What's New in Digital Imaging Software?

PSA Journal, August, 2001 by Stanley Ashbrook

Genuine Fractals PrintPro is for photographers, graphic artists, and printing pros working in CMYK and other color spaces. If you want to output your work for four-color printing, this is for you.

Most of us who output our work to film recorders for slides and inkjet printers, working in RGB, would want Genuine Fractals 2.0. The output from my slide scanner, about 31 MB, will produce a good 11" X 14"; but by saving in Genuine Fractals, the file can be opened and enlarged to over 50 MB which makes a sharp 16" X 20".

If your input and output requirements are more modest, there is Genuine Fractals 2.0 LE for $49. It has 10MB input file maximum with a maximum output size of 64MB.

At the time of writing this article the Genuine Fractals product line was being sold by their creator Altamira, to LisardTech. If you want more information, go to this website: http:// 204.29.20.136/product.asp.

* Eye Candy 4000

Eye Candy by Alien Skin Software has long been a popular set of special-effect filters for Photoshop and other applications that accept plug-in compatible filters. Eye Candy 4000, the latest upgrade, offers 23 special effects filters.

There are five brand-new filters: Marble, Wood, Drip, Melt, and Corona. Eye Candy 4000 combines practical filters you'll use everyday like Bevel Boss, Shadowlab and Gradient Glow with stunning effects Like Chrome, Smoke and Fire. Powerful new features and sliders, including bevel and gradient editors and seamless tiling, make Eye Candy 4000 easier to use than ever. You can even trade your favorite settings with others.

More information on EyeCandy can be found at the Alien Skin Software website at http://www.alienskin.com.

* KPT[R] 6

One of my all-time favorite set of filters has been Kai Power Tools. It is now owned by Corel and KPT[R] 6 is the latest version. It is a collection of image filters that includes 10 plug-ins that extend and enhance the creative possibilities of Adobe Photoshop and compatible products.

Included are Goo, Equalizer, Projector, Gel, LensFlare, Turbulence, Materializer, Reaction, SceneBuilder and SkyEffects.

I have used them all, but the effects that I find most useful are Equalizer for sharpening, Sky Effects to pep up bland skies, and Projector to straighten the vertical lines in a photograph due to wide-angle lenses.

Equalizer includes three types of filters: Equalizer lets users control the amount of contrast for nine different pixel frequencies, Bounded Sharpen lets users transform blurry images, and Contrast Sharpen lets users modify the contrast of an image.

With the Sky Effects plug-in you add realistic (or unrealistic) skyscapes to images. You can control the sun, moon, cloud cover, haze, fog, and rainbows that appear in a skyscape. Sky Effects has several cloud layers that you can manipulate to give the illusion of depth to the sky. You can also control the color, density, and "lumpiness" of clouds; the color, position, and haze of the sun; the color, position, and glow of the moon; the intensity and position of a rainbow; and more.