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Plugin Newsletter - April / May 2011
CONTENTS
THE PLUGIN SITE PANEL 1.06: Support for NoiseControl PLUGIN GALAXY FOR AE: Special offer with 50% reduced price PHOTOWIZ STUFF: Interview and Example Images
NEW POLLS: Which operating system do you use for processing images? What kind of CPU do you use? THE DISCUSSION FORUMS: Missing Plugin Support in Corel Painter 12, Turning B&W to Colour, Color Shift Solution for FocalBlade
GRAPHICS NEWS: PSP X3 Service Packs, Photoshop CS5 12.0.4, Lightroom/Camera Raw Updates, Super Snap & Urban Graphic, Creative Software Review Magazine, Graphics.com May Challenge
Dear Reader, Sorry for the delayed release of this newsletter issue. The main reason was the work on our new NoiseControl plugin, which took longer than expected, but unfortunately there was also a hard drive failure on our main computer, which cost a lot of time. I know, there is already a wide range of existing noise reduction tools, but I think NoiseControl has something unprecedented to offer, because we avoided the shortcomings of available tools. NoiseControl offers various methods for achieving a good result and provides full control over all aspects of the process. Even better, it filters out noise very effectively, so that you do not need to strike a bad compromise by either keeping too much noise or smoothing away too many image details. NoiseControl also supports processing 16-bit/channel images in Paint Shop Pro X3. Corel released a Service Pack 3, which finally allows Photoshop Plugins to work on 16-bit images. Although they needed many years for adding this simple feature, they implemented it wrongly, which means that you may get ugly artifacts depending on the used image and plugin. In anticipation that it may take months or even years again until this bug is fixed by Corel we adjusted NoiseControl to work around it. We will soon update our other plugins with this fix. See the Graphics News section below for a download link for the PSP X3 service packs. Speaking of Corel, there are bad news about
the plugin support in Painter 12. See the Discussion
Forum section below.
NOISECONTROL 1.0 FOR WINDOWS New noise reduction plugin After almost three years here is a brand new image processing product from The Plugin Site. It is called NoiseControl and removes image noise as well as other artifacts while keeping image edges and details intact. At the same time it applies sophisticated sharpening without amplifying noise. It is able to achieve a superior detail/noise ratio by keeping indispensable details while filtering noise. For best results it internally operates with 16-bit and 32-bit precision, even when processing 8-bit images. NoiseControl offers two methods for automatically choosing effective denoising parameters: The Auto Sample feature finds and evaluates a noise sample, a uniform image area without details, whereas the Auto Preset feature chooses an existing preset according to the embedded EXIF data, mainly the camera model and ISO value.
There are also various possibilities to manually fine-tune the denoising settings. You can manually select a noise sample in the preview by drawing a sample area, visually compare split views with different settings and select one of them or you can manually adjust the denoising controls. The ability to view luminance and color channels separately is an additional aid for manual fine-tuning. In order to selectively adjusting the denoising for various image areas, NoiseControl allows you to alter the denoising parameters in shadows, midtones, highlights and nine color areas of the image. These selective adjustments can be performed with the help of sliders or by clicking on the appropriate image area with the eyedropper tool and dragging left or right. For further information, example images and a demo
version see
THE PLUGIN SITE PANEL 1.06 Support for NoiseControl Get the panel for free from
Special offer with 50% reduced
price
PHOTOWIZ STUFF Interview and Example Images B/W
Styler Examples Here is a short interview with me: FamousWhy.com
Interview I was also interviewed for a plugin article in the
German Foto Praxis magazine (Issue 14) and the British Photo Professional
magazine. Watch out for them.
POLL RESULTS What types of photo enhancement
plugins do you prefer? Poll 1 (285 voters): What types of photo enhancement
plugins do you prefer? Poll 2 (187 voters): Would you use the 64-bit version
of a commercial Photoshop plugin? Poll 3 (157 voters): Would you use the Standalone/Lightroom
version of a commercial Photoshop plugin? For more poll results please visit the
NEW POLLS Which operating system do you use for processing images? What kind of CPU do you use? This time there are two polls. One about your operating
system and one about your CPU. This kind of information helps plugin developers
to concentrate their development efforts on the main operating systems
and CPUs.
THE DISCUSSION FORUMS Missing Plugin Support in Corel Painter 12, Turning B&W to Colour, Color Shift Solution for FocalBlade Here are some interesting posts from The Plugin Site forum: Missing Plugin Support in
Corel Painter 12 Turning B&W to Colour Color Shift Solution for FocalBlade Feel free to post suggestions or start a discussion
topic at
FREE PLUGINS AND TOOLS Chasys Draw IES, Colour Surprise,
Hot Spot Studio, Imagelys Picture Styles Chasys Draw IES (for
Windows) is a suite of freeware applications. It contains a layer-based
image editor called Chasys Draw IES Artist with Photoshop plugin support,
animation, icon editing support and super-resolution via image stacking.
There is also an image file converter, an image viewer and a RAW camera
file processor. The whole suite takes advantage of multi-core processors,
touch-screens and pen-input devices. Cybia Colour Surprise (for Windows) randomizes
the colors in your images to create fun and experimental effects. It works
best with color-rich images and opens and saves jpg, png, gif, tif, pcx,
bmp and tga formats. Hot Spot Studio is a freeware toy (for Windows),
which lets you position spots on a canvas in order to create colorful
patterns and graphics. Imagelys Picture Styles is an application for
seamless texture creation (for Windows). It features layers, one thousand
presets and various effects. Unlike the free Lite edition the commercial
version lets you apply Photoshop plugins and is also available as a Photoshop
plugin. For more free plugins and tool, please visit the
GRAPHICS NEWS PSP X3 Service Packs, Photoshop CS5 12.0.4, Lightroom/Camera
Raw Updates, Super Snap & Urban Graphic, Creative Software Review
Magazine, Graphics.com May Challenge Corel offers four service
packs for Paint Shop Pro X3. Service Pack 3 finally lets you apply
Photoshop plugins to 16-bit/channel images. Warning 1: Please check the
images for artifacts if you do that. Warning 2: Under XP the service pack
installations corrupted our PSP installation, so we did not manage to
use them. No problem under Vista and 7. The Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 update enables specially
designed apps on tablets, smartphones and PCs to communicate with and
control Photoshop CS5. Adobe designed three new iPad apps called Nav,
Color Lava and Eazel, which are available on the App Store. Third party
developers are also able to design such apps with the new Photoshop
Touch SDK. Additionally some security, crash and performance problems
have been fixed. Adobe released Lightroom 3.4 and Camera
Raw 6.4. They provide RAW support for 13 new cameras including the
Canon EOS 600D/T3i and 1100D/T3, Nikon D5100 and Fujifilm X100 plus profiles
for more than 25 lenses. Cybia released two low-cost image effects applications
(for Windows). Super Snap adds a touch of retro colour with a selection
of styles that recreate a traditional 35mm film look. Urban Graphic
creates a flat-colour effect by reducing the amount of colors in a photo,
thereby achieving screen-printed style, pop art, graffiti style and cartoon
effects. Steve Upham, the guy behind Cybia, is now also publishing
a magazine called Creative Software Review. It contains reviews
of creative graphics software. Issue 1 takes a look at tools and plugins
that produce traditional media effects like drawings and paintings. The Graphics.com May challenge asks you to
creating an original work from a series of cloud images by May 31. The
winner receives a one-month Pixmac subscription, worth $199, and a T-shirt.
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Copyright (c) 2000 - 2009 by Harald Heim |
