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*** From the Archives ***

This article is from May 7, 2003, and is no longer current.

Plug-Ins and XTensions: Photoshop Film Fixers, InDesign Palette Cleaners, Illustrator Map Generators, QuarkXPress Calculators

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.


Illustrator

  • Import GIS Data into Illustrator & FreeHand
    Avenza Software’s MAPublisher ($695) and MAPublisher Lt ($249) are powerful plug-ins for Illustrator 10 or FreeHand MX that let you import CAD drawings and maps in geographic information systems (GIS) format, including shapes, boundaries, routes and elevations. MAPublisher also lets you automatically create legends and keys. It can import database tables, which can be linked to existing map layers, and can export to ArcView Shape files and SVG and dBASE formats. MAPublisher Lt works with Mac OS 8 or higher and Mac OS X. Their Web site shows examples of the beautiful, detailed maps made by customers.
    Avenza Software

 

  • 3D in Illustrator
    Vertigo’s PopArt 2.0 ($69) is a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator 8-10 that converts an Illustrator object into a 3D model, with control over size, extrusion and orientation. You can use one of eight light sources, and edit the object at any time. The controls are quite straightforward and can be previewed with an Apply button.
    Vertigo TechnologyInDesign

    • Auto-Flow Text in InDesign
      Em Software’s InFlow ($75) is a plug-in for Adobe InDesign that senses overset text inside an autoflow text chain and makes InDesign create additional pages as needed (similar to how QuarkXPress can automatically create new pages to accommodate imported text).
      Em Software
  • Fix InDesign Palette Clutter
    Teacup Software’s Workspace Manager 2 ($50) is a plug-in for InDesign that helps solve InDesign’s overwhelming palette clutter. It detects what type of page object is active and automatically brings up the palettes appropriate to that object, letting you work more efficiently.
    Teacup SoftwarePhotoshop

    • Add or Remove Film Grain
      Visual Infinity’s Grain Surgery 2 ($179) is a most unusual and powerful plug-in for Photoshop 5.5 and above. Years of research into the patterns in all film, known as “film grain,” allows Grain Surgery to remove or add it to an image. Removing grain will clean an image and sharpen detail. Grain Surgery can also remove compression artifacts and halftone patterns. You may use it to match grain across images (great for catalog or yearbook use), or to make a digital photo appear analog. (Its “Match Grain” feature lets you extract the noise model from one image or layer and apply it to another image.) It includes 21 presets for film stock from Agfa, Fuji and Kodak.
      Visual Infinity
  • Realistic Natural Effects
    Alien Skin’s Xenofex 2 ($129) is a Photoshop-compatible plug-in for Photoshop 6 or higher, Photoshop Elements 2 or higher, and Fireworks MX or later that creates 14 realistic natural phenomena, such as lightning, constellations, fluffy clouds, transparent fog, sunsets, burned edges, cracks, crumple, stain, rip, shatter, mosaics, television, and flag (for rippled surfaces). It runs natively in Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Upgrades are $69. Sidegrades are $99 from Alien Skin’s Eye Candy.
    Alien Skin

 

  • Photoshop-to-Flash
    Media Lab’s PSD2FLA is a plug-in for Photoshop ($89) that lets you convert a layered Photoshop document into a layered Flash movie, optionally ignoring hidden layers. It supports Flash 5 and later, and Photoshop 7 on Mac OS X.
    Media Lab
  • Genuine Fractals 2.5
    LizardTech’s Genuine Fractals 2.5 ($159) is a plug-in for Photoshop that truly lets you enlarge a high quality original to many times its original size. In tests, experts were unable to reliably distinguish between giant printouts of a 214 MB original and the 38 MB Genuine Fractals version. Genuine Fractals replaces pixels with fractal descriptions of edge contours and color blocks, so an image can be enlarged up to 600% without blurring details. A 20MB image shrinks down to 2 or 3 MB, from which you can generate virtually any size image. You can encode and decode repeatedly without loss of quality. The regular version supports RGB, Multichannel and Grayscale images, while the Print Pro version ($299) adds support for CMYK and CIE-Lab color spaces. Both work in Mac OS 8.6 and above, and Mac OS X 10.1 (a 10.2 version is on its way).
    LizardTechQuarkXPress

    • Calculations in QuarkXPress
      eQuatrix’s MathTabs ($99) is an XTension for QuarkXPress that can automatically add, subtract, multiply, divide, do percentages, and calculate totals for lines and columns. You assign a mathematical function to a text tab (similar to a spreadsheet cell) and MathTabs performs the calculations. If numbers change, MathTabs XTension can update the totals.
      ThePowerXChange

    This article courtesy of and copyrighted by Design Tools Monthly. For a free sample of the monthly printed newsletter, email [email protected].

     

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