Plugin Newsletter - January 2008

 

Contents
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EDITORIAL

THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES: Enhanced Plugin Installations, New HTML Shrinker Installation, Free Plugins & Plugins Essentials Page

POLL RESULTS: How large are the images that you usually process?

NEW POLL: In which application(s) do you use Photoshop plugins?

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Enhancing Scanned Text, Wide Angle Compensation Plugin, Graduated Cokin Plugin, EyeCandy under Vista, fo2pix Closed Down, GIMP Vectorization, Watermarking Action

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: FilterForge FreePack 1, Flat Median, Pro Photo Shoot, Image Tricks 2.4, AVI2DVD

GRAPHICS NEWS: FilterMeister 8.7 Update, Imaging Factory Ceased Operation, Elements 6 for Mac, onOne Liquid Resize, PhotoImpact X3 & CorelDRAW X4

PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE

ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE

 

Dear Reader,

With the latest release of FilterMeister (see the News section below) we will hopefully see several Photoshop plugins updated for Vista and improved otherwise. Still, there are some plugins that were created with FilterMeister but are not updated anymore by their developers. For these cases I and Alex Hunter are preparing a patch tool. With the help of this tool everyone will be able to make old FilterMeister plugins compatible with Vista. The tool should become available very soon.

We already updated our Photoshop plugins with improved installations and an enhanced Plugin Installer (see below). During the next month we will release free updates of our plugins (especially the PhotoWiz plugins) which will make them even more reliable and efficient.

Kindest regards,
Harald Heim

www.thepluginsite.com

 

 

THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES: Enhanced Plugin Installations, New HTML Shrinker Installation, Free Plugins & Plugins Essentials Page
--------------------------------------------

The setups of Harry's Filters, PhotoFreebies and all PhotoWiz plugins have been updated. The installation now offers multiple languages and launches an updated Plugin Installer, which now supports German language, German Photoshop versions and a few new applications. e.g. PageMaker, PhotoBrush and ImageAnalyzer. The uninstaller now also launches Plugin Installer for automatically uninstalling the plugin from all available applications.

http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/harrysfilters/
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/

HTML Shrinker has also been updated with a multi-language installation, which runs under Windows Vista. It is now also possible to deactivate a desktop icon and context menu items (Pro version only) during installation.

http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/htmlshrinker/

The Free Plugins page has been updated with the latest free Photoshop-compatible plugins that were mentioned in previous newsletters. The "Installing Your Plugins" paragraph of the Plugin Essentials page now features the name of the Photoshop plugins sub folder of 11 localized versions of Photoshop.

http://www.thepluginsite.com/resources/freeps.htm
http://www.thepluginsite.com/knowhow/tutorials/introduction/introduction.htm

 

 

POLL RESULTS: How large are the images that you usually process?
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More than 340 votes were recorded in the previous poll with the question "How large are the images that you usually process?". Here are the results:

1. 3648 x 2736 (10 Megapixel) 17%
2. 3264 x 2448 (8 Megapixel) 14%
3. 2848 x 2136 (6 Megapixel) 13%

4. 4048 x 3040 (12 Megapixel) 8%
5. 6000 x 4000 (24 Megapixel) 8%

6. 2048 x 1536 (3 Megapixel) 5%
7. 1024 x 768 (0.8 Megapixel) 4%
2560 x 1920 (5 Megapixel) 4%
8. 1600 x 1200 (2 Megapixel) 4%
4992 x 3328 (16 Megapixel) 4%
Larger than 9000 x 6000 4%

9. 2272 x 1704 (4 Megapixel) 3%
10. 1280 x 960 (1.3 Megapixel) 3%
11. 800 x 600 (0.5 Megapixel) 3%
12. 9000 x 6000 (54 Megapixel) 2%
640 x 480 (0.3 Megapixel) 2%
13. 320 x 240 (0.1 Megapixel) 1% 4
14. Smaller than 320 x 240 1% 2

44% of all people process 6 to 10 Megapixel large images, which is no surprise because most digital cameras that are sold nowadays produce such images. If you extend the range to 6 to 12 Megapixel, it already covers 52% of all people. 16 % process images that are 16 Megapixel or larger and 30% of all people process images with 5 Megapixel and lower.

For more poll results, please visit the Know-How section at
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/

 

 

NEW POLL: In which application(s) do you use Photoshop plugins?
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More than 50 different applications currently support Photoshop plugins. We want to know in which applications you use Photoshop plugins. You can choose between 19 applications and an "Other" option and you can vote for more than one application.

Please cast your vote at the bottom of the page at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/

 

 

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Enhancing Scanned Text, Wide Angle Compensation Plugin, Graduated Cokin Plugin, EyeCandy under Vista, fo2pix Closed Down, GIMP Vectorization, Watermarking Action
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Here are some of the latest interesting posts on The Plugin Site Discussion Forums:

Enhancing Scanned Text
dvlad wrote: "i have scanned some old book pages, and i want to remove the paper background, and keep only the text and the pictures(artistic capitals) without loseing quality . The image mode is RGB 8 bits, because capital letters are red. Does anyone know of a way to do this?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2879

Wide Angle Compensation Plugin
mikebore wrote: "Anyone know of a filter like Squeeze by Imaging Factory? The filter compensates for the tendency for people at the edge of a group taken with a wide angle to look fat. It squeezes the edges in, without affecting the middle. ... if anyone knows of anything similar which is universal binary I would be very grateful."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2841

Graduated Cokin Plugin
Don wrote: "I'm looking for a filter that mimics Cokin graduated filters. Should be adjustable demarcation line up and down. Should be able to set at percentage of darkening 30%, 50% etc.. Application of different colors, such as tobacco, blue and others. Should be usable in PhotoShop 7"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2847

EyeCandy under Vista
goofygrmom3 wrote: "Is there a special trick to downloading and installing Eye Candy with Vista? ... what I really want is the old Eye Candy 3 because it's free and it has the 'jiggle' that I used to use all the time. ... New pc has Vista and I'm using PSPx2. ... Any thought and suggestions will be greatly appreciated."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2848

fo2pix Closed Down
plugsnpixels wrote: "It has just been confirmed that the folks at fo2pix have liquidated their business. They produced the buZZ set of plug-ins, along with ArtMaster Pro, which created a wonderful simplification effect. ... Read more info on RetouchPro."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2856

GIMP Vectorization
shaneden wrote: "Hi..can anyone help me?? Is there currently a gimp plugin that could do vectorization coz i am having a hard time finding one."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2878

Watermarking Action
Lou wrote: "I'm having a little difficulty trying to develop an action that I can automate for a batch of photos with PS 3. I would like to create just a simple white boarder for the subjects name in the bottom left corner and the also insert my name onto the picture itself at the top right corner."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2877

For more interesting discussions and posting your own comments or questions please visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/

 

 

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: FilterForge FreePack 1, Flat Median, Pro Photo Shoot, Image Tricks 2.4, AVI2DVD
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FilterForge will be offering socalled Freepacks, which are free Photoshop plugins (for Windows) based on the Filter Forge technology. Freepack 1 is a set of seven metal textures and effects, e.g. metalizing effects, alien-looking or industrial metallic surfaces, rust and aluminum foil. The effects are fully adjustable and support seamless tiling.

http://www.filterforge.com/download/

Mehdi released the free Flat Median plugins (for Windows). It is a mixture of a blur and median effect. You can control the contrast of the result with the Flatten setting. Additionally the effect can be applied in horizontal or vertical direction.

http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/flatmedian.htm

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot is an add-in for Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 (for Windows) that allows photographers to add client and equipment details for a photo shooting appointment. Outlook must be restarted before the Pro Photo Shoot plug-in will be visible.

http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/prophotoshoot.aspx

Image Tricks 2.4 (for OS X 10.4 and later) is a free application that offers 17 new filters from OS X Core Image architecture. 13 of them are only available in Mac OS X Leopard. It also offers 12 image generators, 30 masks, support for 20 image formats and many more. The commercial Pro version contains even more features and only costs $15.

http://www.belightsoft.com/products/imagetricks/overview.php

AVI2DVD is a freeware tool (for Windows) that uses various other freeware tools for converting AVI, WMV and other video files to Video DVD format. Its dialog is available in 21 languages. If you keep the "Make Iso" check box activated, it will create an .iso file, which can easily be burned as a Video DVD with the free ImgBurn tool. Alternatively if you deactivate the "Make Iso" check box in AVI2DVD, you can burn the resulting Video DVD files with the DVD Mastering Expert feature of the BurnOn CD&DVD freeware.

http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareAvi2Dvd.html
http://www.imgburn.com/
http://www.download.com/BurnOn-CD-DVD/3000-2646-10434785.html

 

 

GRAPHICS NEWS: FilterMeister 8.7 Update, Imaging Factory Ceased Operation, Elements 6 for Mac, onOne Liquid Resize, PhotoImpact X3 & CorelDRAW X4
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Beta 8.7 of FilterMeister 1.0 has been released recently. It offers compatibility with Windows Vista, support for XP and Vista visual styles, Photoshop memory allocation, new tab sheets, edit box and slider controls and many more. FilterMeister lets you import Filter Factory plugins and also lets you write your own Photoshop filters. If you want to create standalone plugins of your filter code, you need to register it for $25.

http://www.filtermeister.com/

The Imaging Factory, a company who developed various plugins for photo enhancement, has ceased operation. As found Oscar Rysdyk explains the plugin code was written for the abandoned Metrowerks compiler and moving the code to a new platform would involve too much time and work. On the other hand Mr. Rysdyk seems to be on a "new and important personal venture" which does not allow him to further operate The Imaging Factory. For more information please visit:

http://www.theimagingfactory.com/

Adobe announced the Mac version of Photoshop Elements 6 to be available early in the second quarter of 2008. It needs at least Mac OS X 10.4.8 and is compatible with OS X 10.5 Leopard. The Windows version was already released last year.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/

onOne Software announced the acquisition of Liquid Resize. Liquid Resize will allow users to resize and change the original aspect ratio of an image while minimizing geometric distortions with a "seam carving" technique. A free public beta of Liquid Resize will be available in late January 2008 as a stand-alone application and a Photoshop plugin version is expected in mid 2008.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/press/release331_20080117.php

Corel released PhotoImpact X3, which provides more tools for quickly improving photos, enhanced crop tools, a new media management suite, a cloud pen, video graphics tools and more. Corel also unveiled the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 with more than 50 new and enhanced features. Photo-Paint, which is part of the suite, now offers RAW camera file support.

http://www.corel.com/

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