Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - January / February 2010
CONTENTS
PHOTOWIZ FOR WINDOWS: FocalBlade 1.07, ContrastMaster
1.04
PHOTOWIZ FOR MACOS X: New versions of all PhotoWiz plugins
PLUGIN GALAXY AE: Version 1.6 supports the latest versions of After Effects and Premiere
THEPLUGINSITE PANEL 1.03: Support for the latest plugin versions
POLL RESULTS: In which versions of an
image processing product are you interested?
NEW POLL: From which companies do you own commercial plugins?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: PSP 9 Videos, PSP Tubes Problem, Plugin Installation Trouble, Alienskin plugins in Fireworks, EZ Mask with PSE7
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Mehdi Plugins,
ASCII-art, DeMoirize, FXbench, Pointwise Shape-Adaptive DCT, Softimage
Pic Reader
GRAPHICS NEWS: Philter Phrenzy Contest, Bibble 5 Pro, CameraRaw/Lightroom Update, iPhoto 8.1.1, Eye Candy 6, ColoRotate, Corel Painter 11 Update
Dear Reader,
I hope you had a nice holiday season and a good start into the new year. This year promises to bring exiting new software releases, e.g. Photoshop CS5, Lightroom 3, PSP X3, just to mention a few. We are also preparing for new releases in the coming months. So as I was quite busy with developing software during the last two months, there was no December issue of this newsletter. But as a compensation there is much more stuff in this issue.
As you probably can see this is the first issue of the Plugin Newsletter in HTML. I hope you like it. We will continue to improve the layout and also try to include images in future issues. It would be nice to hear your comments. Thanks.
Kind regards,
Harald Heim
PHOTOWIZ FOR WINDOWS
FocalBlade 1.07, ContrastMaster
1.04
The new FocalBlade 1.07 and ContrastMaster 1.04 updates for Windows contain
various bug fixes for the 32-bit and 64bit versions. The preview update
of the ContrastMaster plugin has been made faster (especially with a maximized
window) by calculating the histogram only when needed and not all of the
time.
PHOTOWIZ FOR MACOS X
New versions of all PhotoWiz
plugins (except PhotoFreebies)
Previously we offered the PhotoWiz plugins for Mac as three different
versions, which made it difficult to choose which version to install and
it sometimes also meant that two versions needed to be installed. With
the new updates of the PhotoWiz plugins it is much easier: Now you only
need to install the new universal binary, which works in Photoshop CS2,
CS3, CS4 and Elements 6,7, 8 regardless of the processor of your Mac.
For people who still use Photoshop 7 or CS and other older applications
we still supply a separate PowerPC version.
The PhotoWiz updates also fix a problem with saving the settings in a write-protected plugin folder. The setting files are not saved in a system area that is always writable. Additionally some of the plugins have small bug fixes applied in the new version. The most noticeable changes were made to ColorWasher, which has a few controls rearranged to comply with the Windows version.
PLUGIN GALAXY AE
Version 1.6 supports the latest
versions of After Effects and Premiere
Plugin Galaxy AE is a set of 21 plugins with more than 150 animatable
video effects. The new version 1.6 is available for Windows and Mac. It
is mainly important for Mac users, because Plugin Galaxy AE was turned
into a universal binary that also runs on Intel-Macs. As a result it can
now be used in After Effects CS3 and CS4, Premiere Pro CS3 and CS4 and
Premiere Elements. Additionally the manual was updated. We still offer
the old Version 1.5 for people who want to run in Final Cut Pro on a PowerPC-Mac
or with Rosetta.
THEPLUGINSITE PANEL 1.03
Support for the latest plugin
versions
ThePluginSite Panel (for Win/Mac) allows you to apply all plugins of The
Plugin Site in a very convenient way in Photoshop CS4. Due to the updates
of the PhotoWiz plugins a new release of the free ThePluginSite Panel
was necessary. So Version 1.03 supports the latest versions of all PhotoWiz
plugins. The panel was also prepared for possible future versions, so
that it does not necessarily need to be updated when new versions of the
plugins are released.
POLL RESULTS
In which versions of an image
processing product are you interested?
1170 votes (from at least 558 voters) were cast in the previous poll about
the preferred image processing version of a product. Here are the results:
1. Photoshop Plugin 47.7%
2. Lightroom Plugin 11.4%
3. Standalone Program 11.1%
4. AE Plugin 8.6%
5. Other 4.9%
6. iPhoto Plugin 4.6%
7. Aperture Plugin 3.9%
8. Bibble Plugin 3.8 %
FxPlug Plugin 3.8 %
It seems that the interest in Photoshop plugins is four times higher than in Lightroom plugins and standalone programs and 5.5 times higher than in After Effects plugins. For the other plugin types the interest ratio is 10 times or lower. Of course this can only be said for visitors of The Plugin Site. If the ratios are the same for all people can only be guessed.
So we will still mainly concentrate on Photoshop plugins, but also take Lightroom plugins, standalones and After Effect plugins into account.
For more poll results, please visit the
Resources section
NEW POLL
From which companies do you own
commercial plugins?
The new poll lets you vote for up to 19 companies that produce Photoshop
plugins and an "Other" option. Please vote for the companies whose commercial
plugins you own. Do not vote for a company if you only use a freeware
plugin of it. This will let us see which plugin companies are especially
popular. Among the 19 choices (out of 200+ existing plugin companies)
we only selected those which offer more than one plugin product and which
we consider to be better known.
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
PSP 9 Videos, PSP Tubes Problem,
Plugin Installation Trouble, Alienskin plugins in Fireworks, EZ Mask with
PSE7
Here are the latest posts on The Plugin Site Forum:
PSP 9 Videos
nighteagle wrote: "A couple of years A couple of years ago I used Paint
Shop Pro version 9 and remember that there ware video tutorials reviewing
some of the features of the software. These ware very helpful for me,
but now i can't find them. I go through all the menus (they were somewhere
there as i remember) but didn't found anything. Does somebody know what
i am talking about and where ware those videos."
Read
More...
PSP Tubes Problem
jenijenjeni wrote: "I bought a new computer and loaded PSP7 with no trouble,
but I can not get any of my sparkle tubes to load, it says 'The version
of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you are running....'
Any ideas? Or know where I can get new tubes that will work?"
Read
More...
Plugin Installation Trouble
I can not install the psp filter unlimited1 and the filter attack. I have
windows7 and pspx2 ultimate, but i see here all the time. Its not compatibel
with this windows version. Can you please help me ??"
Read
More...
Alienskin plugins in Fireworks
augustroad wrote: "I've been a longtime windows user of Adobe/Macromedia
Fireworks, and have always used the MX version until recently. I just
upgraded to a new Macbook and was sad to see that the AlienSkin EyeCandy
and Splat! Edges plugins weren't included anymore. I've become really
attached to them. I finally came across the paragraph on this web site
(which I'll include below) that talks about how to convert these plugins.
... Am I doing something wrong, or is it not possible to take a Windows
8bf filter and bring it over to Mac?"
Read
More...
EZ Mask with PSE7
Drucifer wrote: "How do you work EZ Mask inside Photoshop Element 7? Digital
Film Tools instructions only go up to Element 4. Just wondering if anything
has change?"
Read
More...
For more discussions and asking questions see
The Plugin
Site Forum
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
Mehdi Plugins, ASCII-art, DeMoirize,
FXbench, Pointwise Shape-Adaptive DCT, Softimage Pic Reader
The Mehdi Plugins collection contain a new plugin
called Noise Shampoo (for Windows). It is an edge-preserving smoothing
filter that denoises images. The Flat Median 1.3 plugin now offers a Dry
setting and the Julia World 1.1 plugin renders smooth colors in the exterior
of the fractal. Additionally Vista/Win7 compatibility issues were fixed
in Blots 2.1 and Gradient Smithy 1.1.
Visit website...
A Mac version of the ASCII-art plugin is now
available for download. The Mac version now even includes two features
that are not available in the Windows version: It supports small characters
of 5 x 5 pixel and also respects selections.
Visit website...
The free DeMoirize plugin (for Windows) is included
in pre 4.0 versions of Capture One PRO for Windows. It removes moire artifacts
from images. To get the plugin you need to download e.g. Capture One PRO
3.7.9 for Windows. To install it double click SETUP.EXE in the CO PRO\DeMoirize
sub folder of the downloaded .zip file. By default the Photoshop CS4 Plug-Ins
folder is selected in the installer. If you use another application, you
need to change the destination folder.
Visit
website...
FXbench lets you write
animatable filters for Adobe Premiere, Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements,
Ulead VideoStudio and MediaStudio Pro (for Windows). The programming language
is similar to FilterFactory, but not the same. FXbench already includes
204 predefined filter codes, in case you do not want to make your finger
dirty with programming your own. The filter code is not compiled to machine
code, it is interpreted, so more complex filters may run a bit slow. FXbench
does not let you create plugins (like FilterFactory or FilterMeister),
but you can save your filter codes in a distributable xml file.
Visit
website...
The Pointwise Shape-Adaptive DCT plugin (for
Windows) lets you denoise grayscale and color image as well as deblock
and dering JPEG files. Unfortunately we were not able to use it in Photoshop
CS3 and CS4 without a crash. So be careful when using it. It may work
in earlier versions of Photoshop or other compatible applications without
a crash, but we cannot confirm it.
Visit website...
The Photoshop Softimage Pic Image Reader 1.1.0
(for Windows) is an image format plugin for opening Softimage Pic files.
You need to register with the web site in order to download it.
Visit
website...
GRAPHICS NEWS
Philter Phrenzy Contest, Bibble 5 Pro, CameraRaw/Lightroom
Update, iPhoto 8.1.1, Eye Candy 6, ColoRotate, Corel Painter 11 Update
Graphics.com launched another Philter Phrenzy Contest,
which asks you to use Digital Anarchy's free Cartoon Bubble plugin in
a creative way. You can participate until February 15, 2010. The three
winners will receive one year of access to the Mediabistro On Demand video
training library and Digital Anarchy's ToonIt! Photo plugin.
Visit
website...
Bibble 5 Pro (for Win/Mac/Linux) is a RAW workflow
and conversion software. It is claimed to work much faster than similar
applications.
Visit website...
Photoshop Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 and DNG Converter
5.6 (for Win/Mac) are available. The updates fix minor issues and
provide Raw support for 20 new cameras, including the Canon 7D, G11, S90,
Nikon D3S, Sony A500, A550, A580, Olympus E-P2, Pentax K-x.
Visit website...
Version 8.1.1 of Apple's iPhoto image management
software (for MacOS X) addresses issues affecting face recognition performance,
accuracy, book ordering and iPod touch support. The update is for all
users of iPhoto 09.
Visit
website...
Alienskin Eye Candy 6 (for Win/Mac) offers 30
special effect filters and over 1000 presets. Eye Candy now adapts its
effect to the image size and supports 16-bit/channel images as well as
CMYK mode.
Visit website...
ColoRotate is a color picker plugin for Photoshop
CS4. It lets you choose foreground/background colors and create palettes.
It claims to be more intuitive than the Photoshop color picker by offering
3D color views and various other features. With an optional "ColoRotate
Cloud" subscription, you can also sync colors between computers and share
with other people.
Visit website...
The latest update for Corel Painter 11 (for Windows)
is available for free to Painter 11 customers. It delivers on key requests
from the Painter community of users, including improvements to transformations,
color management, copy/paste, performance and auto-painting.
Visit website...
