Some Useful Photoshop Plug-ins News & Views Software Review

By Michael Hendry Michael Hendry is director of publication services at TxR Global Technology Services. Originally published in News & Views January 2000 issue. Copyright 2000 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

If you've dabbled with any of the big three photo editing software (Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint, or Jasc Paint Shop Pro), you've undoubtedly toyed with "plug-ins"-filters that apply special effects to your picture. Whether you found any useful ones is another matter. Here are a couple that do have some useful functions. Xenofex Xenofex 1.0 ($129, www.alienskin.com) has some interesting effects if you actually develop artwork, such as for web site development or multimedia. It includes sixteen filters: Baked Earth, Constellation, Crumple, Distress, Electrify, Flag, Lightning, Little Fluffy Clouds, Origami, Puzzle, Rounded Rectangle, Shatter, Shower Door, Stain, Stamper, and Television. I don't have room to cover all of them here, but visit their web site to see examples of each. Some of the ones I found interesting are: Electrify and Lightning: Both add electrical effects that would be difficult to do by hand. Electrify gives you neat Frankenstein effects, while lightning is directional. Lightning can also create cracks in sidewalks, vines, tree limbs, and other naturally twisted objects. Flag: Applies wave distortion to simulate a waving flag. Handy for creating web banners and flag animations. Little Fluffy Clouds: Creates just what it says. I used this for a 3-D animation of the earth. Anyone who remembers the old Superman series knows how fake an earth looks without clouds. Before I mapped the earth texture to a sphere, I applied this filter, adjusted the controls so it was sunny over Philadelphia, and was set to go. Shatter: Breaks apart the image as if you are looking at it in a broken mirror. I haven't used this yet, but I'll think of something to do with it. Most effects have many controls and adjustments (see Figure 1) that give you a lot of creative possibilities. It's not cheap enough for most of us to get it just to play around with, but if you do artwork where you can use these types of artistic effects, than this set would be well worth it. (Note that Xenofex does not work in Corel Photo-Paint 9, only version 8. There is a fix on the Xenofex web site so it works with the latest versions of Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop). Series 3 Screen Filters Series 3 Screen Filters ($99, www.andromeda.com), could be a workhorse for technical communicators as a whole. These filters convert grayscale artwork or photographs to line art, using advanced screening techniques. This gives you fine control over the halftone process, rather than leaving it to the printer or the software. You can also create artistic effects such as woodcuts and engravings. For those of us that have to produce quality work on the office copier (between breakdowns!), this plug-in gives us more options and higher quality output. A note for those of you interested in embedded help: this filter provides an excellent example. It relies solely on a dynamic "helper" box, which provides help as you position the pointer over each control.

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Last updated: April 25, 2000 (mvh)