Plugin Newsletter - July / August 2009

Contents
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EDITORIAL

PLUGIN GALAXY 2 FOR MACOS X: Including four free filters

POSTCARD CONTEST 2009: Your last chance to participate!

THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATE: Updated Plugin Commander Tutorial, Polls Page Updated

PLUGIN REVIEWS: Pixtivity Pro 2, FilterForge, Dynamic Auto-Painter

POLL RESULTS: What do you think of Lightroom's External Editors feature (from the Photo > Edit In menu) as a replacement for real plugins?

NEW POLL: For which of our plugins or tools would you like to see a major upgrade? Which of the following plugins would you like to have developed by The Plugin Site?

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Eye Candy 5 in PSP X2, SuperBladePro under Vista, Transparency Effect, Simulating Cokin Filters, Change Caption Font Size

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: FilterForge Freepack 1 & 2 for Mac, Optorsion & Vintage Screen, ChromAcute, FotoSketcher

GRAPHICS NEWS: Lumiere, AutoFX MTTC 2, Portrait Professional 9

PRODUCTS FROM THE PLUGIN SITE

ABOUT THE PLUGIN SITE

Dear Reader,

The Postcard Contest 2009 is slowly coming to an end. Many interesting postcards were already sent in. If you still want to participate and live in America or Australia, you should send your postcard within the next few days, to make sure that it will arrive by the end of August. For more information see below.

For this newsletter we prepared some new reviews, collected the latest free plugins and graphics news, prepared two new polls and some more. I hope you enjoy this issue.

Kind regards,
Harald Heim

www.thepluginsite.com

PLUGIN GALAXY 2 FOR MACOS X: Including four free filters
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We have finally released Version 2 of Plugin Galaxy for MacOS X. It is available as an universal binary that works natively on Intel-Macs and a Standard version for older versions of Photoshop and Elements. The 21 plugins of the previous version were combined into one plugin with a resizable dialog. There is also a Windows version of Plugin Galaxy 2.

Plugin Galaxy 2 creates special effects and enhances images with the help of more than 160 basic effects. The new Layers and Blend features let you apply multiple effects to the image in one session and create sophisticated effect combinations that were not possible before. Ten new effects, many new effect features and 400 presets are included. The new Play button generates random slider values, which are displayed as preview animations. Version 2 also renders more than two times faster.

The demo version of Plugin Galaxy 2 applies a watermark. But if you only use the Fusion-PopArt or Zoom filters there will be no watermark. So you can use these four filters freely. Same with the Windows version.

For more information visit
http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/plugingalaxy/

POSTCARD CONTEST 2009: Your last chance to participate!
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The Postcard Contest has been running for more than 4 months now and we have received more than 200 postcards from almost 60 people so far. Three people even sent us up to 30 postcards. With 20 prices available chances of winning something are probably better than with any other contest that is running at the moment. You just need to show a little bit of creativity!

So if you still want to participate, please hurry. The deadline for arriving postcards is the end of August. To be on the safe side, you should put your postcard in the postbox as soon as possible.

20 winners will be chosen on September 3, 4 or 5 by a jury of three professional designers and photographers. The 20 winning postcards and probably some more of the sent-in postcards will be exhibited in the Museum of Communications in Nuremberg, Germany, starting October 30 and running until mid December. Not only postcards from the contest will be shown there, but also postcards written by visitors of a previous exhibition as well as postcards of Nuremberg done by various photographers including myself. Photos of the exhibition will be posted on the The Plugin Site.

We are looking forward to receive more interesting cards! Especially if you are one of the 360 people who requested participation but have not send a postcard yet.

For more details see the contest pages at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/gallery/postcard/

THE PLUGIN SITE UPDATE: Updated Plugin Commander Tutorial, Polls Page Updated
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Many people do still use the old Filter Factory plugins and many Filter Factory distributions do not contain at least one of the necessary .dll files, people still have problems making them run. Years ago I wrote a tutorial about solving the problem. Now with Vista64 the system folder name has changed, so the tutorial needed to be updated.

http://www.thepluginsite.com/products/picopro/tutorials/makework.htm

The Polls 2008 page was updated with newer poll results and a new Polls 2009 page was added with the poll results of this year.

http://www.thepluginsite.com/knowhow/polls2009.htm
http://www.thepluginsite.com/knowhow/polls2008.htm

PLUGIN REVIEWS: Pixtivity Pro 2, FilterForge, Dynamic Auto-Painter
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This month our reviewers tested three products from Auto FX, Mediachance and FilterForge.

Robert van de Voort reviewed Pixtivity Pro 2. He writes: "Auto Fx has with this program Pixtivity aimed at the larger audience that you possibly will find on Twitter, Facebook and the like... It offers fun, artistic presentations, some high-tech looking presentations like showing your images on an iPod!!!It is definitely more artistic and creative than commercial. Notwithstanding that aspect of it, I have been able to find simple and effective professional frames or presentation methods to present a commercial looking photographic assignment or model portfolio."

http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=53

Roberto Muscia wrote an extensive review of FilterForge. He concludes that "the simpler FilterForge Editions are an amazing value for money for those who like to use a wide diversity of high quality effect filters in their workflow. And for people who are interested in creating their own filters ... the Standard and Pro Editions are an easy, fun, effective window to that goal."

http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=55

Kay M Kuhnlein became addicted to watching Dynamic Auto-Paint from Mediachance create paintings in real-time. He is amazed that it can create wall-sized paintings from small thumbnails. Read more and see some examples of it at

http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=56

If you own a certain plugin, you are welcome to post your own review at the following URL. If you want to read some more reviews from other people please also visit

http://thepluginsite.com/reviews/

POLL RESULTS: What do you think of Lightroom's external editor feature (from the Photo > Edit In menu) as a replacement for real plugins?
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The last poll was probably the poll with the least participation we have ever had: only 62 voters. Anyway here are the results:

1. I do not use it. If I need to use Photoshop plugins, I rather edit my photos in Photoshop or another application than in Lightroom. 37%
2. I have no problem with it. I often use the external editor feature to apply Photoshop plugins to my images in Lightroom. 29%
3. I sometimes use the external editor feature in Lightroom, but I am not enthusiastic about it. 23%
4. I do not need Lightroom's external editor feature, because I do not need to apply Photoshop plugins. 10%
5. I only use standalone versions of Photoshop plugins with Lightroom's external editor feature. 2%

52% use the external editor feature of Lightroom to apply Photoshop plugins, although 23% are not absolutely pleased with this solution. Another 37% rather edit their images in Photoshop if they need to use Photoshop plugins. So with only 1/3 of all users liking the external editor feature in Lightroom, 1/4 seeing it as a temporary solution and more than 1/3 disliking it, it does seem to be something to be improved in future Lightroom editions.

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

NEW POLL: For which of our plugins or tools would you like to see a major upgrade? Which of the following plugins would you like to have developed by The Plugin Site?
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This time we decided to put two polls online. Both concern The Plugin Site and our plugins. First of all, we would like to hear for which of our products you want to see a major upgrade. And secondly, we want to know what new plugin you want to see from us next.

Both polls let you vote for multiple items, but please narrow it down to as few choices as possible for a clear result. Thanks!

Please vote at the bottom of the page at
http://www.thepluginsite.com/

THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Eye Candy 5 in PSP X2, SuperBladePro under Vista, Transparency Effect, Simulating Cokin Filters, Change Caption Font Size
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Here are some posts from The Plugin Site Forums:

Eye Candy 5 in PSP X2
lacynicks wrote: "I have downloaded and installed Eye Candy 5, but it will not show up in PSPX2 Effects>Plugins. I have Vista on my computer. Any ideas about why this is happening. I have Eye Candy 3 and Eye Candy 4000, which work okay."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3307

SuperBladePro under Vista
Ron Shaw wrote: "Used SuperBladePro (SBP) on my previous Dell XP with no problems. On new Acer Vista machine SBP crashes when I try to launch in PSP, Corel PP, Xara Extreme, and Adobe Elements 3. I get no help from Flaming Pear or Kagi. I have MSVCRT 10.dll installed. Any help would be greatly appreciated."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3308

Transparency Effect
wife-i wrote: "I am in need of a plugin for creating transparent effects like the below ones. Can anyone suggest some plugins to achieve these effects ?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3231

Simulating Cokin Filters
Don wrote: "Can any one tell me how to mimic Cokin vari-colour filters. As in their filter numbers 170 through 173."
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3267

Change Caption Font Size
swannie wrote: "Photoshop Elements & allows caption font size of only 9. Is there any way of changing this via a plugin or other application perhaps ? Do other versions of Photoshop have more flexibilty for this ?"
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3230

For more discussions and asking questions see
http://www.thepluginsite.com/forum/

FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS: FilterForge Freepack 1 & 2 for Mac, Optorsion & Vintage Screen, ChromAcute, FotoSketcher, Annotate!
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FilterForge released Freepack 1 & 2 for Mac OS X. Each package contains 7 filters that produce metal texture effects or photo effects.

http://www.filterforge.com/download/

Island Mountain Graphics offers two plugins (for Windows) for download that are still in development. The Optorsion plugin creates optical distortion including chromatic aberration. The Vintage Screen plugin simulates the look of an old TV-set or black and white cathode ray video monitor. There are two other plugins mentioned on the web site, but not available for download.

http://www.img-graphic.de/english/plugins.html

ChromAcute is a free plugin for removing chromatic aberrations (color fringing) from digital photos. Recently a Mac version has been released and both the Windows and Mac version now support 16bit images.

http://www.chromacute.com/

FotoSketcher is a freeware program (for Windows) for automatically converting digital photos into art. It does not matter if you use a photo of a person, a house or a landscape. FotoSketcher turns them into a painting, a sketch or a drawing. it can also improve the original photo with tools, e.g enhance contrast, sharpen, simplify image, increase luminosity, color saturation and so on.

http://www.fotosketcher.com/

Annotate! (for Windows) by Nikonians lets you add text annotations and virtual crops in JPG images without altering the image data. You can also export the annotations and store them together with the image in a newly created JPG file, which can be rescaled to a certain image size. You need the Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 installed on your computer to run Annotate!.

http://www.nikonians.org/html/resources/software/annotate/annotate.html

GRAPHICS NEWS: Lumiere, AutoFX MTTC 2, Portrait Professional 9
-----------------------------------

Richard Rosenman created a Photoshop plugin (for Windows) called Lumiere capable of generating specular blooms, flared highlights and diffused glows. It processes the brighter areas of the image into glows. It also offers masking controls for isolated glows. An adjustable and resizable preview window provides progress, zoom, image fit, realtime operations and statistical information after each pass.

http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/

Version 2 of Mystical Tint Tone and Color (short MTTC 2) from Auto FX (for Win/Mac) is a suite of 60 filters. It includes portrait filters that improve skin, eyes, lips and hair and reshape facial features, lens filters that simulate graduated filters and polarizers, sharpening filters that add detail and clarity to images and HDR filters that enrich the color and tonal depth of photos. MTTC also offers a brush feature for selectively applying the filters. MTTC comes with over 300 presets that give the user a rapid start.

http://www.autofx.com/products/mttc/detail.html

Portrait Professional 9 is portrait airbrushing software (for Win/Mac) which includes a new ClearSkin automatic skin enhancing technology. It also lets you reshape different aspects of the face to make it slimmer or more attractive. Adjusting the lighting on the face to make it more flattering or remove hat shadows is also possible among many other things. The more expensive Studio version also includes a Photoshop plugin version of it.

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/

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