Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - November/December 2002
Contents
========
EDITORIAL
SPECIAL CHRISTMAS OFFER: Get Plugin Commander Pro for a 20%-reduced price
PLUGIN GALAXY FOR AE 1.50 RELEASED
APOLLO 26 releases FLAME N SKULL
UPDATES OF THE PLUGIN SITE: User Galleries, Plugin Pages Updated, Visitor Gallery, Link to Us!
NEW POLL: Your Favorite Photo Correction Plugin
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
GRAPHICS NEWS from www.Graphics.com
PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE
THE PLUGIN SITE MAP
Dear Reader,
When the end of the year approaches, you automatically ask yourself: Where has the time gone? The year has just begun and now it seems to be already ending. Many of us are probably too busy or too used to the same old routine to stop just for some minutes. To stop to do something you usually wouldn't do or haven't done for a long, very long time. Or to think about what really counts in your life. I think such "interruptions" are essential for life. If you don't do them voluntarily, you may sometimes be fo
rced to take such a break, because something important has gone wrong. Think about it!
.... OK, that was enough meditation for this year :-). Now lets go on with this newsletter. There's a lot of exciting stuff waiting...
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
Harald Heim
http://ThePluginSite.com/
SPECIAL CHRISTMAS OFFER: Get Plugin Commander Pro for a 20%-reduced price
------------------------------------------------
Time again for a Special Christmas Offer: For a limited time Plugin Commander Pro 1.52 is available for $39.95 instead of $50. The CD Version can also be ordered for $49.95 instead of $60. This special Xmas Offer is only valid until December 14, 2002. So don't miss it!
Plugin Commander Pro allows you to manage and preview your plugin, tube and add-on collection quickly and easily. You can disable the plugins, tubes and materials you rarely need and define how your favorite effects will appear in the host application. Plugin Commander lets you apply Photoshop-compatible plug-ins to images, batch process images with ease, display the effects of your plugins as thumbnails, preview your tubes and other PSP add-ons, define your own plugin and file types and even create your
own plugins. And that was just a small peek at the possibilities available with the Pro Edition of Plugin Commander...
Have a look at Plugin Commander Pro at:
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/picopro/
PLUGIN GALAXY FOR AE 1.50 RELEASED
------------------------------------------------
Plugin Galaxy for AE has been updated to Version 1.50. Now it consists of 21 plugins that can produce an incredible amount of 150 animated effects. The new version includes a Page Curl plugin and 18 new filter effects. Among the new effects are Star Field, Diffuse, Rippled Glass, Cave Edge, Jungle Edge, Curved Edge, Cutline Edge, Quad Feedback, Tunnel Feedback, Space Worm, Dragon's Tail, Butterfly, Plate, Wall, RGB Saturation, Erode En/Decryption and Cross En/Decryption. Many of the old effects were improved, e.g. some render faster, the border in Edge Tool can be moved over on the image, there are new Overlay and Expose features in four plugins and many more.
Plugin Galaxy for AE is available for Windows as well as MacOS 9 and X. It can be used in Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro, Pinnacle Commotion, Discreet Combustion and some other video and animation applications that support After Effects plugins. Users who ordered Version 1.0 during the last three months or who already ordered the OS X Update will get Version 1.50 for free. Otherwise the update costs $25. All registered users will be informed soon.
For downloading a demo version and more information please visit:
http://thepluginsite.com/products/pgforae/
SPONSOR AD: APOLLO 26 releases FLAME N SKULL
------------------------------------------------
Apollo 26 presents its second retail release, Flame N Skull, a ŒMini¹ Design Kit available for instant download. The kit features two sick fonts, Sotoflame and Motorpsycho, and 70 pieces of .eps art. Early birds and existing customers can get the kit for an amazing $19.00. The price will go up to $49.00 at a later date. The DEFCON kit is also still available, a great Holiday gift for designer friends.
UPDATES OF THE PLUGIN SITE: User Galleries, Plugin Pages Updated, Visitor Gallery, Link to Us!
------------------------------------------------
There are now User Galleries available for seven of our Products: Plugin Galaxy, HyperTyle, Edge & Frame Galaxy, Photo Galaxy, Plugin Galaxy for AE and Mutation/Abstraction. You are invited to add your images created with these products there.
http://graphicsgalaxy.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=productgallery
Several pages of the Resources section have been updated. The Commercial Plugins page was completely reviewed and updated. Now it contains the names, small descriptions and links to hundreds of Photoshop-compatible plugins. Some other plugin pages in the Resources section have been updated, too, with the information from the latest three newsletters.
http://thepluginsite.com/resources/
Some old image have been removed from the Visitor Gallery to make room for new ones. 13 new and interesting images from Fabrizio Fella, RE Cornell, Peter, Kort Kramer, Ken Deitcher, Vladimir Petrov and Wayne Pease have just been added. Don't miss them and visit:
http://thepluginsite.com/gallery/visitors/
We would appreciate if you placed a link on your home page to The Plugin Site. After doing so, please drop us a note and we will link back to your site (if your site fits to the content of The Plugin Site). For linking information, buttons and a description, please look at
http://thepluginsite.com/about/linking.htm
NEW POLL: Your Favorite Photo Correction Plugin
------------------------------------------------
Our latest poll asks: "Which of these tools do you use regularly for photo correction?". Besides Photoshop's and PSP's photo correction tools you can choose between 18 plugin products that are more or less aimed at the same purpose.
Please cast your vote at
http://thepluginsite.com/
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: ...
------------------------------------------------
Here are the latest interesting topics from our Discussion Boards:
brooky asked: "Hi there I want a plugin for Photoshop/Fireworks that makes rich shiny simple 3D buttons etc. Can anyone recommend one for me?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=238
IRISH asked: "Quicky-Are Extensis Plugins compat with Photoshop Elements 2.0? OR Paint Shop Pro 7? I have downloaded the freebies they offer on the site for 30 days and have found that Photoshop users recommend them quite a bit."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=236
cypan asked: "Can anyone please tell me which Photoshop plugins can make movies like some of the filters in KPT 6 ?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=237
andynyc asked: "Copy and pasting into same exact position in Photoshop? how? holding down option key often doesn't work. especial if there is a feathered edge."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=230
It would be nice if you could help these guys. But you can also post your own requests or messages at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
------------------------------------------------
Antonino Perricone just released Version 2.0 of his Luce plugin (for Windows). The new version has a crash bug fixed and some new options. Luce 2.0 produces a more brightness-balanced result with the help of the Quadric check box and offers a new a directional light effect. Deactivating the new Add Source check box produces a blur effect. Luce 2.0 also promises a new shadow effect, but unfortunately it doesn't work. However, Antonino told me that he would make an update available soon.
http://thepluginsite.com/resources/perricone/luce.htm
Ulead started offering their commercial Art Texture plugin for free some time ago. Now they also offer Particle.Plugin and the FantasyWarp plugin (for Windows) for free, too. Particle.Plugin creates eight natural particle effects, e.g. smoke, fire, bubbles, clouds and rain. FantasyWarp takes any image or selection and warps, distorts and twists it into surreal patterns. Don't miss these two plugins!
http://www.ulead.com/download/freedownload.htm
Type Chameleon (for Macintosh) from Jintek is a free Photoshop plugin for creating type effects. It produces wildly distorted type on a path, circle, arc or trapezoid as well as rotates, skews and distorts shapes and adds borders, fills, and drop shadows. The result can be directly rasterized and merged with the image or saved as an EPS file if you want to keep the type resolution independent . The EPS file can then be copied into any Photoshop layer, where it will adapt to the resolution of the rest of
the Photoshop file. Type Chameleon requires Photoshop 4.0 or later and Adobe Type Manager 3.5 or later.
http://www.jintek.com/type_cham.html
INFINITimages offer a free Photoshop plugin (for Macintosh) called MonoToner.
Digimarc offers a free 1.7 upgrade for their watermarking plugin which is delivered with many image applications for Mac and Windows. The Digimarc plugin enable you to detect, embed, and read Digimarc watermarks with many leading image editing applications.
http://www.digimarc.com/imaging/plugin.htm
Fractal Snowflake Generator (for Windows) creates 2-color fractal snowflakes. It lets you define foreground and background colors, the complexity and number of rays and many more. A Randomize button allows you to quickly cycle through possible effect settings. The created snowflakes can be saved as a BMP file and post-processed in any image application, e.g. to be added to Christmas cards.
http://a-i-studio.com/snowflake/
sTile 2.6 (for Windows), a free texture generation application, has been released. In the past it was also known as Harm'sTile 99. It lets you create texture tiles with the help of many filters and special features. It is highly recommended for people who want to create some nice background textures.
http://www.harmware.com/sTile.htm
Texture Processor is a freeware tool (for Windows) for producing seamless textures. It already comes with a variety of textures that can be modified, mixed or altered for a quick start. Texture Processor includes several pattern, deformation and filter algorithms which can be combined to produce seamless textures. Unfortunately the texture size is limited to 256 x 256 pixels and you can only save them in BMP format. Other than that it is fun to use.
http://www.paurex.com/?products&prod=tp12
RenderSoft CamStudio (for Windows) is a free tool for recording screen activity into standard AVI video files. CamStudio can be used to demonstrate features of a new software, to create movies for user trainings, to record the sequence of steps that cause the occurrence of bugs in faulty software, to record a movie stream and many more. There is a great autopanning feature, which tries to keep the cursor in the middle of the frame. This means that you don't can show what is happening on the whole screen
without recording at full screen size which keeps the AVI file very small.
http://www.rendersoftware.com/products/camstudio/
PDF2HTMLgui (for Windows) is a freeware application for converting PSD files to HTML. It can export the whole document or only certain pages and even ignore images. To use PDF2HTMLgui you also need to download the binary PDF2HTML and GostScript binaries from the same page.
http://guiguy.wminds.com/downloads/pdf2htmlgui/
GRAPHICS NEWS from Graphics.com
------------------------------------------------
The 2002 Ulead Digital Imaging Contest runs until December 15, 2002. Prizes include the Ultimate Digital Photography Kit including a 4 Mega Pixel Digital Camera, Epson Photo Printer, Flash Memory, Graphics Tablet and more. Participants have to enter original image compositions up to 500 x 500 pixels, which include at least one filter effect from PhotoImpact 8.
http://activity.ulead.com/contest/us/pi8/runme.htm
ArtMatic Pro 3.0
The latest version of this Mac app adds native support for OS X and piles on the features. In their words: "ArtMatic's library of over 300 graphics generators and filters can be patched together in complex structures to create an extraordinary range of images and effects". Snag the demo and see if they're right.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1325
Andromeda RedEyePro Plugin Launched
There are lots of ways to reduce those glaring devil eyes, which can be especially disconcerting on newborns. Into the fray steps Andromeda, with a Mac/PC Photoshop plugin. No word on a demo yet.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1310
Adobe Sued Concerning Photoshop 7 Healing Brush
Macromedia must be chuckling about this one. Shell & Slate has filed suit against Adobe for "numerous allegations, including misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract concerning the Healing Brush texture-cloning tool included in Adobe Photoshop 7.0". What a world.!
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1309
Photos.com Royalty-Free Subscription Site Launched
A new subscriber-based service for royalty-free stock photography has been launched. Photos.com provides unlimited downloads of its 20,000 images, available in sizes up to 6 x 8 inches at 300 DPI, for $29.95 a week. Fire up the modem.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1304
Poser 5 Content Paradise Goes Live
Curious Labs and Renderosity have joined forces to make it easy for Poser users to search for, buy, download and install addons without leaving Poser. Great concept.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1294
PhotoKit 1.0
This Win/Mac Photoshop filter collection includes 129 effects that are said to "offer accurate digital replications of analog photographic effects". A fully functional seven-day demo is available.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1276
Asiva Photo for Windows is Now Available
Joining the Mac version released earlier, both are now at version 1.2. Masks? We don't need no steenking masks to make color corrections! Or a demo version, it would seem.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1260
For daily graphics news updates, visit
http://www.Graphics.com
