Plugins for Photoshop, Elements, Lightroom, PSP & others
Plugin Newsletter - July 2005
Contents
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EDITORIAL
PHOTO GALAXY 1600 RE-RELEASE
THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATE: Plugins Pages Updated, Polls 2005 Page
PLUG-TALK: Interview and Give-Away with FilterMeister Alex Hunter, nik
Give-Away Winners
DIGITAL PHOTO EFFECTS: Color Gradient Plugin Reviews, Rosenman Plugins Tutorials
POLL RESULTS: Number of Used Plugin Products
NEW POLL: Commercial Photo Effects Plugins
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Skin Paste, Restoring Documents, Pen & Ink
FX, Shape Transformation, New CS2 Features, Downsizing
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: Deep Paint, Fine Threshold, SimpelFilters, Gradient
Remover, ppLabCor, Picasa 2
GRAPHICS NEWS: MS Acrylic, Eye Candy 5 Impact, Siggraph 2005, SketchBook Pro, Adobe Security Issues, Survey
PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE
ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE
Dear Reader,
It was a great pleasure to do an interview with Alex Hunter, who created the FilterMeister tool. Many of the best freeware plugins were created with it and would probably not exist otherwise. The interview shows his great knowledge concerning computers, but he is also a kind, funny and very pleasant person. The way he deals with his chronic illness is admirable. See below for the link to the interview. Next time there will be an interview with Jeff Butterworth, the founder of Alienskin, which promises to be very interesting, too.
It is always surprising to see that at least one or two freeware plugins are released each month. Of course, I need to do some searching to find them, but sometimes I get a helpful hint from someone. So if you find a new and undiscovered star in the plugin universe, keep sending the news to me. As usual you can find information about the latest new plugins below.
Kindest Regards,
Harald Heim
http://www.thepluginsite.com
PHOTO GALAXY 1600 RE-RELEASE
------------------------------------------------
We have just remodeled our Photo Galaxy product series. The five CD volumes
of Photos Galaxy 1600 have been turned into two products called "Themes"
and "Textures" with 2000 photos each on 2 CDs. The price was
also reduced by 33%. We also discontinued Photo Galaxy 800, but the "Photo
Galaxy 2300 Textures" product remains the same.
As a result Photo Galaxy is now a collection of three products with more than 5000 royalty-free digital photos. The photos were taken between 2000 and 2003 in different places in England, Wales, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the USA. The available photos were chosen from a pool of more than 20,000 photos to assure high quality. The photos can be used royalty-free for commercial purposes, e.g. as material for graphics artwork or multimedia projects, as decoration for web sites and e-book covers, for creating greeting cards, brochures, flyers or other print products and many other things.
For more information and for downloading some sample
images please visit:
http://thepluginsite.com/products/photogalaxy/
THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATE
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The Free Plugins, Plugins by Category, Commercial Plugins and Filter Factory
Plugins pages in the Resources section of The Plugin Site have been updated
with new plugins.
http://www.thepluginsite.com/resources/
The Polls 2005 page was added. It contains the results of the monthly
polls that were conducted in 2005 so far.
http://www.thepluginsite.com/knowhow/
PLUG-TALK
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The third interview in the Plug-Talk series was conducted with Alex Hunter,
who created FilterMeister. FilterMeister is a tool for developing Photoshop
plugins and without it a lot of cool freeware and commercial plugins would
probably not be available now. Alex tells us about his past with Intel,
his love for garden gnomes and the future of FilterMeister. If you answer
a simple question you will be able to win three copies of FilterMeister.
http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/plug-talk/AlexHunter.htm
The winners of nik Give-Away have been chosen. Sheldon Buckman (Florida),
Hans Maerker (Germany) and Marie Burton (Texas) have won a copy of nik
Color Efex Pro 2 Standard. The answer to the give-away question "
How many years ago was nik Multimedia founded?" was 10 years. 30%
of all participants had it wrong. Someone even said 85 years. Please also
note that a photo of Nils Kokemohr has been added.
http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/plug-talk/NilsKokemohr.htm
DIGITAL PHOTO EFFECTS
------------------------------------------------
Issue 27 of the Digital Photo Effects magazine marks two changes: A new
look with a larger font and new layout elements were introduced, which
make it more reader-friendly. Additionally support for Paint Shop Pro
was dropped, because only 2% of all readers seem to use PSP. This means
that Digital Photo Effects will only contain tutorials for Photoshop and
Elements from now on.
The main project of issue 27 deals with getting perfect skies with Photoshop. You get to know how to replace skies, create amazing sunsets and transform your landscapes. A new series of beginner guides focuses on specific tools in Photoshop and Elements. Other tutorials show how to enhance macro shots, blend bark and skin to make a wood man, add friends and family to a B-movie poster and produce summer haze and sunny saturation. All in all, Digital Photo Effects contains 34 photo projects, two hours of video guides, more than 60 free pictures and MontagePlus from Serif on the cover CD.
My Essential Plugins column reviews three color gradient plugins and chooses the best plugin for this task. My other Plugin Guide column shows how to create glow, lens correction and surreal effects with the free Rosenman Plugins.
http://www.dcmag.co.uk/news/article/mps/UAN/633/
POLL RESULTS
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219 people voted in the latest poll about "How many plugin products
do you use more or less regularily?". Here are the results:
1. 3 or 4 plugins (51) 23.29%
2. 5 to 10 plugins (50) 22.83%
3. Up to 20 plugins (44) 20.09%
4. Up to 50 plugins (21) 9.59%
5. 1 or 2 plugins (19) 8.68%
6. Too many to count them. (12) 5.48%
7. More than 100 plugins (9) 4.11%
8. My graphics tool doesn't support plugins. (7) 3.20%
9. Up to 100 plugins (4) 1.83%
10. I don't need any plugins. (2) 0.91%
To sum it up almost 46% of all people use 3 to10 plugin products and 66%
of all people use 3 to 20 plugins. 20% of all people use 20 or more plugins,
almost 9% use only one or two plugins and the rest of 4% use no plugins.
The Plugin Site certainly attracts mainly people who are interested in
Photoshop plugins, so it is not surprising to have such a result. If the
poll would have been conducted on another website, the amount of people
using no or only few plugins would have certainly been higher.
For more poll results, please visit the Know-How section at
http://thepluginsite.com/knowhow/
NEW POLL
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Our latest poll asks "Which of these commercial photo effects plugins
do you like best?" and gives you nine choices plus 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:
Jay wrote: "... I heard there is plugin in market
but i don't know name. ... If someone face has any unwanted mark that
i can remove vith some one else skin (Skin Paste). Please let me know."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1624
David wrote: "I'm searching for plugings working
with scanned images of documents, usually old and with problems of conservation,
that is, that are not easily read because it has lost ink and things like
that. ... Any idea?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1634
Graham wrote: "I am looking for a free plugin
to Converting Photo's to Pen & Ink Drawing."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1649
Rilo asked: "I'm lookin for a ps-Plugin (not
nessecarily PS) to drag any kind of Picture selection into any kind of
shapes ... E.g. I have a rectangular selection and want do redraw it like
an arc (or anything else). ... In PS I dont even find the easiest Transformations
when it comes to organic shapes."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1653
latinsnake wrote: "About 6 maybe 8 months ago
I downloaded a plugin for PaintShopPro with a 15 day trial. I dont remember
the name of the plugin. I will post a work I did and maybe some one can
tell me what I used to make this?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1650
Mehdi wrote: "hi, i've just discovered that cs2
has a "smart sharpen" tool. i'm just not convinced by the results
...
noise is enhanced, halo can still appear ... i may be dumb ... also what
do you think about the noize reduction program ?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1631
hsegel wrote: "I have a large number of photgraphs
that are 2576 X 1932. I need to reduce them to about 250 pixels wide...
What is the best way to reduce these and have the best possible quality
in the end result?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1641
For more interesting discussions please visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS
------------------------------------------------
Right Hemisphere decided to discontinue their DeepPaint 2 product (for
Windows) and make it available for free. Deep Paint is a painting tool
that offers artistic photo-cloning, fully editable brush and canvas settings.
It simulates oil, acrylic and watercolor brushes. Deep Paint works as
a Photoshop plugin as well as standalone application.
To download it please go to:
http://www.download.com/Deep-Paint/3000-2191_4-10398243.html?tag=lst-2-7
For more information see:
http://www.righthemisphere.com/forum/announcement.php?forumid=50
The Mehdi plugin collection has been extended with a new plugin called
Fine Threshold. Unlike traditional threshold filters, Fine Threshold achieves
nice anti-aliased results. Fortunately, all Mehdi plugins are now delivered
in unencrypted zip files, which saves a lot of time.
http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/finethreshold.htm
Ralph Altmann, a German book author, offers four freeware plugins (for
Windows) on his web site. At the moment they are only available in German
language, but may be translated to English soon. To download them just
go to the four pages below and click on the link with the zip file. The
"SF Farbanzahl" plugin counts the number of colors in an image,
"RGB-Kanalmixer" and "Grauwertmixer" are enhanced
versions of the Channel Mixer in Photoshop and finally "Farbraumkonverter"
lets you convert an image between various color spaces. All four plugins
are easy to use, even if you don't know German.
http://www.simpelfilter.de/analyse/farbzahl.html
http://www.simpelfilter.de/bildbearbeitung/farbmixer.html
http://www.simpelfilter.de/bildbearbeitung/graumixer.html
http://www.simpelfilter.de/bildbearbeitung/konvertierung.html
Rob Miller now also offers a Gradient Remover plugin (for Windows) in
addition to his Vignetting Remover. As its name says Gradient Remover
helps to remove unwanted background gradients in images. It is meant for
astronomical images, but it also works on normal photos. A downloadable
tutorial for the plugin is also available. The author requests a donation
of at least $5 for his web hosting costs.
http://www.atm-international.com/Astrophotos/photoshop_plugins.htm
ppLabCor (for Windows) is a special purpose plugin to correct a bug in
the current version of ColorLab* that causes Lab TIFFs generated from
data files to have wrong colors.
http://www.photo-plugins.com/Plugins/Plugins/
Google offers Picasa 2 (for Windows), a free photo management software
for organizing, editing and sharing digital pictures. It automatically
locates all your pictures and sorts them into visual albums organized
by date with logical folder names.
http://www.picasa.com/
GRAPHICS NEWS
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Graphics News from Graphics.com
Microsoft Provides Open Beta of New Windows Graphics
Application Codenamed Acrylic, the new application is an extension of
the Expression application that Microsoft purchased from Creature House
in 2003.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2958
Alien Skin Announces Eye Candy 5: Impact
This collection of ten seamless texture generators for Mac and Win Photoshop-compatible
apps is the third in a series of upgrades to EyeCandy 4000.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2956
Special Sessions Announced for SIGGRAPH 2005 Conference
The conference, to be held in Los Angeles July 31 to August 4, is expected
to attract nearly 30,000 graphics and interactive technology professionals.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2960
Alias Updates SketchBook Pro for Tablets
The first full-feature release since its introduction in 2001, SketchBook
Pro 2 for Mac and Windows adds functionality with creatives in mind.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2959
Adobe Issues Security Update for Windows Creative
Suite Products
Adobe is advising those who are using Photoshop CS, Creative Suite or
Premiere Pro 1.5 to download and install a security update.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2952
Surveys Signal Growth in Salaries and Jobs for Creatives
With the economy finally picking up steam, two recent surveys devoted
to the creative services sector point to better times ahead.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2964
For daily graphics news updates, visit
http://www.Graphics.com