Each month Design Tools Monthly reviews some of the best plug-ins and XTensions on the market. Most of the mentioned products can be purchased through The PowerXChange.
At the moment, the plug-in market is challenging for several reasons:
- Many users have not upgraded to QuarkXPress 5, and developers are not writing new XTensions for QX4.
- QuarkXPress 5 breaks XTensions created for QX3.
- Most XTensions and plug-ins will break in Mac OS X.
- Plug-ins written for Photoshop 6 will work with PS7, but only in the Classic environment. And many plug-ins have not yet been updated for PS7, let alone for PS7 in Mac OS X.
- The vast majority of graphic designers have not adopted InDesign or Mac OS X, so developers receive almost no immediate payback for their work.Stay tuned as we watch these developments.Here’s this month’s roundup of Photoshop plug-ins and QuarkXPress XTensions.Photoshop
- Free Dreamy Photo Plug-in
Dreamy Photo is a free Photoshop plug-in from Auto FX’s DreamSuite Series. It lets you add a soft, warm feel to an image. Get it at www.autofx.com/freeplugins/dreamy7.html
Auto FX
- Free Dreamy Photo Plug-in
- Doctor Your Images
Alien Skin’s Image Doctor ($129) is a plug-in for Photoshop that intelligently removes blemishes, objects, and JPEG compression artifacts, either throughout a document, or within a selection. We used it to remove a scratch, a wire, an unknown bright spot, and a person, with impressive results. We also successfully removed artifacts from a JPEG-compressed image. Image Doctor can be invaluable when all you have is a JPEG for your print project. Try it free for 30 days.
Alien Skin
- Reduce Noise in Digital Images
theimagingfactory’s Noise Reduction Pro ($99.95) is a plug-in for Photoshop that removes the noise in images produced by digital cameras, especially when shooting in low light. By adjusting its sliders, you can dial out the small random groups of strangely colored pixels in your image. They have a free full-featured 30-day trial version. The results are impressive.
theimagingfactory - Quick Answers in Photoshop
Kelby’s Notes ($19.95) is a plug-in for Photoshop 7 that puts the top 100 most-asked Photoshop “How do I?” questions in a menu. It works in Mac OS X or 9.1 or higher. Written by Scott Kelby, head dude at NAPP, PhotoshopWorld, Photoshop User magazine, and Mac Design magazine. Available at www.kelbysnotes.com. - Real Shadows in Photoshop
Andromeda Shadow Filter ($119) is a plug-in for Photoshop that creates realistic 3D shadows with edges that blur and soften with distance, just as real shadows do. You can create multiple shadows by using a virtual camera to pan around in 3D space to adjust multiple, movable lights and color filters. It can even create shadows that appear in three dimensions when viewed through 3D glasses!
Andromeda Software - Realistic Effects in Photoshop
Alien Skin’s Xenofex ($129) is a plug-in for Photoshop that creates 16 realistic special effects, such as lightning, constellations, stains, clouds, distress (for organic aging effects), and flag (for rippled surfaces).
Alien SkinQuarkXPress- Much Easier Style Sheet Updating
Xpedient’s Redefine Style Sheet ($50) is an XTension for QuarkXPress that lets you instantly change an existing style sheet to match any selected text. So, instead of redefining the existing style sheet manually (by tediously defining new properties in the Edit-> Style Sheets dialog box), you can simply select some text that looks the way you want it, and press a key combination to revise an existing style sheet.
Xpedient Corp.
- Much Easier Style Sheet Updating
- Add Up Numbers in QuarkXPress
Meadows Information Systems’ Math Grabber ($99) is an XTension for QuarkXPress that lets you drag a marquee around any column of numbers and perform a calculation, inserting the resulting values automatically. Use it to instantly calculate prices in foreign currencies, with specified precision.
Meadows Information Systems, a division of Banta Integrated Media Publishing Solutions - Import RTF into QuarkXPress
Techno Design’s RTF Import XT ($199) lets you import Rich Text Format (RTF) files into QuarkXPress 3.3 or 4.
Techno Design - Free QuarkXPress Image Enhancer
Free on Quark’s website: Enhance Preview XT Special Edition (EPXT-SE), from Koyosha Graphics. This XTension for QuarkXPress 4 lets you see a high-resolution preview of an imported photo on a QuarkXPress page, so no matter how much you zoom in, so you can accurately place items and text along image areas or clipping paths.
Quark Inc.; Koyosha GraphicsThis article courtesy of Design Tools Monthly.
This article was last modified on December 14, 2022
This article was first published on October 2, 2002
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