Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others

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Plugin Newsletter - March / April 2007



Contents
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EDITORIAL

B/W STYLER 1.01 FOR WINDOWS: Vista Fix, Multiprocessor Support, New Film Types, German Language Support

COLORWASHER, FOCALBLADE & LIGHTMACHINE FOR WINDOWS: Updates that fix a bug with Windows Vista

FOCALBLADE & LIGHTMACHINE FOR MAC: Mac-Intel Versions for Photoshop CS3 are available


POLL RESULTS: Would you like to be able to use Photoshop plugins in Adobe Lightroom?

NEW POLL: Which of these steps do you usually apply when enhancing a photo?

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Color Management, PSP frames, JPEG as texture, Animation Shop


FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Vicanek Plugins, Xero Pulsar, Thedigitalartshop Plugins, Easyfilter Plugins, Microsoft HD Photo plugin, PhotoPresets for Lightroom

GRAPHICS NEWS: Photoshop CS3, DustKleen/SensorKleen, Filter Forge 1.0, DreamText, Video Tutorial Library, In-HOWse Design Awards


PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE

ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE

 

 

Hi,

As you can see below we have created a lot of new updates for our PhotoWiz products recently. One reason was the release of Photoshop CS3 for the Mac and the other reason was a problem under Windows Vista with 2 GB or more RAM. Our freeware plugins Harrys Filters and PhotoFreebies still need to be updated, which will be done soon.

Many other free and commercial plugins that were created with FilterMeister have the same problem. So these plugins will need to be recompiled to work fine under Vista with 2 GB or more RAM. Feel free to tell the creators these plugins to contact me for a solution.

By the way, if you are interested in my photographic work, I just added several new portrait, dance and fantasy images to my photography web site at http://www.haraldheim.com/


Wishing you Happy Easter Holidays,

Harald Heim
http://www.thepluginsite.com

 

 


B/W STYLER 1.01 FOR WINDOWS: Vista Fix, Multiprocessor Support, New Film Types, German Language Support
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Version 1.01 of B/W Styler for Windows offers a few new features plus some bug fixes. The most important bug fix concerns Windows Vista: Previous versions of B/W Styler crashed under Vista with 2 GB or more RAM. Version 1.01 does not.

Some effects of B/W Styler 1.01 now support hyperthreading and multiple processors. This means a speed increase of up to 30%. 22 new B/W film presets were added, so you can now simulate 37 different B/W films in B/W Styler. Finally, the dialog is now also available in German language. Registered users will receive the update within 24 hours by email.

For more information about B/W Styler see:
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/

 

 


COLORWASHER, FOCALBLADE & LIGHTMACHINE FOR WINDOWS: Updates that fix a bug with Windows Vista
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Previous versions of ColorWasher, FocalBlade and LightMachine crashed under Windows Vista if at least 2 GB RAM were available. Now updates have been made available of them, which don't have this problem anymore. Registered users already received the update by email.

For more information about ColorWasher, FocalBlade and LightMachine see:
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/

 

 


FOCALBLADE & LIGHTMACHINE FOR MAC: Mac-Intel Versions for Photoshop CS3 are available
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FocalBlade and LightMachine is now also available as an Intel version which runs natively in Photoshop CS3 on Mac computers with an Intel processor. You can expect a speed increase of two to three times with these versions. People who have purchased the FocalBlade and LightMachine for Mac will receive the Mac-Intel version free of charge by email within the next 24 hours. A Mac-Intel version of ColorWasher will become available soon.

For more information about FocalBlade and LightMachine see:
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/

 

 

POLL RESULTS: Would you like to be able to use Photoshop plugins in Adobe Lightroom?
------------------------------------------------
150 people voted in our latest poll. Here are the results:

1. I plan to use Lightroom in future and would like to be able to use Photoshop plugins with it. 41%
2. I use Lightroom and would like to be able to use Photoshop plugins with it. 32%

3. I don't use Lightroom. 16%
5. I use Lightroom, but I don't need to use Photoshop plugins with it. 8%
4. I plan to use Lightroom in future, but won't need any additional plugins then. 3%

40% of the voters already use Lightroom and 44% plan to use it in future. Only 16% don't want to use it. 73% of all voters would like to be able to use Photoshop plugins in Lightroom. As Lightroom does not support Photoshop plugins itself, plugin developers will need to create Lightroom versions of their plugins. Unfortunately that is not possible at the moment, because Adobe did not release the necessary specifications.

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

 

 

NEW POLL: Which of these steps do you usually apply when enhancing a photo?
------------------------------------------------
This month's poll lets you vote for the steps that you usually apply when enhancing a photo. You can choose from 20 different image enhancement tasks. You don't need to choose just one task, you can vote for several of them. But please don't vote for all 20 items, because that will have no impact on the results and have the same effect as if you did not vote at all.

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

 

 


THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Color Management, PSP frames, JPEG as texture, Animation Shop
------------------------------------------------
Here are some posts from The Plugin Site Discussion Forms:

myprisms wrote: "I am trying to get giclee prints made for my oils on canvas paintings. What drives me nuts is how much colors change from the original to a digital photograph and then further onto a canvas or paper print. ... Can anyone please give me a solution to this problem?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2613

danasbike asked: "I am sort of a rookie with my PSP and am wondering where to find the plug-ins I have downloaded. I am also wondering where to find a better selection of picture frames as my PSP selection is limited. Thanks!"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2592

Link021463 wrote:"I have PSP9 and I had read somewhere that any JPEG can be installed and used as a texture... yet, when I try to import some JPEG Textures, it always says it isn't a recognized format?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2593

eddyg86 wrote: "I recently took to animation shop pro, to draw a little animation for a friend of mine. I was going to draw with my WACOM tablet, as i do in photoshop Cs so very often. ... But in animation shop, not only is there no effect applies, and you are left with jagged, pixelated line drawings, there does not seem to be effect settings in which i can fix this..."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2601


For more interesting discussions and posting your won comment or question please visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/

 

 

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Vicanek Plugins, Xero Pulsar, Thedigitalartshop Plugins, Easyfilter Plugins, Microsoft HD Photo plugin, PhotoPresets for Lightroom
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Mr. Vicanek offers free plugins (for Windows) for download. The Color Cube plugin provides a 3D visualization of all colors in an image, which can e.g. help to detect color clipping. You can spin the color cube and view it from any angle you want. The PanoWarp plugin performs transformations that are necessary for stitching panorama images. Finally, the Perspective plugin lets you pan, tilt, rotate, reposition and resize an image.

http://www.vicanek.de/


Xero Pulsar is a freeware starmaker plugin with eight options. Xerographics also offer a commercial starmaker called Quasar with more options.

http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/pulsar/info.htm


Among various commercial plugins Thedigitalartshop.com also offers three free plugins (for Windows). GREYSCALER is a kind of channel mixer for converting images to black and white. It also offers brightness and contrast sliders. IMAGE ENCODER encrypts and decrypts your images with a 24 bit key. IRIDESCENT applies a color-shift effect to your images.

http://www.thedigitalartshop.com/filters/filters6.html


Easyfilter offers three plugins (for Windows) for image adjustment and color space conversion. The Image Adjustment plugin contains sliders for hue, saturation, lightness and contrast, and works in 8 and 16 bit RGB mode. The Color Space plugin converts from and to RGB, CMY, CMYK, HSB, HSL, Lab and LCH. The Color Converter plugin is quite similar, but also offers 17 different RGB working spaces for input and output. For the first two plugins you can also download the FilterMeister source code and inspect the algorithms.

http://free.pages.at/easyfilter/filtermeister.html


The BETA release of the Microsoft HD Photo plugin adds support for the HD Photo format to Photoshop CS2 and CS3 (for Windows). The HD Photo format offers compression with up to twice the efficiency of JPEG with fewer damaging artifacts. HD Photo offers both lossless and lossy image compression, and can retain the full dynamic range and color gamut data from a camera's sensor.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b157ca0f-083f-4957-9aa3-4da1de3dc20b&DisplayLang=en


OnOne Software offers free PhotoPresets for Photoshop Lightroom (for Win/Mac) created by Jack Davis. The 80 PhotoPresets change only one development parameter allowing you to optimize your image at each step. You start with adjusting your images color and tone and then you can add effects like black and white conversions, tinting, split-toning and vignetting. There are also videos that explain how to use the PhotoPresets.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/photopresets-wow.php

 

 


GRAPHICS NEWS: Photoshop CS3, DustKleen/SensorKleen, Filter Forge 1.0, DreamText, Video Tutorial Library, In-HOWse Design Awards
------------------------------------------------
Adobe announced Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended. Photoshop CS3 is meant for designers and photographers whereas Photoshop CS3 Extended additionally offers tools for 3-D, motion graphics, image measurement and analysis. The software will be available for PowerPC and Intel-based Macs as well as Windows XP and Vista.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/


Image Trends announced DustKleen and SensorKleen, two Windows standalone applications that remove the artifacts of dust on scanned images and image dust from the DSLR camera sensor covers. DustKleen offers an automatic and manual mode whereas SensorKleen only allows manual correction. A full automatic Pro version of SensorKleen will follow later in 2007.

http://www.ImageTrendsInc.com/


The final version 1.0 of Filter Forge is now available. Filter Forge lets you build your own filters with the help of a visual editor and allows you to download the filters that were created by others (1855 of them are currently available).

http://www.filterforge.com/


DreamText.com offers a Photoshop plugin plus up to 49 font typesets in 3D.

http://www.DreamText.com/


The Art & Design Video Tutorial Library from the Sessions Online Design School provides 16 videos, each of which walks you through a certain design technique.

http://www.sessions.edu/reg/forms/Video_landing.asp


The In-HOWse Design Awards calls for entries. You can submit your best corporate work until April 30, 2007. If you win, your work and name will be highlighted in the February 2008 issue of HOW magazine.

http://www.howdesign.com/competitions/




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