Plugin Newsletter - February 2005

 

Contents
========

EDITORIAL

THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATE: PhotoWiz Contest, LightMachine Galleries Updated

DIGITAL PHOTO EFFECTS: Shadow/Highlight Plugins Reviewed

POLL RESULTS: How much would you pay for an electronic magazine with plugin tutorials?

NEW POLL: Which of the following commercial sharpening plugins do you use?

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Hourglass Warping, Interlace Effect, Plugin Problem, Cutting Out, Gradient Shape

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Rosenman, Mehdi, Flaming Pear, Cybia, Terragen, Edo, Photomatix

GRAPHICS NEWS: SiteGrinder, Little InkPot, Asiva, JupiterImages, StuffIt, REALVIZ, Wacom

PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE

ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE

 

 

Dear Reader,

Our main mailbox was flooded two times, so if you didn't get any reply from us to an email in the second January week, we probably never received your email. As a consequence we decided to shut down our info(at)thepluginsite.com email address, because that's where most spam and virus emails came from. So please don't try to contact us at this address any more. You can best reach us by using the email form at http://thepluginsite.com/about/contact.htm

We have also been overwhelmed by the success of our LightMachine product. It is currently our best selling product. There will probably be an update of LightMachine at the end of February and more PhotoWiz products are already in the pipeline.

It also worth mentioning that the Plugin Newsletter will have 100.000 readers very soon. The current issue was sent out to more than 97.000 people. The Plugin Newsletter was first published on September 1, 1998 with approx. 200-300 subscribers, so it is now in its 7th year of publication.

For more news please read below...

Sincerely,
Harald Heim
www.thepluginsite.com

 

 

THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATES
------------------------------------------------
We would like to apologize for the fact that the winners of the "Best Correction" topic of the PhotoWiz 2004 Contest haven't been selected yet. January was a busy month and the submissions of the current contest topic need even more time to evaluate than the previous topics. The results are expected around mid February. Thanks for your patience.

http://thepluginsite.com/gallery/photowiz2004/

The Highlight and Selective Color pages of LightMachine's Example Gallery has been updated with new images that demonstrate LightMachine's abilities. The Selective Color comparison page has been updated, too, with new tools and a new example. Finally a separate User Gallery has been added for LightMachine. Feel free to upload your LightMachine corrections there.

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

 

 

DIGITAL PHOTO EFFECTS
------------------------------------------------
Issue 21 on the Digital Photo Effects Magazine (formerly known as Digital Photography Techniques) brings you a 10-page special on fixing your photos: How to add colour to black and white pics, restore damaged photos and fix washed-out polaroids. Other highlights include how to master depth-of-field in Photoshop, create stunning reflections, make a scrapbook in Paint Shop Pro, change a photo's background in Elements and how to make dull photos sunny in Photoshop. In total there are more than 67 pages of imaging tips and tutorials.

The Review section contains reviews of the best budget cameras and looks at five shadow/highlight correction plugins. The cover CD features three hours of Photoshop lessons and two full products worth $70 including the full version of the Buzz Lite plugin.

http://www.dcmag.co.uk/news/article/mps/UAN/542/

 

 

POLL RESULTS: Plugin Magazine
------------------------------------------------
The latest poll with the question "How much would you pay for an electronic magazine with plugin tutorials?" produced the following results:

Any reasonable price if I like it. 30.5%
I am not sure. 11.8%

$1 per issue. 9.3%
$3 per issue 8.1%
$2 per issue 6.80%
$5 per issue 6.2%
$4 per issue 5.6%
$10 per issue 1.9%

I don't pay for such information. 16.1%
I'm not interested. 3.7%

Whereas 20% of all voters are not interested in such an offer, more than 40% trust us to price it reasonable or are not sure what they would pay. The rest of the voters would mostly pay something between $1 and $5, so the average price would be $3.

For more poll results, please visit the Know-How section:
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/

 

 

NEW POLL: Sharpening Plugins
------------------------------------------------
This time we are asking for which commercial sharpening plugin you use for making your photos crisp and popping. You can choose between nine major sharpening plugins and an "Other" option.

Please vote at the bottom of the page at

http://thepluginsite.com/

 

 

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS
------------------------------------------------
Here are the latest interesting posts from The Plugin Site Forums:

M.C.eggtooth wrote: "I have a shape that is like a 2d hourglass or an odd curl and i want to paste an image in photoshop over it and CAUSE THE IMAGE TO BE WARPED TO CONFORM TO THE SHAPE. "
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1384

screen-fx wrote: "I am looking for a mac/photoshop cs friendly interlacing software, any help will be appreciated"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1380

Hubbabub wrote: "I have 20 of the free plugins from Richard Rosenman ... In PSP704 they all show up in the plugin menu. But in PSP901 only 18 of the 20 show up in the plugin menu."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4279

bola wrote: "i´m shooting several objects with white background in order to cut out theses objects. the white of the background is a little magenta or cyan. is there any plug in or filter to obtain perfect white in this case?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1386

artwork asked: "is there a plugin that allows me to create paths or shapes and haeve the gradient follow the shape of the path/shape?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1309

For more interesting discussions please visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/

 

 

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
------------------------------------------------
Mr. Rosenman published a new freeware plugin (for Windows) called Vignette Corrector. It removes vignettes that are caused by a camera lens, but can also be used for some artistic effects.

http://www.richardrosenman.com/photoshop.htm

The free Mehdi Plugins (for Windows) have been updated, too, with a new plugin (for Windows) called Projection. Projection creates some artistic perspective effects. Four of the old plugins have been updated to version 1.1: Wavy Lab, Melt, Vibrations,
and Seamless Border. Don't forget that you need to enter the password "Mehdi" before you can unzip these plugins.

http://www.mehdiplugins.com/

Flaming Pear's Freebie Set (for Win/Mac) has been updated to Version 1.9 and now consists of 30 plugins. Apart from updates of many of these plugins, some new ones have also been added. The new Rule 30 plugin produces an abstract gray pattern, Veins transforms the image into color lines that look like blood veins, the three "Gray from" plugins produce B/W images and Pixel Trash produces noise effects. All plugins apply the effect without showing a dialog except Kyoto Color and Pixel Trash, which have a dialog with a few sliders.

http://www.flamingpear.com/download.html#vitriol

Cybia updated his Works and Fotomatic plugins (for Windows). The old plugins of each Works series have been combined to a single plugin, which lets you select the individual filters from a drop-down menu. The Fotomatic plugins have been updated to Version 1.3 with a few smaller dialog layout changes.

http://www.cybia.co.uk

Field Fixer for After Effects (for Win/Mac) from Frischluft allows you to correct field problems manually by selecting upper and lower field for the current frame. HSL Selection for AE offers the same selection method as Frischluft's commercial Flair and Lenscare products.

http://www.frischluft.com/free/free.php

Terragen 0.9 from PlanetSide is a scenery generator (for Win/Mac) for generating photorealistic landscape images and animations. Currently Terragen is free for personal non-commercial use. If you register it, you will be able to render images larger than 1280 x 960, use terrains larger than 513 x 513 and activate the enhanced anti-aliasing modes.

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

Edo is a free image compositing application (for Mac OS X) that lets you combine and manipulate video files, 3D sequences and still images using a powerful node graph visual interface. Edo can animate an image in three-dimensional space, trim and time-stretch video clips and offers many blending modes as well as high-quality Mitchell-Netravali and Lanczos image scaling.

http://www.anioni.com/edo/

Photomatix Basic (for Windows/MacOS X) creates high dynamic range images by combining two exposures of the same scene. These can then be saved as .hdr files. There are also two methods for combining photos: The Average method creates photorealistic results while the H&S Details method produces more or less unnatural looking images. There is also an enhanced commercial Pro version of Photomatix available.

http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html

 

 

GRAPHICS NEWS
------------------------------------------------
Produce Entire Websites with the SiteGrinder Plugin
You have to admit it's a novel idea to try to generate complete Web sites by using named layers in Photoshop. Demos available.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2795

Hand-drawn Rendering Styles Added to Little Ink Pot's Sketcher Plugin
The Sketcher plugin, which transforms digital images into natural sketches and illustrations, has been given three new transformation styles: Cellular Crosshatching, Pen and Ink and Granular. Windows only, demo available.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2796

Asiva Plugins Updated to version 2.2
Version 2.2 of Sharpen+Soften, Correct+Apply Color, Shift+Gain and Selection plugins have been released, providing improved color space support. For Mac and Windows, demos available.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2785

JupiterImages Launches New Image Service
JupiterImages has announced the launch of RightsProtectedImages.com, providing a new licensing model for the professional stock photography industry.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2784

JPEG Compression Breakthrough Debuts with StuffIt Deluxe 9.0 from Allume Systems
StuffIt Deluxe 9.0 for Windows will be the first product to incorporate the company's new image technology, which is said to compress JPEG images up to 30% without any loss of quality.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2778

REALVIZ Stitcher Express for Panorama Creation Launched
REALVIZ, a developer of panorama photo creation software, has launched Stitcher Express, a slimmed-down version of Stitcher 4.0. Mac and Win demos are available.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2774

Wacom Graphire3 Pen Tablets Include New Third-Party Graphics Software
Wacom Technology Corporation's Graphire3 pen tablets now include Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, Corel Painter Essentials 2 and nik Color Efex Pro 2 GE.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2776

For daily graphics news updates, visit
http://www.graphics.com

 

Back to the News Page