Buy. Download. Create. Get Photoshop CS4 now at the Adobe Store.
Try before you buy! Download any Adobe product for a free 30 day trial.
The Photoshop Blog offers the latest Photoshop news and software updates, Photoshop tips and tutorials, and random thoughts from graphic artist and Photoshop expert Jennifer Apple.
Photoshop Plugin Reviews From Jay Nelson - April 2008
April 22, 2008
Here are the latest Photoshop Plugin Reviews by Jay Nelson, the editor-in-chief of Design Tools Monthly.
Intuitive Image Fixing
onOne Software's PhotoTune 2.2 ($130, formerly 20/20 Color MD) is an image-enhancing and color-correcting plug-in for Photoshop that's remarkably easy to use. All you do is look at a series of side-by-side images, each time clicking on the one you think looks best. After you complete this 15-second process, it applies the minimum number of adjustments to make your image look like your final choice. You can work on your entire image, one layer, or a selection. In our tests, it increased both detail and color in shadow areas, balanced colors, and toned down glare. You can also save up to four "snapshots" of your adjustments at any point in the process to compare with subsequent adjustments, and include PhotoTune's adjustments in a Photoshop Action for batch processing. Version 2 adds support for 16-bit and Raw images. Version 2.2 lets you apply changes to a selection and includes SkinTune to accurately adjust skin colors.
Color Efex Pro 3
Nik Software's Color Efex Pro 3 adds up to 52 professional-quality photographic filters to Photoshop, with more than 250 unique effects. Amazingly, you can "paint" the filters onto your image with variable strength, using a Wacom pressure-sensitive pen and tablet. The basic filters let you apply traditional color lens effects to enhance skin tones, skies, and foliage, all without damaging the rest of the photograph. One amazing filter is the Sunshine filter, which transforms the dull colors in a picture taken on a cloudy day into the colors you would see on a bright summer day. Other filters include B/W Conversion, Classical Soft Focus, Vignette, Darken/Lighten Center, Fog, Remove Color Cast, Graduated Blue and other colors, Polarize, Silver and Gold Reflectors and White Neutralizer. The Stylizing filters include artistic effects such as Indian Summer, Midnight, Monday Morning, Old Photo (Color & B/W), Pastel, Solarization and many others. Among the new filters are Film Effects, Film Grain, and Glamour Glow. Versions are available priced from $100 to $300, with a 15-day free trial.
Brush On Detail
Pixel Vistas' PhotoLift ($40) is a plug-in for Photoshop that is shockingly effective at increasing detail and contrast in areas of interest. You can use it on a selection, or brush it on interactively. We encourage you to roll your mouse over the samples at their website.
Recolor Fabrics and Products
If you have a project where you need to change the color of many items, such as articles of clothing, products, etc., Clicdesign's ColorVision ($350) can save you hours and hours. This plug-in for Photoshop maintains the original texture and feel of an item or fabric, without losing shading or details. You can use a standard Adobe color Swatches file to assign colors, or even let it generate new colors for you.
Kodak GEM Removes Blemishes
Kodak's Professional GEM Airbrush Plug-in 2.1 ($100) is a remarkable filter for Photoshop that lets you remove blemishes, spots, wrinkles, shadows and film grain from an entire image or from a selection. It works with 8-bit and 16-bit images, and magically preserves details such as hair, eyelashes and eyebrows. The technology is extremely advanced and the results are remarkable. You can download a trial version to test it for yourself.
Amazing Color Adjustments in Illustrator
If Adobe Illustrator is your preferred design tool, you may miss some of the creative capabilities available in Photoshop. Astute Graphics' Phantasm CS is a remarkable plug-in for Adobe Illustrator CS2/CS3 that adds color controls similar to Photoshop's: brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and levels and curves -- but you can use them on native Illustrator shapes and imported images. It also adds controls for invert, levels, shift to color, and overprint removal. All controls are available as both a Filter and a Live Effect, so that you can later edit or remove your changes. It's available in three versions ranging from $45 to $175. The "Designer" version adds halftone, duotone and other effects, while the "Studio" version adds industrial-strength output features such as previews for separations, overprints and ink coverage, and the ability to edit inline images.
AKVIS Enhancer
Akvis Enhancer 8 ($69) is a unique plug-in for Photoshop that pulls detail out of shadows and highlights. It can dramatically improve most photos, especially those with strong light behind your subject. Besides enhancing details in shadows and highlights, Enhancer can also improve details in a photo's midtone areas, making it an effective tool for sharpening an otherwise well-exposed photo. It's also extremely effective at removing the haze that sometimes covers a photo, which is usually the result of non-optimal camera settings. A fully functional, 10-day free trial is available.
Image Doctor 2
Alien Skin's Image Doctor 1 was a breakthrough plug-in for Photoshop. Now Image Doctor 2 is here ($199), and it improves the speed and quality of its results, and its interface. Image Doctor comprises several filters: Dust and Scratch Remover, JPEG Repair, Blemish Concealer, Skin Softener, and Smart Fill. These filters do what their names imply: restore rips, scratches, and dust in scans of old photos; repair overly compressed and blocky JPEG images, such as cell phone photos; remove unwanted objects from pictures with a seamless recreation of the nearby background; and retouch and soften skin areas by removing moles, birthmarks, scars, wrinkles, tattoos, pimples, and oily or splotchy skin patches. We've used them and they work beautifully.
A Unique Focus Tool
onOne Software's FocalPoint ($160) is a unique plug-in for Photoshop that lets you apply creative focusing effects to an image. You set the location of a "sweet spot" of focus and then control the amount and kind of blur, and then optionally lighten or darken the edges. Remarkably, you can tilt the plane of focus, much like a tilt-shift lens, or simply lighten or darken the areas outside the sweet spot, for a vignetting effect. Blur choices include a standard defocused look as well as a blur that simulates motion. You can save your favorite effects as presets for easy use later on, even as an Action on an entire folder of images. There's nothing else quite like it.
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | RSS feed | bookmark | comment
Photoshop CS4 & Photoshop CS4 Extended - Best Deals From Adobe
Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended feature a newly refined, tab-based interface in a single, integrated window, with self-adjusting panels arranged in docked groups. Automatically keeping tools well organized and away from your work area means you get greater efficiency, less clutter, and better results, faster than before.
Delivering all the features of Adobe Photoshop CS4 software, including the new Adjustments and Masks panels, Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended also provides breakthrough 3D editing and compositing power to paint directly on 3D models, create 3D animations, convert 2D images to 3D objects, and more; richer motion graphics editing; and more powerful and flexible image analysis and tracking. Learn more on our Photoshop CS4 Tutorials Page. To download the free trial, see details on our Photoshop CS4 Free Trial Download Page.
Find upgrade options and package deals at the Adobe USA Store. Teachers and students get special pricing at the Adobe Education Store. You can also buy in your country currency and language at the following Adobe International Stores:
Adobe United Kingdom | Adobe Germany | Adobe France | Adobe Eastern Europe
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium - Complete CS4 Bundle
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium software is the designer's dream toolkit for print, web, and mobile publishing. Creativity is rarely confined to one medium, so put your vector illustrations in motion, moving fluidly between Adobe Illustrator CS4 and Adobe Flash CS4 Professional. And use Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended to design and slice a web page for publishing with Adobe Dreamweaver CS4.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium combines essential tools for producing everything from professional page layouts to rich interactive experiences in a unified, intuitive environment. Also includes Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, Adobe InDesign CS4, plus Adobe Fireworks CS4.
Buy now or download the free trial at the Adobe USA Store, or buy in your country currency and language at the following Adobe International Stores:
Adobe United Kingdom | Adobe Germany | Adobe France | Adobe Eastern Europe
Exclusive onOne Software 10% Instant Discount Coupon
Enter our exclusive discount coupon code - PSSPPT06 - during the checkout process at onOne Software for an instant 10% discount on any onOne product. This includes Genuine Fractals and their amazing Photoshop Plug-In Suite.
onOne Software's Plug-In Suite combines full versions of six essential software tools — Genuine Fractals Print Pro, PhotoTools Pro, PhotoFrame Pro, Mask Pro, PhotoTune and FocalPoint — an affordable combination that includes everything a photographer needs to make their images look their best.
Why do you need plugins? Photoshop is an amazing image editing application that has forever changed graphic design and digital photographic editing, but like any tool, if you don't have time to fully learn it, you can't get the most out of it.
Plugins for Photoshop allow you to either do something that you cannot do with the features included in Photoshop or they allow you to do something easier, faster or better than you could do in Photoshop without the plug-in. Whether it is color correction, resizing, masking or creating an effect, you can find a Photoshop plug-in that can help you be more efficient with your time.
Did You Know You Could Create An Entire Website In Photoshop?
SiteGrinder Photoshop Plugin - Create Websites Instantly
There often seems to be a strict division of labor within the world of web design and development. Creative professionals tend to stick to the Photoshop domain, while those well-versed in scripting are left to the task of implementing their work. Indeed, the two realms are quite different from each other, to which any of us even vaguely familiar with either can easily attest.
Essentially, Photoshop is a no-holds-barred design studio, offering the artist a seemingly endless array of creative options. On the other hand, HTML, CSS, Java and the like follow strict rules of engagement, requiring the developer to take any number of esoteric concerns into consideration in order to ensure that designs are properly displayed on the web.
Turn Photoshop Into A Complete Web Design Tool
SiteGrinder seeks to bridge this gap between design and development. Basically, this program turns Photoshop into an easy-to-use and fully functional web design tool. With SiteGrinder, designers will now have the freedom to totally let their creativity loose and then, without skipping a beat, transfer their designs to the web. Bringing esthetic concerns together with more practical considerations, this program is an amazingly powerful tool that would make a fantastic addition to any web designer's bag of tricks.
Generate Your Web Pages Directly From Photoshop
By generating web pages directly from Photoshop, you'll be able to spend much more time on the creative end of the spectrum, since you'll know right off the bat how well particular designs will translate to the web. No more going back to the Photoshop drawing board after getting a phone call from your development team, telling you that what you had envisioned doesn't have a chance of being displayed on the web. You can immediately visually and interactively test your designs, which permits you to then make changes to either esthetics or functions while it's still relatively early on in the design process.
Pricing and Availability
Mac OS X and Windows versions of the SiteGrinder unlockable demo are available now via download. SiteGrinder can be ordered from Media Lab's online store.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Available At The Adobe Store
Adobe has announced the immediate availability of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 software, the photographer's essential toolbox for managing, adjusting and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. With new enhancements such as dual-monitor support, radical advances in non-destructive localized image correction, and streamlined search capabilities, Photoshop Lightroom 2 is a compelling upgrade that simplifies photography from shoot to finish. Visit the Adobe site to download a free 30 day Photoshop Lightroom trial free download.
As Adobe’s first application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Macintosh computers with Intel processors and Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit operating systems, Lightroom 2 also provides improved memory performance for dealing with large scale images. Find the latest Lightroom 2 tutorials on our Photoshop Lightroom 2 Tutorials page.
Photoshop CS4 Book - Photoshop CS4 Essential Skills - By Mark Galer And Philip Andrews
Brimming with beautiful pictures, Photoshop CS4 Essential Skills guides you through a project-based, progressive curriculum so that you can build all the essential skills to enhance photographs creatively and professionally with Photoshop CS4. If you are an aspiring professional or a student learning photography, digital imaging, or design graphics, you'll be amazed at the stunning results you can achieve. A DVD is included free.
The Essential Skills Photography Series from Focal Press uniquely offers a structured learning experience for photographers of all ages, with both the underlying theory and loads of invaluable 'how to' and real-life practice projects - all from the most talented photography practitioners/educators in the world.
Read 2 free sample chapters:
Skin Retouching Tips In Photoshop CS4
Transforming Smart Objects In Photoshop CS4
Find more Photoshop CS4 tutorials on our Photoshop CS4 Tutorials Page.
Find More Adobe Photoshop Books at Amazon.com
Find all the latest bestselling Photoshop books at discount prices at Amazon.com.
Photoshop CS3 Book - CS3 Essential Skills - By Mark Galer And Philip Andrews
Brimming with beautiful pictures, Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills guides you through a project-based, progressive curriculum so that you can build all the essential skills to enhance photographs creatively and professionally with Photoshop CS3. If you are an aspiring professional, enthusiastic amateur photographer, or a student learning photography, digital imaging, art and design, or design graphics, you'll be amazed at the stunning results you can achieve. A DVD is included free.
The Essential Skills Photography Series from Focal Press uniquely offers a structured learning experience for photographers of all ages, with both the underlying theory and loads of invaluable 'how to' and real-life practice projects - all from the most talented photography practitioners/educators in the world.
Read 2 free sample chapters:
Adjusting Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw CS3
Photoshop CS3 Tutorial High Dynamic Range
Special book offer - save 24%
Photoshop CS3: Essential Skills (Amazon.com - $28.08 - save 24%)
Exclusive 20% Discount On Select Total Training Products & Bundles
To redeem our exclusive discount coupon, use promotion code save20pss in your shopping cart. You could save hundreds of dollars. Use this special link to see the full offer.
Total Training for Adobe Photoshop
Learn Adobe Photoshop with 21 hours of interactive Adobe Photoshop tutorials. This is training for real-world situations and includes additional tips and techniques used by the pros.
View Sample Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash Pro Video Tutorials
Free Adobe Photoshop CS3 video tutorials
Free Adobe Photoshop CS2 video tutorials
Free Adobe Dreamweaver video tutorials
Free Adobe Flash Pro video tutorials
posted by Jennifer Apple | permalink | RSS feed | bookmark | comment
