xero : graphics and web design

Photoshop®-Compatible Plugins | Set 3 : Release 2 - February 2005

All trade and other registered marks are hereby acknowledged

Introduction

Thankyou for downloading the xero filter plugins! We hope you enjoy using them. Redistribution is permitted and encouraged, subject to the constraints below. We also welcome and value feedback; please use the link at the bottom of the page to let us know what you think of the filters. If you wish to redistribute the filters via a website, then please do so, but offer the download file intact, unchanged, and including this file.
These filters were built using FilterMeister from AFH Systems Group, and have been tested with Jasc's Paint Shop Pro version 8.10. They have also been tested with Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and Micrografx Picture Publisher 8.0. They should work with any other host supporting the Adobe plugin architecture.
Pete Bailey
xero : graphics and web design
Congresbury
North Somerset
England

Copyright | All filters supplied by xero : graphics and web design are Copyright © 2002-2005, Peter Bailey. However, they are issued as freeware, and may be distributed freely for personal use. Any form of commercial use or redistribution requires the express written permission of the copyright-holder. This constraint covers inclusion of any or all of the filters in any commercial collection or on any magazine cover-disc . If you wish to use or redistribute any of these filters by such means, please don't hesitate to contact me; in spite of the above, permission is unlikely to be refused.
Disclaimer | All plugin filters from xero : graphics and web design are offered without warranty as to suitability for any specific purpose. We will not be held responsible in any way for any loss or damage, howsoever caused. Use at your own risk.
Installation | Uncompress the file(s) using any of the millions of ZIP utilities available, then copy the files to your host application's plugins directory (eg c:\Program Files\Jasc Software Inc\Paint Shop Pro 8\Plugins). If you are unsure of the correct folder, check your graphics package's manual.

What's new

In brief, the changes in this release are:

1. All filters have had a complete UI makeover. The background bitmap has been replaced with a simple gradient, and the 'About' button (that strange circular symbol in the bottom right corner) has been replaced with a slightly more meaningful strange circular symbol. The 'Ok' and 'Cancel' buttons have been replaced with standard Windows-style buttons, which aren't as pretty, but do at least move when you click them. All filters in set 2 now also have the ability to save and load settings. Finally, all filters now have a clickable link to the xero website.
2. All filters now have a standard set of "convenience" controls, immediately beneath the preview pane:
   - A '1:1' button, which goes directly to 100% zoom. (Shift-clicking the + button does the same thing, and always has).
   - A 'Fit' button, which goes directly to the highest zoom setting that will allow the whole image to fit within the preview pane.
   - A 'Reset' button, which resets all sliders to their default values.
3. Bad Dream This one now has separate sliders for the three colour channels, so that you have full control over the colouration. Additionally, as this filter tends to make images darker and increase contrast, there are brightness and contrast sliders so that you can fine-tune the result.
4. Duochrome There is now a choice of linear or cosine gradient types. The linear option gives the same behaviour as in the original - the colours used change smoothly from shadow-colour to highlight-colour over the image's brightness range. The new cosine method (together with the new breakpoint and transition sliders) gives much more control - the breakpoint slider controls the brightness level at which the gradient changes from shadow-colour to highlight-colour, while the transition slider controls the smoothness of the transition. If that doesn't make sense, then a few moments playing with the sliders will clarify!
5. Emphasis This one has had a major re-write! The original had more bugs than a boarding-house bed. The 'Scan' feature, especially, was giving results that were nothing like I intended. It now works correctly... I think ;-) Each of the colour buttons also now has an associated checkbox and a radiobutton. You can untick the checkbox if you want to leave that colour out of the processing - in the previous version, you had to actually change the colour button to black, which wasn't exactly intuitive or even convenient. You can also now select a colour from the preview pane by right -clicking it. The colour from the image will be copied to the colour button currently selected by the column of radio buttons. To help things along, there is now a button marked 'Original' just below the 'Scan image' button. If you click this, the preview pane will change to show the original image, to make colour-selection easier. The text on the button will also change to 'Processed' - when you click it a second time, the preview pane will revert to showing the processed image. In addition to all this, the plugin now has an overall 'Strength' slider, and a new 'Transparency' mode. The default 'Colour emphasis' mode together with the new 'Invert Selection' checkbox gives the original 'Emphasis' and 'De-Emphasis' modes. If you select the 'Transparency' mode, however, the image will be made progressively transparent in affected areas, rather than the default behavious of making it monochrome. Obviously, this only works on a layer with an alpha-channel... ;-). You can get some very nice effects by duplicating a layer, blurring the lower one, then using this plugin to make selected parts of the upper layer transparent.
6. Fuzzifier This one has one new slider, which brings back some of the detail from the original image. There's not much more I can say about it, really.
7. Improver Nothing on the outside has changed, but the code has been hacked about a bit and tuned for speed. It'll be quicker, but not dramatically so.
8. Lineart There is now a new edge-detection algorithm available, called 'Enhanced'. This tends to give nicer results, and is less prone to generating artifacts than the 'Original' method - which is still available for those who actually like artifacts. In addition, when you select the 'On background colour' style you can actually select a background colour on the fly, rather than being forced to use the host's background colour. Similarly, when you select the 'Monochrome' style, you can select a foreground colour.
9. Pastellise There are now two new rendering modes, called 'Natural' and 'Soft', and an associated slider called 'Colour strength'. These give the plugin a vastly greater range of possibilities - click the 'Random' button a few times to get a feel for what it can do.
10. Tekstya Ok, I confess... I wimped out totally on this one. I couldn't think of any useful improvements, so it's just got a new UI. Sorry.
11. Tweaker Internally, this plugin is the simplest in the whole set, but it's given me more headaches than the rest of them put together. Finally, I managed to make it work the way I wanted it to, though. You can now control saturation (as well as brightness) separately for shadows and highlights. Additionally, there are two 'Quick fix' checkboxes for easy correction of images containing black and/or white areas. Give 'em a try!

Support | If you have any queries or suggestions, please email me at the address below. As the filters are offered as freeware I'm unable to make any promises, but will always do my best to help.

Finally...

I'm always interested to see what people are doing with these filters. If you have a website and publish any artwork or tutorials involving the xero filters, please let me know! Ideally, I would like to include a list of links to such sites on the xero site.
Thankyou, best wishes, and have fun!
Pete Bailey
xero : graphics and web design

Useful Contacts | Contact xero | Send Mail
| Visit the xero website | Take me there...
| Visit my other site | The Museum of Misinformation
| Visit my other other site | Skyblue Computing
| Visit the FilterMeister homepage | www.filtermeister.com
| Visit the JASC Software homepage | www.jasc.com