Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others

News

 

Plugin Newsletter - November / December 2009

 

CONTENTS
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EDITORIAL


PHOTOWIZ UPDATES FOR WINDOWS: 64bit versions of FocalBlade, LightMachine, B/W Styler and ContrastMaster are available

THEPLUGINSITE PANEL 1.02: Supports almost all versions of our plugins and fixes various bugs

POSTCARD CONTEST 2009: Photos of the exhibition


POLL RESULTS: In which versions of Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements do you use plugins?

NEW POLL: In which versions of an image processing product are you interested?

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: PSP Tubes Not Loading Under 64bit, Thumbnails Displaying Slowly, Eye Candy 3 Problems


FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Cartoon Bubble, Mosaic Toolkit & Illumination Fix Toolkit, Lens FX & Particle Pro, Xero Plugins, Icon Plugin, Picasa 3.5

GRAPHICS NEWS: Lightroom 3 Beta, AlphaToys, Lightroom/Camera RAW RC, FocalPoint/PhotoTune Updates, Viveza 2


PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE

ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE

NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTION

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Dear Reader,

As you may have noticed we changed the server for sending out this newsletter. We decided against simply importing the old subscription base. Instead we asked everyone to subscribe again to the new server. As a result the subscription base got a lot smaller and we weeded out addresses of people who were not interested in this newsletter anymore. Thanks for making the transition to the new server! If you need to change your subscription, please follow the instructions at the bottom. By the way, it is planned to send out the Plugin Newsletter in HTML format next year to make it better readable and more pleasant to view. Please excuse any problems that may occur with the first delivery from the new server.

We also updated all of our PhotoWiz products in order to provide 64-bit versions of them. A few months ago the poll results indicated that 30% of all users were interested in 64-bit versions. However, it seems that only 5% of all PhotoWiz users seem to be interested in 64-bit versions if an upgrade fee is involved. The number of 64-bit users will increase in the coming months and years, so it was a good step to already provide 64-bit versions of the plugins. Another important update is Version 1.02 of our Photoshop panel which now supports almost all versions of our plugins.

For more news see below...


Kind regards,
Harald Heim

http://www.thepluginsite.com

 

 

PHOTOWIZ UPDATES FOR WINDOWS: 64bit versions of FocalBlade, LightMachine, B/W Styler and ContrastMaster are available
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We released updates of four PhotoWiz plugins which include 64-bit versions for Photoshop CS4. Now 64-bit versions of all PhotoWiz plugins are available. This was the main reason for the updates, but we also added support for visual styles, enhanced the installers and demo version. Additionally the file size of the plugins were reduced to almost 50%, because we used another compiler and leaner framework to create them.

For more information and for demo download please visit

http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/

 


THEPLUGINSITE PANEL 1.02: Supports almost all versions of our plugins and fixes various bugs
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Version 1.02 of ThePluginSite panel includes various improvements: It now supports all full and demo versions of PhotoWiz (except PhotoFreebies 1.0), Plugin Galaxy 2, HyperTyle and Harrys Filters. For this it needs to scan for available plugins for a few seconds at initial startup. As a compensation the panel appears faster when collapsing and displaying it again later. Additionally a crash bug was fixed, which was actually caused by Photoshop itself, but we added a work-around. However, the panel still does not support some of the PhotoFreebies plugins on the Mac. We will probably only be able to fix this problem by releasing new versions of PhotoFreebies for Mac.

We released a version 1.01 a week before 1.02. If you use 1.01, please get the 1.02 update as several problems have been fixed with it. There is a new About item on the panel menu, which shows you the version number. If that item is not there, you are not using Version 1.02.

http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/tpspanel/

 


POSTCARD CONTEST 2009: Photos of the exhibition
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35 postcards of our Postcard Contest 2009 are exhibited in the Museum of Communication in Nuremberg, Germany, until January 10, 2010. To give you an impression of the exhibition you can now watch a few photos that were taken at the vernissage on October 30:

http://www.thepluginsite.com/gallery/postcard/exhibition/

To have a look at the exhibited postcards themselves see:
http://www.thepluginsite.com/gallery/postcard/winners.htm

 

POLL RESULTS: In which versions of Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements do you use plugins?
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More than 2000 votes have been achieved by the latest poll. Here are the results.

Total Results:

1. Photoshop 54.6% 1112 votes
2. Paint Shop Pro 29.6% 603 votes
3. Photoshop Elements 15.8% 322 votes

Individual Results:

1. Photoshop CS4 35.3%
2. Photoshop CS3 28.9%
3. Photoshop CS2 13%
Photoshop 7 13%
4. Photoshop CS 5.8%
5. Photoshop 6 or older 3.8%

1. Paint Shop Pro X2 38.5%
2. Paint Shop Pro 9 18.1%
3. Paint Shop Pro X 14.3%
4. Paint Shop Pro 7 9.6%
5. Paint Shop Pro 8 8.3%
6. Paint Shop Pro XI 7.5%
7. Paint Shop Pro 6 or older 3.8%

1. Photoshop Elements 7 30.1%
2. Photoshop Elements 6 22.7%
3. Photoshop Elements 5 12.4%
4. Photoshop Elements 8 12.1%
5. Photoshop Elements 4 9.9%
6. Photoshop Elements 1/2 7.4%
7. Photoshop Elements 3 5.6%

A similar poll in May 2008 (that did not specifically ask about plugin usage) resulted in 8% less for Photoshop, 6% more for Paint Shop Pro and 2% more for Elements. So it looks like Photoshop become more popular during the last 18 months. Now more people use Photoshop than Paint Shop Pro and Elements together.

More than 1/3 of all Photoshop users use CS4 and a bit less than 1/3 are still using CS3. The CS2 and 7 user groups are equally large and make up more than 1/4 of all users. In May 2008 more than half of all Photoshop users worked with CS3. So it looks as if CS4 did not convince people as much as CS3 when it was released.

In May 2008 more people used Paint Shop Pro 9 than X2. Now it seems many people have jumped to X2. This is no surprise with X2 being around for quite some time now. No surprises with the Photoshop Elements results either.


For more poll results, please visit the Resources section at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/resources/

 

NEW POLL: In which versions of an image processing product are you interested?
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In our new poll we want to know what type or plugin/standalone version of an image processing product you need and want to use. We offer eight possible versions of a product, which includes a standalone program, Photoshop plugin, Lightroom plugin, Aperture plugin, iPhoto plugin, Bibble plugin, AE plugin and FxPlug plugin. Additionally there is an "Other" item.

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

 

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: PSP Tubes Not Loading Under 64bit, Thumbnails Displaying Slowly, Eye Candy 3 Problems
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Here are the latest posts on The Plugin Site Forum:

PSP Tubes Not Loading Under 64bit
jenijenjeni wrote: "I bought a new 64bit 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?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3396

Thumbnails Displaying Slowly
Someone wrote: "Why does it take a long time for the preview to show on .jpg and .bmp photos. The majority show a preview straight away but some usually the same ones each time take up to 2.5 minutes to show a preview. I did have this problem before with some .jpg's so converted them to .png and .gif the problem carried over into the newer format they took long time to preview. Can someone please explain what is wrong and what can I do to fix it. ... I have windows xp in the folders I have Views Thumbnails enabled"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3364

Eye Candy 3 Problems
duckychic wrote: "i am taking animation classes online .... my lesson says to use eye candy 3 (whichi i have) and go to jiggle and ragged edges, i have everything but the ragged edges and have seem to stump everyone. i have been stuck on this lesson for a couple of weeks now.
can you help by chance?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3394


For more discussions and asking questions see
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/

 


FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Cartoon Bubble, Mosaic Toolkit & Illumination Fix Toolkit, Lens FX & Particle Pro, Xero Plugins, Icon Plugin, Picasa 3.5
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Digital Anarchy released Cartoon Bubble, a free Photoshop-compatible plugin (for Win/Mac) for creating cartoon word bubbles. It is also planned to make it available for Aperture.

http://digitalanarchy.com/demos/bubble.html


The Mosaic Toolkit & Illumination Fix Toolkit (for Windows) that we are hosting on our web site has been updated. Version 2.4b of the Mosaic Toolkit plugin now provides 11 new mosaic styles. Additionally you can now import an external BMP file, tile it, select a transparent color, and blend it with the source file. Illumination Fix Toolkit 1.7 now offers a cool-warm slider and a shadow recolor effect. Both plugins are now Vista compatible and include a help file.

http://thepluginsite.com/resources/lotis/


Richard Rosenman offers two new free plugins (for Windows). Lens FX produces 10 different distortions including more common lens effects like Punch, Push, Concave and Convex as well as more exotic ones like Wave and Ripple. Particle Pro 0.1 Beta creates animated particle effects, but it does not let you apply or save them. You can still play with the various parameters and see the balls jumping around differently.

http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads/


All plugins from Xero graphics (for Windows) have been updated for Vista & 7 compatibility. There are now only two packages: XL and Classic.

http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/


The Icon Plugin for Photoshop is a free file format plugin (for Windows) for exporting and importing Windows icons (.ico files). Unlike the ICO plugin from Telegraphics it also lets you add images to existing icon files.

http://www.sibcode.com/icon-plugin/


Google Picasa 2.5 (for Windows), a free image-editing program, is available. The latest version features improved tagging, import options and geo-tagging with integration of Google Maps. A Mac version of it also became available, which includes most of the features of its Windows version.

http://picasa.google.com/

 


GRAPHICS NEWS: Lightroom 3 Beta, AlphaToys, Lightroom/Camera RAW RC, FocalPoint/PhotoTune Updates, Viveza 2
-----------------------------------

Adobe offers the first Lightroom 3 Public Beta, which will expire on April 30, 2010. The raw processing engine was overhauled, noise reduction improved and a film grain tool was added among other things. Lightroom 3 beta is unfinished, so some features are not in the release and some not complete yet.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/


VanDerLee released the AlphaToys Photoshop plugins (for Windows). It consist of 16 filters that manipulate the transparency of image layers. It lets you convert from color to transparency, make bright or dark areas opaque or transparent, keep color or fill with black or white as well as blur, sharpen and adjust the brightness and contrast of the alpha channel. Half of the AlphaToys filters don't have a user interface, the others have a simple small window.

http://www.vanderlee.com/plugins_alphatoys.html


Adobe offers release candidates of Lightroom 2.6 and Camera RAW 5.6. These are pre-release versions for the purpose of testing, which may still have a few small bugs.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Lightroom_2.6
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Raw_5.6


onOne Software released FocalPoint 2, a plugin for simulating depth-of-field and selective focus, as well as PhotoTune 3, an image optimization plugin. FocalPoint 2 lets you create multiple areas of focus and a new brush options lets you paint in the blur effect. PhotoTune 3 offers a new uto-correction algorithm and an updated SkinTune module.

http://www.ononesoftware.com


Viveza 2 from Nik Software, which is a selective color and light control plugin utilizing the so-called U Point technology, will be available in December. It contains an improved interface, new global image adjustments, shadow recovery and 64-bit/Lightroom/Aperture support.

http://www.niksoftware.com/viveza2/





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