Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - September 2007
Contents
========
EDITORIAL
PHOTOFREEBIES FOR MACOS X RELEASED
POLL RESULTS: Do you prefer skinned or standard dialogs for Photoshop
plugins?
NEW POLL: Which is your favorite RAW Converter?
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Red/Blue 3D effect, Photoshop Trends, Bend Effect, Reproducing A Background, Flaming Pears Problems, Masking Plugins for PSP7, PSP7 Layer Palette Problem
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Wire Pilot, Mehdi Plugins Updates, Martin Koch
Plugins, Raw Therapee, Photobie, ImageSorter
GRAPHICS NEWS: Paint Shop Pro X2, SensorKleen Pro & AutoMatting, Dfine 2, SuperResolution, Layer Splitter, ProEXR
PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE
ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE
Dear Reader,
Version 12 (X2) of Paint Shop Pro has been released a few days ago. Three quarters of a decade after layer styles were introduced to Photoshop they are now available in PSP. Initially layer styles were added to Photoshop 5.5 (or was it 6.0?) as a reaction to a similar feature in Fireworks. However, Corel was faster with the Express Lab in PSP X2, which looks like a simplified clone of Photoshop CS3's Camera RAW. So PSP now has its own built-in full-featured RAW converter.
I hope Corel managed to add 16bit image support for Photoshop plugins in PSP this time. It would be a shame if it would still not be possible to use Photoshop plugins to process 16bit images in PSP X2, although native PSP filters can do that since Version X. If anyone finds out, please let me know.
Speaking of RAW converters, please don't miss our latest poll about them. I suspect that Photoshop is now people's favorite RAW converter after Adobe buried RAWShooter. But it may still be interesting to see how the others do, including Adobe's own Lightroom. When preparing the poll I came across a feature-rich freeware RAW converter called Raw Therapee, which may partially fill the gap that RAWShooter Essentials left behind. See below for more details.
If you use a Mac, please have a look at the new MacOS X version of our PhotoFreebies plugins. They have a few limits compared to the Windows version, but should still be useful for certain photo effects.
Kind regards,
Harald Heim
www.thepluginsite.com
PHOTOFREEBIES FOR MACOS X RELEASED
------------------------------------------------
The free PhotoFreebies plugins are now available for MacOS X. They include
effects like sepia, saturation gradients, b/w conversion, color space
transformation and more. Some of them have a dialog with adjustable controls
whereas others are applied instantly without displaying a dialog.
There are two versions: A PowerPC version, which runs in most applications, and a CS3 version, which can be used natively in Photoshop CS3 on Intel-Macs as well as PowerPC-Macs. The Mac version only supports 8bit RGB images and does not contain the RGB2HSL and HSL2RGB plugins.
For more information and a free download please visit
http://thepluginsite.com/products/photowiz/
POLL RESULTS: Do you prefer skinned or standard dialogs
for Photoshop plugins?
------------------------------------------------
Here are the results of 107 votes of the poll about skinned and standard
dialogs for Photoshop plugins:
1. I prefer standard dialogs for most plugins. 37%
2. I always prefer standard dialogs. 30%
3. It depends on the type of plugin. 14%
4. I prefer dialog skins for most plugins. 11%
5. I always prefer dialog skins. 7%
Two thirds of all votes prefer standard dialogs for Photoshop plugins,
14% make it dependent on the plugin type and 18% prefer skinned dialogs.
For more poll results, please visit the Know-How section
at
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/
NEW POLL: Which is your favorite RAW Converter?
------------------------------------------------
At the end of 2005 we already had a poll about RAW converters, but several
things have changed since then. RAWShooter is not available anymore and
Lightroom as well as other new RAW tools appeared. The poll lets you choose
between 19 RAW conversion programs and an "Other" item.
You can cast your vote at the bottom of the page at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Red/Blue 3D effect, Photoshop Trends, Bend Effect,
Reproducing A Background, Flaming Pears Problems, Masking Plugins for
PSP7, PSP7 Layer Palette Problem
------------------------------------------------
Here are some of the latest interesting posts on The Plugin Site Discussion
Forums:
Red/Blue 3D effect
OgtheSamurai wrote: "I used to have a plugin that created the kind
of 3D effect that works with those old 3D, red and blue lensed glasses
... Does anyone here know what plugin or what plugins set that could be
(in)?"
http://thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2742
Photoshop Trends
mobileman wrote: "I, as a student of digital designing, studying
photoshop, would like to up to date my knowledge,
so, what is the current trend in photoshop works?"
http://thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2755&highlight=
Bend Effect
vikenpsp asked: "Does anyone know of a plugin or filter that will
bend photos? I found this ... but it does not apply to Paint Shop Pro."
http://thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2744&highlight=
Reproducing A Background
dfsumner wrote: "I was playing with the different filters and plugins
that I had loaded on my computer about 8 months ago and came up with this
background. I would like to do some more like this in different colors
but can not recreate it and do not know what plugin or filter I used.
Can anyone help me???"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2736
Flaming Pears Problems
etherize wrote: "I don't have many plug-ins (maybe 5 total) and most
are Flaming Pears. I really like them, but I have a serious problem with
them freezing up. I use them in PSE5 ... I've written to Flaming Pear
but received no response. Has anyone else experienced this and solved
the problem?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2732
Masking Plugins for PSP7
gunsan wrote: "I still use PSP7.4 as my working horse. I know it
so well and like it better than the newer versions. Now I wonder if there
is a god cut-out filter that still can run on PSP7. All of the new good
ones just are Photoshop compatible"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2729
chaitereye wrote: "I'm still using PS7 but suddenly
I can't see any of the layers in the layer palette. I know they are there
but not showing up. How can I correct this problem?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2724
PSP7 Layer Palette Problem
NyghtBloom wrote: "I am going crazy! I have PSP XI (and love it!)
A few months agao, I installed Mura Meisters Copies filter and it has
been working fine, until last night! I went to apply it and it caused
my PSP to shut down!! ... I do have Windows Vista, but not sure if that
is the problem because when I first downloaded MM Copies it worked! ...
Can anyone help me?????"
http://thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8031#8031
For more interesting discussions and posting your own comments or questions
please visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Wire Pilot, Mehdi Plugins Updates, Martin Koch
Plugins, Raw Therapee, Photobie, ImageSorter
------------------------------------------------
Wire Pilot is a free plugin and application (for Windows) for retouching wires, posts, antennas and other unwanted linear objects from a photo.
http://www.colorpilot.com/wire.html
Version 2 of the Seamless Border plugin of the Mehdi plugins (for Windows)
became available. It now offers three join modes. Additionally all Mehdi
plugins were updated for Windows Vista compatibility.
http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/
Martin Koch updated his Dither and Line plugins (for Windows). They now
offer a few more features for dithering and line screening. Enhanced versions
of the plugins can be purchased.
http://verlagmartinkoch.at/software/
Raw Therapee (for Windows) is a free RAW converter with many features.
It offers a thumbnail view, many photo enhancement tools and ICC based
color management. It outputs JPEG, PNG and TIFF files.
http://www.rawtherapee.com/
Photobie is a complete image editing software (for Windows). It supports
Photoshop plugins and offers layers, painting tools, a screen capture
tool, a gif animation tool, a photo framing tool, an image browser with
batch resize/rotate and slide show features. It requires .NET framework
1.0 or higher to be installed.
http://www.photobie.com/
ImageSorter 2 (for Windows) is an image browsing application, which automatically
sorts images by the similarity of their color layouts. Similar images
in a folder are placed close to each other. A Mac OS X version is to be
released soon.
http://mmk.f4.fhtw-berlin.de/?page_id=40/lang-pref/en/
GRAPHICS NEWS: Paint Shop Pro X2, SensorKleen Pro
& AutoMatting, Dfine 2, SuperResolution, Layer Splitter, ProEXR
------------------------------------------------
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 was recently released by Corel. The new Express Lab mode enables users to view and edit dozens of photos at the same time and offers a wide range of automatic as well as manual photo adjustments. It features a new graphite workspace, a HDR Photo Merge tool, several makeover tools, layer styles, visible watermark features, an Auto-Preserve Originals function, a Save for Office option, dynamic language switching and much more. The package includes video tutorials, Nik plugins and a special version of MediaOne Plus.
http://www.corel.com/paintshopprophoto/
Image Trends announced SensorKleen Pro, a Windows application that automatically
erases dust and debris in a set of DSLR camera images, and AutoMatting,
another Windows application for automatically adding artistic borders.
http://www.imagetrendsinc.com/
Nik Software announced Version 2 of its noise reduction tool Dfine (for Win/Mac). It contains the U Point technology for selective editing control, a new user interface and an automatic camera profiling system.
http://www.niksoftware.com/
SuperResolution, a new plugin for After Effects and Premiere Pro, promises
to upsize your videos with higher quality than other known methods by
using image data from neighbor frames.
http://www.thedeemon.com/super_resolution/
The Layer Splitter plugin (for Mac) creates separate PSD, TIFF, PICT or
Targa file from each layer in a Photoshop or Illustrator document. It
supports transparency, 16-bit and 32-bit images and unicode file names.
A Windows version is under development.
http://www.metadma.com/LayerSplitter.html
Fnord released the commercial ProEXR plugin (for Win/Mac), which adds
support for the OpenEXR format in Photoshop. Included is also a collection
of four open source plugins that support OpenEXR files in After Effects.
http://www.fnordware.com/ProEXR/
