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 Alien Skin’s Eye Candy Effects Collection includes full, retail versions of Eye Candy 5: Textures, Nature, Impact, Xenofex 2, and Snap Art. Create amazing chrome, fire, smoke, lightning, clouds, comics and dozens of other effects. With 54 filters and over 1000 one-click settings, you'll blast through your creative projects.
All of those who visit SoftwareEvals.com often know that we have been fans of Alien Skin plugins since they first started. In the earlier days of Adobe Photoshop 4, 5 and 6, Alien Skin was the savior to most of us graphic artists. They made repetitive tasks much easier with the Eye Candy filters, and we looked like creative geniuses.
Adobe has done a lot of work on their software, and have actually incorporated alternatives to some of the cool filters Alien Skin has been so good at designing. HOWEVER, we still use Alien Skin filters on a daily basis as they are still superior. Bevels and shadows on type have been remedied with Adobe’s layer styles, however, there are many times when the layer style isn’t appropriate for your needs. That is when Alien Skin’s great plugins come into play - plus Alien Skin goes much, much further.
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The Eye Candy Effects collection is a must for anyone  who works with Photoshop, or the other photo editing programs such as Adobe Elements, Corel Painter, and Adobe Fireworks. For compatibility with your photo editing program if you aren’t using Photoshop (we ask why not?) see www.alienskin.com.
The Collection is a compilation of what was in Eye Candy 4 with many improvements and additions, however the collection has broken down those features in to different collections.
Eye Candy Impact has the chrome, brushed metal, glass, bevels, shadows, backlight, and brushed metal to which Alien Skin users are accustomed, however they have been rewritten and updated to function with many more built-in options, presets and endless alterations. They have also added extrude, gradient glow, motion trail and super star
Eye Candy Nature features a host of natural effects including fire, smoke, rust, snow drift, icicles, corona, drip, ripples, squint and water drops. Each filter comes equipped with a bunch of presets, all of which are adjustable to suite your needs.
Eye Candy Textures is truly awesome, as it contains texture effects such as reptile skin (being true to their name), animal fur, brick wall, stone wall, wood, diamond plate, marble, swirl, texture noise, and weave. I love it for the reptile skin filter alone, as it adds a lot of fun to text, boxes and other shapes.
Xenofex 2 - we have been using this ever since it came out originally, and our favorites have always been flag, lightning and puzzle, but it also includes filters called baked earth, constellation, crumple, distress, electrify, little fluffy clouds, origami, rounded rectangle, shatter, shower door, stain, stamper and television, and we have used them all.
SnapArt ... This has got to be our all time favorite and Alien Skin has really done their homework with this filter. With it, you can take a fine photograph and using the filters, create an abstract painting or a plethora of other effects including color pencil, comic, impasto, pastel, pen and ink, pencil sketch, pointillism, stylized and watercolor. When applied to a photograph, you get a simulated painting that is truly awesome. When printed on canvas, it is tough to tell that you didn’t paint it. Impasto is my favorite, as its effect gives a good photograph the texture of a painting. The others work equally as well, and when compared to the work of Corel’s PaintShop, AlienSkin’s filters are much easier to use and the effects are just as good. Work smarter, not harder.
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 Alien Skin’s Exposure is a Godsend for those who scan old photos and negatives. With a ton of presets for black and white as well as color film, you can adjust old faded negatives or prints to their proper color balance, and those are infinitely adjustable as well. Controls for Grain, Focus, Tone and Color enable you to tweak that photo exactly as you want it to be. Other presets under the Settings tab include calotype, daguerrotype, infrafred, orthochromatic and cross-processing settings, all with adjustments too.
Old photos aren’t the only things to be processed with Exposure. New digital photos can be filtered to take on the appearance of old films, whatever the film may be. They have included nearly every type of film made throughout photography’s history. It is all very quick, precise and infinitely adjustable. Give it a try, you’ll love it.
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Alien Skin’s Blowup is their newest offering to take low resolution  photos and enlarge them, maintaining detail. Similar to their Image Doctor’s JPEG Repair, Blowup has gone further and creates four times (1600% area) enlargements from any image without jagged artifacts or halos. In some cases, BlowUp can enlarge up to six times (3600% area) without obvious artifacts. In our testing, we found some photos were better done with Blowup, but there were some which appeared better with Image Doctor. Image Doctor allows you to add grain to the level which the photograph can take on nearly a mezzotint effect, but BlowUp’s grain is more film-like. Blowup has settings to take a photo at its resolution and enter in specific sizes, including resolution for the new image, and will even do it on an entirely new Photoshop level preserving the original image.
One important difference of Blowup over all other Alien Skin plugins, it resides in the Automation menu (File>Automation>Alien Skin Blowup)
In our evaluation, having both Image Doctor and Blowup in your arsenal of tools is vital, as they do work differently and both have very important features.
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Companion to Optics Pro is the DxO FilmPack. Similar to the Alien Skin Exposure plugin in simulating old films, it also can be used in the same way, with scanned negatives and prints that are faded or color shifted, and with those that are still in good shape, as well as with new digital files where you want to simulate the film grains of the past. It works very well and would be a good addition to your tool arsenal. It works extremely well when you apply to a color shifted old neg or print, and with the myriad of choices of films, just trying each out will enable you to find the right effect.
Included in DxO FilmPack options are the ability to change the image with Color Positive, Color Neg, BW Neg and Cross Processing filters, and once you have chosen that alteration, you can change the Color Modes including contrast, and saturation. Under the Special button you’ll find the toning effects, including Black and White, Ferric Sulfate, Gold, Selenium, Sepia Terra and Gold and a generic Sepia. Other adjustments include the color profiles, intensity which can be dialed to a specific percentage, and the image size. This is an incredible plugin that can make you far more productive, and after all, you can’t have too many plugins.
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Extensis software have long been in our toolbox, our favorite being one they no longer offer, PhotoTools for Photosho p. However, Portfolio 8 is a wonderful digital asset catalog and manager that is faster than Adobe Bridge even in CSIII. They operate similarly, but Portfolio is more efficient. Extensis has updated the RAW file support in Portfolio 8 for both Windows, as well as added a new file filter that enables the Windows version of Portfolio to catalog Microsoft Word and Excel documents.
Support for the cataloging of RAW files from 22 additional digital cameras and digital backs, including newer models from Canon, Nikon and Leaf, is the main change in RAW Filter 3.0, a plug-in for Portfolio 8.
Dollar for Dollar, you can’t get better asset management - Portfolio 8 is easy to use and efficient . Give it a try ... you will like it. Also for online catalogues without having to program html, check out the Portfolio 8 Net Server.
Potrfolio 8.5 is coming out soon, be watching ...
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Most designers have a plethora of fonts, and in Windows, that can become a huge operational problem.  Suitcase for Windows provides the type of font management that Windows users need. It is the ideal add-on for Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator and QuarkXPress users who work with fonts daily, speeding your workflow and making your design applications more responsive and reliable. However, they haven’t got it working for Photoshop where much of our design work is performed, and that is a huge issue.
In order to use Suitcase properly, you must move the fonts you want managed from the Windows Font Folder to their own folder, and the fonts may not be duplicated in each folder, so if you want the same fonts in both folders, you need to install fonts with different names as in Arial, Helvetica, Arena. There may be slight variations, because they are not all alike, however, in many applications, it may not matter. You can rename them in the new folder to avoid this conflict without losing the exact typestyle, however this may cause problems with your service provider or printer.
It does load when your system is turned on, slowing down the system’s startup, but, depending upon how many fonts you put in the Suitcase folder, it isn’t a big deal. Activating individual fonts and font groups is quick and easy and very efficient.
Suitcase does have its pluses and minuses, but overall it is a highly effective font management system, and the best out there.
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 Alien Skin’s Image Doctor is a terrific tool to have in your toolbox. The most often used tool in Image Doctor is the JPEG repair, which enables you to pull a photo or graphic off of the web and resample it to make it printable in higher resolution and quality. You can even add grain to it to give a new effect. Works great.
The Scratch Remover works pretty good, as long as you don’t combine textures and colors. In solid areas and backgrounds, it works super. The Smart Fill will fill a selected area with texture from another part of the image. Spot Lifter is excellent in blending spots and scratches.
Alien Skin’s Splat includes a Border Stamp filter  with included images featuring flowers, food, and a variety of every day items. The Fill Stamp uses the same images, but fills an area with the items. Edges features a dot, ink spill, pixelated (crummy effect but may have a use somewhere), small tears and thick lines. All are adjustable to create the effect you want. A Frame filter includes frames made of wood with many choices from plain wood to elaborate frames, novelty, dover and geometric frames that are great for bordering areas in graphic projects. The Patchwork filter gives different effects to the image changing a continuous tone photo to a patterned one, and resurface which applies various surfaces to an image. Splat is a lot of fun to play with and has many useful production tools.
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FILTERS, FILTERS, FILTERS. PhotoShop Filters can make you dizzy, trying to figure out which one will be the best for your type of work fl ow. We have reviewed a good collection of filters from Andromeda and Auto FX and are just blown away by the depth of options they all give.
ANDROMEDA
Andromeda submitted six different filters for our review. Beginning with the Series 1 Photography Filters, while the interface is rather basic, the filters work well. The cMulti Circular Multiple Images filter is similar to the “on the lens” filters once used with film cameras that produce controlled kaleidoscopic effects. Both circular and square patterns are included. They can be softened with feathering for more effects. The sMulti Filter gives the same as above but with parallel lines, square areas or conbined.
The Designs filter includes a 2 & 3d like dimensional texture, mezzo screen texture, and mezzo grain texture. Remember the days in the darkroom doing double burns for mezzo effects? Dry off your hands and get on the computer, these are better.
The Diffract filter also works like those “on the camera” filters we all had stuffed into our camera bag, producing spectral rays on the image. It can be placed anywhere or everywhere, giving unlimited flexibility.
The Halo filter spreads out the bright points in a photo in any or all direction to create a halo effect. It does not work on the spread shadows into the bright areas.
The Prism filter is just that- it works like a prism on your lens, but works on the computer. The Star filter does just that, it can add one or more stars with 4, 8 or 16 points, adjustable arm lengths with background sun and halo effects.
The Rainbow filter is really slick for placing chromatic rainbows anywhere in an image with controls on density, arc and more. The Reflection filter makes it look as if the main portion of the image is reflected in a pool of water. There are ways to do this without the filter right in Photoshop, but for those who can’t figure it out, these are great.
Our most often used filter made by Andromeda is the Red Eye Pro filter, which makes getting red eye out of those pesky digital images a snap. You can go through a huge file in a matter of minutes.
Velocity adds speed to any image through selected highlight areas. Lens Doc includes fixes for distortion, perspective and rotation of the image. For those photos which paralax is a problem, this is the filter for you. It also corrects crooked images.
The ScatterLight Lenses series of filters include Dream Optics, Soft Focus, Soft Diffuser, Fog, Stars, and Fun Lenses which include dust, geo, liquid, multiple, stretch and wavy.
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DxO Optics Pro is a must for digital photographers. It can take an entire file of photographs, (most of us earn our living with portrait work of some kind, wedding, seniors, etc.) and features such as digital noise, under or over exposure, color and more are completed in batch for the entire shoot. The presets are incredible in their accuracy of analyzing a photograph, and then applying fixes that make them bounce. If you are a digital photographer, you need DxO Optics Pro. Below are features and links to the Dxo Optics website ... check it out.