Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - November/December 2011
CONTENTS
COLORSTYLER PREVIEW:
Have a look at our up-coming product
PHOTOWIZ STANDALONE/LIGHTROOM 1.06b WINDOWS UPDATES: Support for ACDSee and new camera raw files
RUNNING THE PHOTOWIZ STANDALONES UNDER MACOS X
POLL RESULTS: What digital camera brand
do you use? How much would you maximally pay for a plugin from The Plugin
Site?
NEW POLLS: In what format(s)
do you usually shoot digital photos? In which new commercial plugin(s)
from The Plugin Site are you most interested?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Panorama
Correction Plugin, Color Temperature Correction, Plugin Support in PSP
X4, EyeCandy in PSP XII
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Perfect365, MAGIX
Photo Manager 10 & Photo Designer 7, dispcalGUI/Argyll, Wineskin
GRAPHICS NEWS: Adobe Upgrade Policy Change, Corel PaintShop Pro X4, PSP X3 Service Pack 5, ThumbsPlus 8, Dynamic Autopainter Pro 64
Dear Reader,
If you have not yet heard about Adobe changing its upgrade policy, please read the Graphics News section below. Basically it looks as if Adobe tries to force its customers to buy every new upgrade if they want to continue using future versions of their software. The only alternative will be to pay a monthly fee, which is only financially attractive for people who need more than just one, two or three Adobe applications.
These are certainly bad news for many Adobe customers.
If they are not already fed up, they should let Adobe know what they think
of this step. On the other hand these are good news for smaller companies,
which offer competing products at lower prices. They will see many new
customers in the coming months and years.
Sincerely Yours,
Harald Heim
COLORSTYLER PREVIEW
Have a look at our up-coming product
We are planing to release a second new product this year (which we have never sone since 2003) called ColorStyler. You could say that it is the color version of our already existing B/W Styler product, but it will offer much more. ColorStyler will enable you to enhance your photos in numerous ways to make them look their best and add your own personal style.
The most remarkable features, which are not available in our other products so far, are image thumbnails of presets, a curve tool, a masking brush tool and a more flexible UI. ColorStyler will include hundreds of presets for simulating color films, color filters and various other traditional photography effects as well as special effects.
Any suggestion about what you would like to see in ColorStyler are welcome.
For more information and for
subscribing for the release news go to
ColorStyler
product page
PHOTOWIZ STANDALONE/LIGHTROOM 1.06b WINDOWS UPDATES
Support for ACDSee and new camera raw files
We have just released updates of all PhotoWiz Standalone/Lightroom versions: ColorWasher, FocalBlade, LightMachine, B/W Styler and ContrastMaster. Apart from smaller bug fixes they now offer support for camera raw files of the latest cameras. Additionally you can now use them as external editors in ACDSee and ACDSee Pro, which works similar to Lightroom. The installer adds them to ACDSee's External Editors menu, from where you can conveniently apply them to selected images.
Registered users will receive the update by email within 24 hours.
For more information and a demo download visit
PhotoWiz
pages
RUNNING THE PHOTOWIZ STANDALONES UNDER MACOS X
There is a new tutorial available that shows how you can run the Windows standalone versions of our PhotoWiz products on a Mac with an Intel CPU. You do not need a copy of Microsoft Windows for that. You only need the free Wineskin tool. The 19-step tutorial explains in detail how to setup Wineskin, install the standalone and run it. It takes a few minutes to do that, but it is definitely feasible.
Of course, you can also make other Windows programs run on your Mac with the same procedure. Doing that for Windows plugins is also possible, but more complex. You would need to install a Windows host tool, e.g. IrfanView, XNView or Photo Designer 7 (see below), and afterwards copy or install the plugin(s) into the same wrapper.
Read the tutorial at the
Mac
Standalone page
POLL RESULTS
Thanks a lot for participating in the recent polls. Here are the results
and some comments:
Poll 1: What digital camera brand do you use?
673 people voted in the last poll about their camera brand preference. Here are the results:
1. Canon 36.6%
2. Nikon 24.6%
3. Sony 8.3%
4. Olympus 5.8%
5. Fujifilm 5.5%
6. Panasonic 5.3%
7. Pentax 5%
8. Kodak 2.6%
9. Samsung 2%
10. Other 1.5%
11. Casio 0.6%
11. HP 0.6%
12. Epson 0.4%
12. Leica 0.4%
12. Ricoh 0.4%
13. Phase 0.3%
13. Sigma 0.3%
As we can see, there are two favorites in this list. Canon is preferred by far, almost 37% would choose this brand, followed by Nikon which is the first selection for almost 25% of all voters. Other brand names reach much lower percentages among our poll participants.
In a poll about DSLRs five years ago the results were similar, but Sony and Panasonic managed to get more popular in the meantime.
Poll 2: How much would you maximally pay for a plugin from The Plugin
Site?
150 people cast their vote in this poll about acceptable prices for products from The Plugin Site. Here are the results and its analysis:
| Price |
Votes
|
Cumulated
|
Profits
|
|
| 200$ |
6% (9)
|
6%
|
1200
|
61% |
| 150$ |
1.3% (2)
|
7.3%
|
1095
|
56% |
| 120$ |
0.7% (1)
|
8%
|
960
|
49% |
| 100$ |
7.3% (11)
|
15.3%
|
1530
|
78% |
| 80$ |
3.3% (5)
|
18.6%
|
1488
|
76% |
| 70$ |
2% (3)
|
20.6%
|
1442
|
73% |
| 60$ |
4.7% (7)
|
25.3%
|
1518
|
77% |
| 50$ |
14% (21)
|
39.3%
|
1965
|
100% |
| 40$ |
6% (9)
|
45.3%
|
1812
|
92% |
| 30$ |
8% (12)
|
53.3%
|
1599
|
81% |
| 25$ |
12.7% (19
|
66%
|
1650
|
84% |
| 20$ |
7.3% (11)
|
73.3%
|
1466
|
75% |
| 15$ |
7.3% (11)
|
80.6%
|
1209
|
61% |
| 10$ |
8% (12)
|
88.6%
|
886
|
45% |
| 5$ |
11.3% (17)
|
100%
|
500
|
25% |
The poll suggests that at $50 our plugin products produce the most profit. $40 seems to be the second best price. According to the poll any price between $20 to $100 would still be at least 75% as effective as $50, so this seems to be the best price spectrum for our products.
It is good to see that we seem to have priced our products on the spot. Although we also offer products at $70, the sales figures do not really indicate that these sell worse, although this poll may suggest it.
We try to keep our prices as reasonable as possible while at the same time maintaining the highest quality. Pricing our products too low or high, would mean less profits which in turn would mean lower product quality, because we would be forced to spend less time on each product.
For more poll results please visit the
Resources section
NEW POLLS
In what format(s) do you usually
shoot digital photos?
In which new commercial plugin(s) from The Plugin Site are you most interested?
Back in 2004 a poll asked in which format people shot their digital photos. JPEG, RAW and TIFF were common at that time. TIFF has vanished in the meantime and DNG appeared. Although DNG could be counted as RAW, we listed it as a separate item in the new poll. It will be interesting to see how much the RAW format made up ground.
The second poll asks you to vote for our next
commercial plugin project. You can choose between four major upgrades
of existing plugins and six new types of plugins. Additionally there is
the choice of a plugin that combines all PhotoWiz effects
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
Panorama Correction Plugin, Color Temperature Correction, Plugin Support in PSP X4, EyeCandy in PSP XII
Here are the latest posts on the forums:
Panorama Correction Plugin
el_del_14 wrote: "When I create panoramas sometimes they have great
distortions. Which is the best plugin to correct them. Thank you in advance"
Read
More...
Color Temperature Correction
Someone wrote: "... I've long used "The Imaging Factory's" "White
Balance" filter and cannot find a replacement to work when Rosetta is
no longer an option. I know raw image processing is a another workaround
but the specific function I'm looking for is to be for JPGs. Does anyone
know of a simple quality plugin along these lines with the same abilities?
That is: color balance adjustment on a Kelvin temperature scale?."
Read
More...
Plugin Support in PSP X4
vorathavorn wrote: "I was thinking of buying Paintshop Pro X4,
but I hear I won't be able to use most of the plugins I have been using
with versions 9 and X2... Is this true?"
Read
More...
EyeCandy in PSP XII
Tich wrote: "Can anyone help me please I have psp12 and windows
7 and I am trying to get Eye candy 5 to work. I can find them in my plugin
folder but they dont show when I open psp12. ! already have Eye candy
4000 and that works fine.
I have tried file location and they show them there aswell so I dont know
what else I can do."
Read
More...
Please feel free to post suggestions or start a discussion
topic at
The Plugin Site Forum
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
Perfect365, MAGIX Photo Manager
10 & Photo Designer 7, dispcalGUI/Argyll, Wineskin
ArcSoft Perfect365 is
a one-touch/click photo makeover tool (for Win/Mac/iOS). It lets you adjust
up to 21 facial features with the help of style makeup templates and the
ability to fine-tune them. Perfect365 performs an automatic facial recognition
and can detect up to 20 faces in one photo. It offers cleanup, makeup
and enhancement features as well as a before/after comparison, key points
for tilted and off-center profiles and lets you save your favorite looks.
An enhanced version of Perfect365 that allows users to save and print
their high-resolution pictures can be purchased..
Visit website...
MAGIX Photo Designer 7 is
a free image editor (for Windows). It has all the standard features of
an image processing application. It uses so-called objects, which work
similar to layers. It also supports Photoshop plugins, but you should
better not apply them to layers to avoid weird results. There is a task
wizard and a one-click photo correction.
MAGIX Photo Manager 10 is a free
image viewing and management tool (for Windows). It lets you manually
optimize photos as well as present, upload, print and burn them. There
is a face detection feature, which will search for all photos containing
a certain face. It works fine, but also shows you other photos that do
not even include a face.
Both tools are 7-day trial versions that can be registered for
free. There are enhanced commercial versions of both tools available.
Visit website...
dispcalGUI is a graphical user interface for
the open-source Argyll display calibration tool. dispcalGUI lets you calibrate
your display devices and create or check their ICC profiles by using a
hardware sensor from Datacolor/ColorVision or X-Rite/GretagMacbeth. There
is also support for multi-display setups. According to our own experience
dispcalGUI is sometimes even more accurate and offers more features than
the original software delivered with calibration devices.
Visit website...
Wineskin lets you run Windows programs under
MacOS X. Unlike other virtual machines you do not even have to buy and
install Windows. It emulates Windows itself, so it does not eat up a lot
of RAM and is installed quickly, but on the other hand does not provide
UI features like visual styles. It also lets developers make ports of
Windows software to Mac OS X. It creates Mac application bundle wrappers
which can be distributed. If you are unsure on how to use it, have a look
at our tutorial above.
Visit website...
For more free plugins and tool, please visit the
Resources section
GRAPHICS NEWS
Adobe Upgrade Policy Change, Corel PaintShop Pro X4, PSP X3 Service Pack 5, ThumbsPlus 8, Dynamic Autopainter Pro 64
Adobe is planning to change
its upgrade policy for the Creative Suite 6, including Photoshop CS6.
Users of CS3 and CS4 will first need to upgrade to CS5 in order to qualify
for upgrade pricing for CS6. So that effectively means a double upgrade
fee or paying the full price again. Even the 20% discount that Adobe offers
for the CS5 upgrade until the end of this year does not really change
much.
It seems that this step is also aimed at converting customers into members
of the Adobe Creative Cloud service, which will start in the first half
of 2012. For a membership fee of $49.99 or $69.99 per month users will
be able to use all Creative Suite applications, the Adobe Touch Apps and
various online services.
Scott Kelby posted an open letter to Adobe, which says that this unexpected
policy change is unfair towards customers and pleas to delay it until
CS7. He is also worried that many users may not upgrade to future versions
of Photoshop and the creative suite at all, because they cannot afford
it anymore without the option to skip one or two upgrades.
Chris Dickman from Graphics.com critizises that Adobe obviously starts
to focus on high-end customers and he speculates that the market segment
of normal consumers and semi-professionals will be "thrown under the bus".
He fears that the entire infrastructure of book authors, trainers and
related websites might be affected.
The
Announcement
Scott Kelby's
Open Letter to Adobe
Chris
Dickman's Comments
Corel released PaintShop Pro X4 (for Windows),
which delivers faster performance and 75 new and enhanced features. Among
these features are HDR Tools, Photo Blend (for creating compositions by
selecting people, objects or areas from a series of images), Fill Light
and Clarity (for enhancing underexposed areas and details), Selective
Focus (depth of field and miniature effects) as well as Vignette Tools
(for soft and faded borders). PaintShop Pro X4 launches 50% faster and
has various effects accelerated. It provides built-in social media sharing
option, e.g. for Facebook and Flicker.
Visit website...
Service Pack 5 for PaintShop Photo Pro X3 has
been released. It fixes a lot of problems with plugins and some other
bugs. It is recommended to install all of the service packs sequentially
to alleviate problems.
Visit
website...
Cerious released ThumbsPlus 8 SP1 (for Windows),
an image management application with many database features. It offers
Windows 7 support, new UI features and customization, enhanced video file
support and a Metadata Batch Editor.
Visit website...
