Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - May/June 2015
CONTENTS
LAYERSXXL 1.02 FOR WINDOWS:
Trial version works another 14 days, Crash problems fixed, Many Improvements
ELEMENTSXXL 2.53 UPDATE: Unicode Support, Black & White Fixes, Lightroom Problem Solved
METARAW 1.13 UPDATE: Extracting Embedded JPEGs, DNG Converter 9, Support for new cameras
POLL RESULTS: Which versions of Photoshop
and/or Photoshop Elements do you use?
NEW POLL: What resolution does your main monitor have?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Starting up Photoshop Elements faster, Plugin Problems in Photoshop
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Rosenman 64-bit
Plugins, Sharplet, Photo Improver, FontForge
GRAPHICS NEWS: Lightroom 6/CC, Apple Photos
Dear Reader,
We moved to a new location last month, so that's why this is only the second newsletter this year. But we are settled now, thus new issues should appear more regularly.
Recently I came across a method to make Photoshop Elements startup faster. See the THE DISCUSSION FORUMS section below for more details.
Kind regards,
Harald Heim
LAYERSXXL 1.02 FOR WINDOWS
Trial version works another 14 days, Crash problems fixed, Many Improvements
Since the first release of LayersXXL most features have been improved and some even extended. For example, there is a new "Content-Aware Fill" option (in Photoshop Elements 13 only) that fills transparent areas instead of cropping them away and a Swap button was added to the Auto-Expose Layers feature that changes the layer positions for multi-expose effect variations. Three crash problems were fixed too.
Please note: The LayersXXL 1.02 trial version works for another 14 days, so you can test it again even if it expired before.
LayersXXL adds up to 180 photo and design features to Photoshop Elements for Windows that were previously only available in Photoshop. LayersXXL performs the following tasks with multiple image files: Denoising high ISO shots, Depth of Field Increase, HDR creation, combining Light Trail photos, preparing a manual composition, multiple exposure effects and panorama stitching. LayersXXL also includes a Layer Comp panel for creating and managing layer compositions like in Photoshop. Even more, there is a new Style Settings dialog similar to Photoshop's Layer Styles dialog with 5 new layer effects and 105 new options.
For more information and a 14-day trial version visit
the
LayersXXL Product
Page
ELEMENTSXXL 2.53 UPDATE
Unicode Support, Black & White Fixes, Lightroom Problem Solved
ElementsXXL supplies 230 professional features for Photoshop Elements and greatly enhances the image editing experience in Photoshop Elements.
The latest version 2.53 of ElementsXLL includes unicode support, which means that the ElementsXXL menu items and dialogs are now available in Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese language. Seven bugs of the Black & White effect that occur in various Photoshop Elements versions were fixed. Neither does ElementsXXL freeze Photoshop Elements anymore when running it from Lightroom and a few smaller problems were removed.
For more information and a 14-day trial version visit
the
ElementsXXL
Product Page
METARAW 1.13 UPDATE
Extracting Embedded JPEGs, DNG Converter 9, Support for new cameras
MetaRaw extends the functionality of the Adobe Camera Raw plugin in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements by opening unsupported raw files and providing several other features.
MetaRaw 1.13 now offers a new "Extract Embedded JPEG" option for opening the JPEG data that is embedded in raw files instead of converting the raw data. It can be found on the Settings dialog for MetaRaw Converter. Neither does MetaRaw ask for a newer version than Adobe DNG Converter 8.3 under Windows XP and Vista anymore. Since Version 1.10 the MetaRaw Converter supports several new camera models, e.g. Blackmagic URSA, Canon EOS 5DS (R), Canon EOS 750D/760D, Nokia N9, Photron BC2-HD, and offers improved color output for 19 cameras.
For more information and a 14-day trial version
visit the
MetaRaw
Product Page
POLL RESULTS
Which versions of Photoshop and/or Photoshop Elements do you use?
390 people voted in the latest poll, which asked for your version of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Here are the results:
1. Photoshop (350 votes)
2. Photoshop Elements (161 votes)
1. Photoshop CS6 (95 votes)
2. Photoshop CC 2014 (86 votes)
3. Photoshop CS5 (48 votes)
4. Photoshop CS4 (23 votes)
Photoshop CS2 (23 votes)
5. Photoshop CC (22 votes)
Photoshop 7 (22 votes)
6. Photoshop CS3 (14 votes)
7. Photoshop 1-6 (10 votes)
8. Photoshop CS (7 votes)
1. Photoshop Elements 13 (53 votes)
2. Photoshop Elements 12 (33 votes)
3. Photoshop Elements 11 (26 votes)
4. Photoshop Elements 10 (13 votes)
5. Photoshop Elements 9 (11 votes)
6. Photoshop Elements 1-5 (10 votes)
7. Photoshop Elements 6 (6 votes)
8. Photoshop Elements 7 (5 votes)
9. Photoshop Elements 8 (4 votes)
Two times more people seem to use Photoshop than Photoshop Elements, which was already verified in previous polls. However, 1/3 of all Photoshop users in the poll use Photoshop Elements as well. Photoshop Elements is probably preferred over Photoshop for certain tasks.
Only 30% of the Photoshop voters own Creative Cloud versions of Photoshop. 50% still use Photoshop CS4 to CS6. With 11 people having added comments to the poll complaining about the CC rental model, it is not surprising that more voters use Photoshop CS6 than CC 2014. Some people still prefer Photoshop CC, although Photoshop CC 2014 is a free upgrade. One of the reasons may be that old extensions are not supported by CC 2014 anymore.
1/3 of all Photoshop Elements voters have upgraded to Photoshop Elements 13, but 1/3 of Photoshop Elements voters still use version 11/12 and the remaining third uses even older versions. As a comparison in our recent ElementsXXL customer survey 42% used Photoshop Elements 13, 48% Photoshop Elements 11/12 and only 10% used Photoshop Elements 7 to 10.
For more poll results please visit the
Resources section
NEW POLL
What resolution does your main monitor have?
The latest poll asks you about the monitor resolution in pixels that your main monitor has. You can choose between 19 value pairs. As not all available resolutions can be listed, please choose the one that comes closest. Don't know your monitor resolution? See www.whatismyscreenresolution.com
Please participate in this poll by visiting
the
Main page...
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
Here are the latest interesting posts from The Plugin Site Forums:
Starting up Photoshop Elements faster
Harald Heim wrote: "I was always annoyed that Photoshop
Elements was busy for several seconds after its main window showed up.
Especially Photoshop Elements 10 seemed to take even longer. Now I found
out that Photoshop Elements connects to the internet (to static.photoshop.com)
during this time. If you make your firewall block it, Photoshop Elements
even gets unresponsive for several minutes. According to the Adobe
Forums, you can use Notepad to add the line "127.0.0.1 static.photoshop.com"
to the hosts file at c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts\ to
fix this problem. If your security software should block it, you have
to deactivate it temporarily. As a result Photoshop Elements can be used
immediately at startup, which is a big relief."
Read
More...
Plugin Problems in Photoshop
Win B wrote: "I have CS6, and have both the 64
bit and the 32 bit version installed on a 64 bit Windows 7 Pro computer.
... On my previous 32 bit computer, I had no trouble at all with any third
party plugins. However on this new one, the plugins show up in the 32
bit version of PS but many of them cause the program to crash. ... I have
the DEP turned off except for essential Windows programs. ... Do you have
any suggestions as to what to do now?"
Read
More...
Feel free to post comments or start a discussion topic
at
The Plugin Site Forum
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
Rosenman 64-bit Plugins, Sharplet, Photo Improver, FontForge
Richard Rosenman updated his collection
of 35 freeware plugins (for Windows) to 64-bit. They can finally be executed
with 64-bit versions of Photoshop, Elements, PSP, Paint.NET and PhotoPlus.
Visit
website...
Redfield Sharplet is a freeware plugin
(for Windows) for increasing the image sharpness with only one slider.
It claims to produce no halo nor excessive grain, noise or contrast.
Visit
website...
Sergey Sverdlov released a new free plugin called
Photo Improver (for Windows). Photo Improver offers many
sliders for adjusting brightness, contrast, dynamic range and colors.
Unfortunately its UI is only available in Russian language, but some features
can be easily understood.
Visit
Russian website...
Visit translated website...
FontForge (for Win/Mac/Linux) is
a tool for creating and editing fonts in the following formats: OpenType,
TrueType, AAT, PostScript, Multiple Master, CID-Keyed, SVG plus various
bitmap formats.
Visit
website...
For more free plugins and tool, please visit the
Resources section
GRAPHICS NEWS
Lightroom 6/CC, Apple Photos
Adobe released Version 6 of Lightroom. In addition to
the retail version 6, there is also a Creative Cloud (CC) version, which
offers access to mobile apps, e.g. Lightroom Mobile, and online services.
Lightroom contains some new features, e.g. HDR Merge, panorama stitching,
facial recognition, a masking brush for the graduated and radial filters,
and offers faster performance. By the way, the HDR and panorama features
were also added to Camera Raw 9 for Photoshop CC.
Visit
website...
Apple's new "Photos" tool (Can anyone think
of a more simplistic and misleading name?) was released with the OS X
Yosemite 10.10.3 update. Photos replaces iPhoto as well as Aperture and
offers an iOS-8-like UI with one-click photo optimization, basic editing
tools and iCloud integration. Photos also imports Aperture and iPhoto
libraries. Mac OS X 10.10.3 is a free update in the Mac App Store.
Visit
website...
