Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - July/August 2018
CONTENTS
CAMERAXXL FOR WINDOWS:
100 new features for Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements
METARAW 3.02 FOR WIN/MAC: Support for new cameras
PLUGIN GALAXY 3.11 FOR WINDOWS: High Zoom Tool Support, Bug Fixes, Improved Installation
POLL RESULTS: What type of camera(s) do you mainly use for taking your photos?
NEW POLL: In what format(s) do you usually shoot digital photos?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Font loading in PSP 9, Number plate pixelation, MuRa Meister Plugin Problem
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Exr-IO, Pexels, Layrs Control 2, Gravit Designer
GRAPHICS NEWS: nik Nik Collection 2018, CorelDraw 2018 & Painter 2019, Corel PhotoMirage
Dear Reader,
CameraXXL has been released after two years of work with various breaks. At first I did not think such a product would be possible at all, but step by step and after removing various obstacles with a lot of new low level techniques, CameraXXL assumed its shape. Finally I decided to release it now rather than wait another year, so several features that do not work perfectly yet had to be deactivated and will be added with future updates. CameraXXL is the sixth product in our Elements Bundle. We will try to complete a seventh product next year, so that the Elements Bundle will contain as many plugins as the PhotoWiz Collection.
CAMERAXXL FOR WINDOWS
100 new features for Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements
CameraXXL offers many new features for Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements (11 and higher). The new features consist of dozens of new controls on 7 new tab sheets as well as a new tool which are added to the Camera Raw dialog. CameraXXL provides a new curves feature, hue, saturation, luminance and grayscale adjustment features, automatic and manual lens correction options, dehaze, grain, vignette and split toning effects as well as a targeted adjustment tool. It also provides camera calibration options as well as a preset feature.
CameraXXL allows applying Adobe Camera Raw as a filter in Photoshop Elements and creating smart objects that can be edited with Adobe Camera Raw. CameraXXL also enables users of Photoshop Elements to install a newer version of Camera Raw than provided by the Photoshop Elements update mechanism.
For more information and a demo version visit the
CameraXXL Page
METARAW 3.02 FOR WIN/MAC
Support for new cameras
MetaRaw 3.02 adds support for Adobe DNG Converter 10.4. MetaRaw Converter now supports the new Canon CR3 raw format, which is used e.g. by the Canon M50, the Sony RX100 VI and the Sony A7 M3 compressed raw format. 11 new cameras were also added to the compatibility list.
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. In Photoshop Elements MetaRaw provides automatic lens correction and chromatic aberration removal features for Adobe Camera Raw. Additionally MetaRaw includes its own raw converter, which has several advantages over Adobe Camera Raw.
For more information and a trial version visit the
MetaRaw Page
PLUGIN GALAXY 3.11 for WINDOWS
High Zoom Tool Support, Bug Fixes, Improved Installation
Plugin Galaxy 3.11 makes right clicking the preview work if the preview zoom is 200% or higher. A crash of the Alpha Tool effects in connection with a blend effect was also fixed. Additionally, the installation was improved, e.g. to work again under Windows XP and to support the MS Store versions of Photoshop Elements.
Plugin Galaxy 3 is a plugin for creating special effects and enhancing images with the help of 160 native filters and countless Filter Factory effects. It supports multiple CPU cores for fast rendering and can be used as a smart filter. Plugin Galaxy works under Windows in dozens of graphics applications including Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, Affinity Photo, Photo-Paint and IrfanView.
For more information and a trial version visit the
Plugin Galaxy
Page
POLL RESULTS
What type of camera(s) do you mainly use for taking your photos?
The previous poll about camera types resulted in 379 votes by 225 voters. Here are the results:
1. DSLR (APS-C) 41%
2. DSLR (Full-Frame) 31%
3. Smart Phone 20%
4. Compact Camera 19%
5. Mirrorless Camera (APS-C) 18%
6. Bridge Camera 9%
7. Old Film Camera 6%
Other 6%
8. Medium Format Digital Camera 5.3%
9. Mirrorless Camera (Full-Frame) 4.9%
Action-Cam 4.9%
10. Drone Camera 3%
41% or more of the voters use DSLR cameras compared to approx. 20% who use smart phones, compact cameras or mirrorless cameras. A similar poll in 2015 had DSLRs at 60%, Mirrorless at 17%, Compact Cameras at 14% and smart phones at 3%. So it seems that smart phone have become even more popular for photography, but also compact cameras gained a little whereas DSLR usage has declined. Even the usage of old film cameras has increased tremendously percentage-wise, but is a small niche. More than 2/3 of all voters use at least a second type of camera. This all shows that there is a greater diversity of camera types today compared to three years ago.
For more poll results visit the
Resources section
NEW POLL
In what format(s) do you usually shoot digital photos?
The latest poll asks you about the format that you use to capture your digital photos. You can choose between JPEG, RAW, gradual preferences for one of them as well as shooting both at the same time.
Please participate in this poll by visiting the
Main page...
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
Here are the latest posts from The Plugin Site Forums:
Font loading in PSP 9
Number plate pixelation
kevin_e wrote: "Anyone know of a plugin or script that will reliably pixelate or blank out a car number plate in many Paintshop Pro 9 images.
I have tried Effects > Distortion Effects > Pixelate with varying results. Not all the number plates are exactly horizontal or the same size."
Read More...
MuRa Meister Plugin Problem
Lynx wrote: "I am having a problem with "MuRa's Meister/Copies" when I go to apply Copies it closes my PSP any help please!!!???"
Read More...
Feel free to post comments or start a discussion topic at
The Plugin Site Forum
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
Exr-IO, Pexels, Layrs Control 2, Gravit Designer
Exr-IO is a free file format plugin (for Windows) for opening and saving OpenEXR (32-bit/channel) image files in Photoshop CS2 and higher. In Photoshop Elements you can only save .exr files, but not open them. It imports all image channels from an OpenEXR file as layers and supports all latest OpenEXR standards and specifications.
Visit
website...
Pexels offers a panel extension for Photoshop CC (for Win/Mac), which lets you search a library of 30K photos, which are free for personal and commercial usage, and insert them into your projects.
Visit website...
Layrs Control 2 is another panel extension for Photoshop CC (for Win/Mac). It offers 7 different features: For renaming layers and layer groups, removing unused layer effects, flattening layer effects, deleting empty layers, creating and rasterizing smart objects as well as finding files.
Visit website...
Gravit Designer is a free vector design application (for Windows/Mac/Linux), which was recently acquired by Corel. As it is HTML5-based it can be used directly in the web browser, but there are also installations for the desktop.
Visit website...
For more free plugins and tools, please visit the
Resources section
GRAPHICS NEWS
Nik Collection 2018, CorelDraw 2018 & Painter 2019, Corel PhotoMirage
DxO release the Nik Collection 2018 (for Win/Mac). The upgrade mainly fixes compatibility problems with the latest OS and host application versions and offers improved stability. There are no new effects or features. The price is only 50% compared to what Google once charged for the product. Now the download link for the previous free version of the Nik Collection has been removed as expected.
Visit
website...
Corel recently released the 2018 edition of its CorelDraw suite (for Windows). It offers a new symmetry drawing mode, Add Perspective effect, Block Shadow tool, feature to align and distribute nodes as well as various enhancements of existing tools. Photo-Paint, the image editing tool of the CorelDraw suite, now allows interactive straightening and perspective adjustment of photos and vector shaping of photos with so-called envelopes. AfterShot 3 HDR, which is also a part of CorelDraw, now lets you create HDR images from JPEG and RAW files.
Visit website...
Corel PhotoMirage (for Windows) lets you create animations and export them as .mp4, .wmv or .gif files. It claims to transform a photo into an animated image in 3 steps: by adding motion arrows, plotting anchor points and hitting the Play button.
Visit website...