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Free Photoshop-compatible Plugins


For Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint

The Plugin Site has rolled out the first version of the new PhotoFreebies plug-in for Photoshop-compatible photo editing. This will be the third product in their ever-popular PhotoWiz plug-in series. PhotoFreebies is a collection of 10 Photoshop-compatible plugins for performing useful photo manipulations and effects. They can be used with dozens of different image editing applications e.g. Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, PhotoImpact and many others.

The intention was to create small and easy-to-use utilities for image manipulation. The PhotoFreebies produce general effects that are needed -- but inconveniently reproducible in common graphics tools.

Features

The PhotoFreebies collections contains sepia effects, saturation gradients, b/w conversion, color space transformations and many more. All plugins can be used on 8bit and 16bit RGB images, except the Histo Fix plugin which only works on 8bit images. The Remove Transparency plugin on the other hand works in almost all image modes that are provided by Photoshop. Some of the plugins have a dialog with a zoomable preview and adjustable controls whereas others are applied instantly without displaying a dialog.

Plugin Descriptions

The Sepia plugin from PhotoFreebies lets you apply five sepia effects with the help of a combo box, a color slider and a Contrast Fix check box. The Desaturation Gradient plugin gradually desaturates the image in four possible directions. Luma Negative turns the image into a negative without changing the colors whereas the B/W plugin converts the image into a grayscale version, that comes closer to the original than currently provided methods. Histo Fix fixes the chopped histogram of a repeatedly filtered image by interpolating lost image information. It offers an option to regain 1/2 bit, 1 bit or 2 bit of information. The Remove Transparency plugin makes a transparent layer fully opaque again. Last, but not least there are also four plugins that transform RGB values into HSL or YCC values and back again without leaving RGB mode. That allows you to manipulate the images in color spaces that aren't provided by most image applications.

Availability & Requirements

PhotoFreebies is currently only available for Windows. A Macintosh version is planned. PhotoFreebies is freeware and can be downloaded now. The two other PhotoWiz products called ColorWasher and FocalBlade are commercial.

The Plugin Site is located in Nuremberg, Germany, and develops graphics, video and web software. We also created the Plugin Galaxy, Plugin Commander, HyperTyle, Edge & Frame Galaxy, HTML Shrinker, Harry's Filters and Photo Galaxy products. We co-produced Alpha Magic with Hollywood FX and Pinnacle and also co-develop the FilterMeister plugin development environment with AFH Systems. +49-911-868516

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CREDITS:
Reviewed by Fred Showker for DTG Magazine and the News-Serve Network. (C) 2004, all rights reserved. For republication permissions and credits press the "Contact" button below. First published in the January 2004 edition of DTG Magazine.

 

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