The Plugin Site - Plugin Newsletter - October/November 2018

ElementsXXL 6 has been released with a three week delay compared with other years. The delay was due to the CameraXXL release in July, so to have enough development time the ElementsXXL 6 had to be delayed slightly. We will try to avoid this in the future and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Making the CameraXXL functionality available was certainly worth it for many people.

Our next and seventh product in the Elements product series will be a plugin that works in Photoshop Elements as well as Photoshop. It will finally bring some features of ElementsXXL to Photoshop itself and offer new features that are not available in ElementsXXL so far.

When I recently installed the latest version of the nik Collection I was appalled to see that it automatically deleted the old free version of nik. As the download for the free version is not available anymore and some people probably did not backup the installer, this means that they are basically forced to buy the new version. I was also disappointed to see that the new commercial nik version does not have the much needed support for 4K screens. If you have not suffered from bugs with latest OS versions, the current new version does not offer anything substantial. But lets hope future nik releases will offer more bang for the buck.

Kind regards,
Harald Heim

The Plugin Site

ELEMENTSXXL 6.0 FOR WINDOWS

200 new features, Support for Photoshop Elements 2019

Photo Credits: Opolja, Chunhahca / Dreamstime

ElementsXXL 6 offers several new filters: Lighting Effects, Clarity, Fill Flash, HDR Toning, Highpass Sharpen, Anti-Alias, Auto Saturation and an improved Color Match filter. Additionally the Curves feature now offers sliders for adjusting the curve, there is support for 23 new smart filters, new HistogramsXXL and Scopes panels, 17 new icons on the Adjustments panel, a Replace Background assistant, an Interpolation option for various tools and the option to always open JPEG and TIFF files in Camera Raw. Various other improvements and bug fixes were also added.

ElementsXXL for Windows adds up to 1080 powerful features to Photoshop Elements that were previously only available in Photoshop. These features are included as new menu items, icons, buttons, key shortcuts and dialogs, so they seamlessly integrate into the user interface of Photoshop Elements. ElementsXXL bridges the gap between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop and greatly enhances the image editing experience in Photoshop Elements.

For more information and a demo version visit the
ElementsXXL Page

ELEMENTSXXL 1.05 FOR MAC

Support for Photoshop Elements 2019

Version 1.05 of ElementsXXL for MacOS now supports Photoshop Elements 2019, which means that it can now be installed in Photoshop Elements 2019 and that ElementsXXL runs fine with it.

ElementsXXL adds up to 130 powerful features to Photoshop Elements for MacOS X that were previously only available in Photoshop. These features are included as new menu items, icons, buttons, key shortcuts and dialogs, so they seamlessly integrate into the user interface of Photoshop Elements.

For more information and a demo version visit the
ElementsXXL Page

LAYERSXXL 1.56 FOR WINDOWS

Support for Photoshop Elements 2019

The latest LayersXXL version now runs smoothly in Photoshop Elements 2019 and the Layer Comp panel finally displays correctly on HiDPI screens.

LayersXXL offers tools for Photoshop Elements for performing image processing with the help of multiple image files, e.g. denoising, DOF Increase, HDR creation, multiple exposure effects, panorama stitching and more. It also includes a Layer Comp panel for creating and managing layer compositions as well as 5 new layer effects, 15 new blending controls and 90 new layer effect options.

For more information and a demo version visit the
LayersXXL Page

CAMERAXXL 1.02 FOR WINDOWS

Support for Camera Raw 10.5 and 11.0

CameraXXL 1.02 now allows installing Camera Raw 10.5 into Photoshop Elements 14 to 2018 as well as Camera Raw 11.0 into Photoshop Elements 2019. Unfortunately Photoshop Elements 14 to 2018 do not support Camera Raw 11, very likely because Camera Raw 11 includes a new process version.

CameraXXL allows applying Adobe Camera Raw as a filter in Photoshop Elements and creating smart objects that can be edited with Adobe Camera Raw. CameraXXL also enables users of Photoshop Elements to install a newer version of Camera Raw than provided by the Photoshop Elements update mechanism.

For more information and a demo version visit the
CameraXXL Page

METARAW 3.02 FOR WIN/MAC

Support for new cameras

The latest MetaRaw 3.03 offers various bug fixes and supports the latest two Adobe DNG Converter versions. The built-in MetaRaw Converter supports more than 20 new camera models by rendering their raw files with better color and correct cropping. The trial version was reset and can be used for another 14 days.

MetaRaw extends the functionality of the Adobe Camera Raw plugin in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. It lets you open camera raw files with Adobe Camera Raw, which are normally not supported by it, and allows applying Adobe Camera Raw to image layers. In Photoshop Elements MetaRaw provides automatic lens correction and chromatic aberration removal features for Adobe Camera Raw. Additionally MetaRaw includes its own raw converter, which has several advantages over Adobe Camera Raw.

For more information and a trial version visit the
MetaRaw Page

FILTERHUB 1.54 FOR WINDOWS

Support for the UI Scaling of Photoshop CC 2019

The previous FilterHub version showed too large fonts on low DPI screens in Photoshop CC 2019. The new versions fixes this and takes the new UI Scaling features of Photoshop CC 2019 into account.

FilterHub is a powerful replacement for the Filter menu of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and offers many advantages over it. It supports built-in filters (from the Filter, Adjustments and Enhance menus), filter plugins and third-party automation plugins. The FilterHub panel runs in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements under Windows and in older Photoshop versions under MacOS X.

For more information and a trial version visit the
FilterHub Page

POLL RESULTS

In what format(s) do you usually shoot digital photos?

The previous poll about the dominant digital photo format was answered by 332 people. Here are the results:

1. RAW only 28%
2. JPEG and RAW at the same time 23%
3. Mainly RAW, sometimes JPEG 19%
4. JPEG only 14%
5. Mainly JPEG, sometimes RAW 11%
6. Sometimes RAW, sometimes JPEG 5%
7. I don't know 1%

86% of all voters shoot RAW and 72% shoot JPEG. 47% mainly do RAW and 25% mainly JPEG. There are only 28% who record only RAWs and 14% who only do JPEGs. 26% use both most of the time. So there is a big overlap, which indicates that both formats have their dedicated use cases. People who like to edit their photos more extensively probably prefer RAW files and people who want result straight out of the camera likely favor JPEG files. As the JPEG engines of most cameras are very good today I think you can do nothing wrong with JPEGs in most cases and only really need RAW files for extreme light conditions and big prints.

For more poll results visit the
Resources section

NEW POLL

Which features do you often use in your image editing applications?

The latest poll asks you which features you often use in your image editing applications like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, PaintShop Pro etc. You can vote for up to 23 features like Actions, Adjustments Layers up to Text Layers and Vector Masks.

Please participate in this poll by visiting the
Main page...

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS

Here are the latest posts from The Plugin Site Forums:

Free Photoshop Alternatives

sophiesarah wrote: "Could you please, le me know, which is the best free photoshop alternative software. Where i can find all tools like adobe photoshop. Thanks in advance."
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Best Graphic Design Software

sophiesarah wrote: "Anyone please, let me know which is the best graphic design software for beginner designer?"
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Feel free to post comments or start a discussion topic at
The Plugin Site Forum

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS

FFT plugins, WebP Format, JPEGsnoop, ShiftN

Unfortunately some older FFT plugins are not available anymore, so I looked for new ones. The Fixel FFT Wizard (for Win/Mac) performs forward and backward Fast Fourier Transformations (FFT), which allows you to remove noise and textures from images.
The Pattern Suppressor package (for Win/Mac) consists of plugins and actions that remove regular repeating patterns from images with the help of FFT.
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The WebP file format plugin opens and saves 24-bit WebP images, which is Google's proposed format for web images.
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JPEGsnoop (for Windows) is a free application that examines and decodes the inner details of JPEG, MotionJPEG AVI and Photoshop files. It can also be used to analyze the source of an image to test its authenticity.
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The ShiftN application (for Windows) offers automatic correction of converging lines in photos. This convergence occurs e.g. when you point your camera towards a high building and are not able to move back further.
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For more free plugins and tools, please visit the
Resources section

GRAPHICS NEWS

Photoshop Elements 2019, Photoshop CC 2019, Artipic

The latest 2019 release of Photoshop Elements features a faster installation, new home screen, automatically created slideshows, a photo collage feature, new guided edits and HEIF support on the Mac. Facebook sharing has been removed. So unfortunately the new upgrade only offers features for absolute beginners. For new pro features have a look at ElementsXXL 6.
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Photoshop CC 2019 (or as Adobe likes to call it: "the October 2018 release") contains a new frame tool, improved content-aware fill, a new multiple Undo mode (which was added to Photoshop Elements years ago), double-click editing of text (again snitched from Photoshop Elements), transforming layers proportionally by default (You guessed it! From Photoshop Elements!), blend mode preview, symmetry mode, a new color panel, a new home screen and various other detail improvements.
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Artipic is an inexpensive image editing solution (for Windows), which offers layers, masks, selections, brushes, styles and batch processing.
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