugin, Photodonut Free Edition, Lightroom Focus Points

GRAPHICS NEWS: Lucis Art Out of Business, Anti-Haze Plugins, Photoshop Elements 15.2 Mac update, Photoshop (Elements) downloads

PRODUCTS OF THE PLUGIN SITE

ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE

NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTION

Dear Reader,

New updates of all PhotoWiz plugins for Windows are now available. This time most new features of more recently released plugins (ColorStyler, BWStyler 2) were added to the other plugins, e.g. the skin feature, 3200% zoom, multi-core support, smart filtering etc. That is why the PhotoWiz Bundle offer has now been renamed to "PhotoWiz Collection 2017". It is planned to keep updating them on an annual basis. Maybe it will be possible to label them "PhotoWiz Suite" one day. Mac updates of the PhotoWiz plugins will follow later this year.

Harry's Filters and PhotoFreebies were updated for tile processing and processing images larger than 2 GB. 2GB+ support will soon be added to Plugin Galaxy as well as the PhotoWiz plugins, especially ColorWasher, FocalBlade and NoiseControl. ElementsXXL 4.03 provides a renewed trial period again, so you can test it for another 14 days.

Also check out our special offers until March 15 and the poll about plugin companies. I came across four free Photoshop plugins this time (see Free Plugins below) and an extensive list of Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom downloads is listed in the Graphics News section. I hope there is something useful for you in this newsletter.

Kind regards,
Harald Heim

The Plugin Site

SPECIAL OFFERS FOR WIN/MAC

PhotoWiz Collection, FocalBlade, ContrastMaster, Edge & Frame Galaxy with 30% to 60% discounts

Until March 15 there are several special offers for our software products available. First of all, the PhotoWiz Collection is available for $99.95 (including Windows standalones) instead of $250. So if you like at least two PhotoWiz products, it makes more sense to order the PhotoWiz Collection for additional $10. Two PhotoWiz products were reduced from $70 to $49.95 namely FocalBlade and ContrastMaster. Finally, Edge & Frame Galaxy is reduced from $40 to $19.95 until March 15.

Check out the special offers on the
Order page

PHOTOWIZ COLLECTION 2017 FOR WINDOWS

ColorWasher 3, LightMachine 2, Skin feature, 3200% zoom, Windows 10 fixes, Improved installation

The previous "PhotoWiz Bundle" has now been renamed to "PhotoWiz Collection", because all seven products (consisting of plugins, standalones and external editors) now offer a very similar feature set. ColorWasher and Lightroom received a new major version number while adding support for multiple cores, increasing the preview rendering up to 12 times as well as making them action recordable and usable as smart filters. A 3200% preview zoom and a reset arrow down button was added to 4 of 7 PhotoWiz products and support for skins was added to 5 of them. Additionally two new Affinity skins were added, key shortcuts unified and the last used tool is preserved. Additionally each PhotoWiz product received some individual enhancements and bug fixes.

The PhotoWiz Standalone/Lightroom versions received support for the 80 raw file formats based on MetaRaw, improved PSD support and meta data handling. The installation was also widely enhanced. There is now a combined installer for plugins and standalones as well as the ability to install future or full versions without uninstallation of old versions or demo versions. Plugins can now be installed into a common Photoshop CC plugin folder, so that you do not need to install them again if you update to a future Photoshop CC version. Plugins can also be installed into Affinity Photo now. The Lightroom Installer was renamed to External Editor Installer and supports new hosts like Exposure X2, ACDSee Ultimate and AfterShot Pro.

For more information and a demo version visit the
PhotoWiz Product Page

ELEMENTSXXL 4.03 FOR WINDOWS

Renewed trial period, 14 new smart filters, Filter menu fix, Huion graphics tablet support, Improved installation

ElementsXXL 4.03 offers a renewed trial period, so you can test it for another 14 days. The update supports 14 new smart filters from The Plugin Site (ColorWasher 3, LightMachine 2), Alienskin, ON1 and Topaz. Applying third party smart filters from a sub menu of the Filter menu works again and under Windows 10 the Curves dialog works with Huion graphics tablets. The installation was also improved, e.g. to avoid multiple uninstall items in future.

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

HARRYSFILTERS 4.10 & PHOTOFREEBIES 2.10 FOR WINDOW

Support for tile processing and 2GB+ images, Support for Affinity Photo, Improved installation

Both plugins now process images tile by tile which requires less memory and allows working on images that occupy more than 2 GB RAM. In the case of Harrys Filters a few effects are exempted from this: All Warp effects, Noisy Blur, Quadrant Flip, Streamer, Zoom and Flame Generator. Harrys Filters 4.10 does not produce any dialog display flicker anymore and was improved for usage in Affinity Photo and Irfanview. PhotoFreebies on the other hand has the rendering speed displayed now and three effects run 66% faster. Both have an improved installation, which supports the common Photoshop CC plugin folder and Affinity Photo. Additionally, after their plugin dialog was displayed, you can now press the Enter key to immediately apply the effect.

For more information and a free download visit the
Harrys Filters Product Page
PhotoFreebies Product Page

POLL RESULTS

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

Thanks to the 96 voters who took the time to participate in the last poll about the new look of The Plugin Site! Here are the results:

1. I totally love the new look. 59%
2. The new design is much better, but still needs some work. 10%
2. It is OK and have nothing to complain. 10%
3. It looks fine, but I still need to get used to it. 8%
3. I do not like it at all and miss the old look of The Plugin Site. 8%
4. The new site looks much better, but it loads slower. 2%
5. The old design was better, because it was more responsive. 1%

Almost 60% love the new look of our web site. For 28% other voters it seems to be OK, but they still need to get used to it or expect minor adjustments. 8% miss the old look and 3% consider it to load slower and be less responsive. So we are pleased to hear that 9 in 10 people agree with the redesign of The Plugin Site. We will continue to improve it further in future.

For more poll results visit the
Resources section

NEW POLL

Photoshop plugins of which companies do you regularly use

The same poll about plugin companies was already conducted 5 years ago, so it will be interesting to compare the old results to the new ones to see how the plugin market changed. This time we cut down the selectable items to the 29 companies and developers that scored best last time. As always there is also an Other option.

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

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS

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

Expanding a selection randomly

psBill wrote: "I've looked and I can't find a plugin that does this. Has anyone seen one? Hopefully it has some random range specification of minimum to maximum, and maybe an offset, too, so you can do "negative selections", as well. So you might specify 0 to 10 with a -5 offset, and that would give you random -5 to 5 changes in your selection it processes. ... I can imagine I could do some cool stuff with a filter like that."
Read More...

Paint Shop Pro 9 suddenly not working in Windows 10

leilaure wrote: "I am going crazy with this. Suddenly Jasc PSP 9 is not launching anymore in Windows 10. Originally I restored the system and it worked again, but there is no way to stop Windows 10 from downloading updates, and I can't pinpoint which update is creating the problem, let alone uninstall it ... I've read thread talking about the graphics card/drivers creating the issue, but cannot find any tutorial for fixing this in Windows 10... PSP is my go to graphic software and I really don't want to switch to Corel as their versions are crap. Anyone coming up with an answer would have my never ending gratitude :) Also, anyone else having this issue?
Read More...

Xero plugin crashes Paint Shop Pro X9

Letty wrote: "The other plugins ... work, only the Xero plugin does [not]!"
Read More...

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

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS

Auto FX free plugins, Mehdi Plugins 64-bit, Image Analyzer Plugin, Photodonut Free Edition, Lightroom Focus Points

Auto FX has increased its number of free plugins (for Win/Mac) from 4 to 10. The new effects are called Focal Zoom, Light Brush, Mood Lighting, Vitality, Lighten & Sharpen and Sharpen Details.
Visit website...

Mehdi finally started releasing 64-bit Windows versions of his plugins starting with the following two: Quick Mirror & Pattern and HSL PLus. HSL Plus 2 additionally received a new clipping method called Median Correction and more flexibility with the saturation control.
Visit website...

Image Analyzer is a free image editing program for Windows. Some of its filters are now available as a Photoshop plugin. It offers edge-aware smoothing, enhance details, HDR tone mapping, local contrast, warp sharpen and color tone adjustment effects. Unfortunately the plugin is not very user-friendly, slow and offers an inconvenient preview zooming/scrolling method.
Visit website...

Photodonut is a standalone and Photoshop/Lightroom plugin (for Win/Mac) which was previously known as Postworkshop. The change of the product name is accompanied by a switch to the subscription licensing model similarly to what Adobe did in 2013. The Free Edition offers all features of the commercial version except for the premium content, the ability to create own styles, perform freehand painting and batch process your images. With the commercial version you can even sell your own styles on their web site. So all in all you could call it the "FiterForge" of painting effects. By the way, the old Postworkshop 3 product is still online.
Visit website...

If you want to view the focus points of your photos in Adobe Lightroom, there are currently two free solutions available. Focus Point Viewer only works for a limited number of cameras, but as this plugin is open source anyone can map it to his own camera with some time and effort after reading the appropriate instructions. On the other hand there is the Show Focus Points plugin, which has a much wider camera support but is less practical to use.
Visit website...
Visit website...

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

GRAPHICS NEWS

Lucis Art Out of Business, Anti-Haze Plugins, Photoshop Elements 15.2 Mac update, Photoshop (Elements) downloads

After 20 years in business Image Content Technology is out of business. They were known for the Lucis Art plugin, which produced HDR-like as well as painting effects. In recent years they have not updated their Mac plugin for newer MacOS versions anymore and last year they confined to only licensing their technology.
Visit website...

If you are looking for commercial alternatives to the Dehaze filters in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have a peek at the Neutralhazer and De.Haze plugins (both for Win and Mac). Neutralhazer isn't under development anymore and does not support MacOS El Capitan or Sierra, but otherwise it seems to work fine. De.Haze is still updated and offers a few more features.
Visit website...
Visit website...

Adobe released a Photoshop Elements 15.2 update for MacOS only. The update includes a bug fix for a launch-related crash. The print-related crash under MacOS X that was already fixed in the previous 15.1 Mac version is also included in the 15.2 update.
Visit website...

Here are some useful direct download links for Photoshop & Elements users from the Adobe web site.

If you don't have your original media anymore but still got your serial number you can get Photoshop Elements 8-15 Win/Mac installation downloads here:
Visit website...

You can get the PSE 15 PDF manual here:
Visit website...

Some CC 2017 products can be downloaded directly from here:
Visit website...

All CS6 products can be downloaded here. For CS3 to CS5.5 see the bottom of the page at:
Visit website...

CS2 products (including serial numbers) are also still available. Please remember that you can only legally use them if you purchased these products in the past:
Visit website...

Lightroom CC/4-6 can be downloaded here:
Visit website...

 

 

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