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For those of you who, like
me, enjoy a good romp through the Filters menu on occasion, you
should be pleased to hear Alien Skin (http://www.alienskin.com)
has released their newest product. This one is called 'Splat',
and definitely raises the bar for other 3rd party filter
developers.
Here is what Alien Skin has to say about the
software:
"Splat! is a powerful new plug-in filter set for
Photoshop®, Fireworks®, Paint Shop Pro®, and other image
editors. Splat! gives digital artists frames, textures, edges,
borders, mosaics and more in one user-friendly package. Like
prior Alien Skin Software filter sets, Eye Candy and Xenofex,
the Splat! filters adapt to irregular selections (with the
exception of the Frame filter), work exceptionally well in print
compositions, and share the same easy-to-use Alien Skin Software
user interface. Unlike Eye Candy and Xenofex, however, the
Splat! filters are content-powered special effects engines. The
Frame, Resurface, Fill Stamp, Border Stamp, and Patchwork
filters use a variety of source images, held in content files,
to make their effects. Since adding new content files yields a
fresh variety of effects, content-powered effects expand
infinitely."
For those of you familiar with the previous Eye Candy packages
or Xenofex and there menus of several filters, you might be
disheartened to see only 6 listings under the Splat Menu. This
is no way reflects the power of the program, as these are
actually categories of effects, and not a restrictive list of
solo effects.
The key word here is expandable. Splat ships
with literally hundreds of ready-made effects built right in,
but an astute user of the program will soon find that adding
their own presets is relatively simple, and with a little
practice is soon second nature.
As always, demonstration is the most powerful
tool to describe a program. Let's take a look at a few of the
goodies in this latest release.
The Border Stamp setting allows you to border an
image with objects. Imaging a picture lying on a table. Someone
throws some loose change onto the table, covering portions of
the picture. This is the effect that Border Stamp tries to
emulate, and extremely effectively at that.
You can even control the density of the change
or object on the photo, as well as the size, margin, and border
width.
Clicking the browse button takes you to an
incredible list of objects that can be applied to the image.
We could spend a lot of time going over this
section alone, but I'd like to touch on all areas so we'd best
move on.
The Edge section lets you ad some pretty cool
border effects on the fly.
The Fill Stamp actually lets you cover the image
with objects.
Next come the Frames, and these will be
extremely popular for those personal photo websites!
Though I would have liked to go through all the
features of this great program, I'll have to put a few items off
until next week. What I can tell you in the space remaining is
that these filters work with Photoshop, Fireworks AND Paintshop
Pro.
Next week we will look at the remaining filters, and run the
program through it's paces.
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