Graphics-program plug-ins give you the power to harness, manipulate, and output incredible digital images.
Ben Long
If you're a digital artist and the illustration-, paint-, or image-editing programs you use have become second nature, you may be ready to stretch a little. It may be time to adopt some new tools and techniques -- or combine the ones you know in new ways. The key could be plug-ins. These little programs-within-a-program work with "host" graphics applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, and Fractal Design Painter and Dabbler) to perform a wide variety of specialized tasks. Some of the functions plug-ins perform would be impossible to do with the host application alone; others are simply too tedious or time-consuming to do without specialized tools.
Plug-ins allow you to add features that may be lacking in your favorite drawing or image-editing program. They range from the simple to the absurd and have become an entire mini-industry unto themselves. Sold separately or in collections, plug-ins are available from a wide variety of sources at a broad range of prices. Choosing the right plug-ins for your needs can be confusing, which is why we decided to round up all the ones we could find and give them a good going over. We tested 29 plug-ins, using a Power Mac 7500/100 with 50 MB of RAM, and tried them out with a mix of their respective host applications.
Before You Buy
Before you consult our ratings tables and purchase a big batch of cool plug-ins, we do have some advice: First, learn as much as you can about your host application, its features, and the plug-ins it comes with. Commercial plug-ins are often souped-up versions of these basic tools, so learning how to use the tools will help you better select more-sophisticated plug-ins.
In addition, if you have special color or output needs, make sure the plug-in can handle them. For instance, not all plug-ins work in CMYK color and not all work with every program.
So What Are Plug-ins, Anyway?
Adobe Systems created the current plug-in standard when it released Photoshop 1.0. By providing extensive hooks and controls, Adobe made it possible for a piece of code to sit in Photoshop and gain access to Photoshop's data. Third-party developers soon delivered an array of plug-ins, and Adobe's competitors in turn began building support for plug-ins into their own graphics programs.
Adobe built on its Photoshop success by developing a similar plug-in architecture for version 5 of Illustrator, its PostScript-based drawing application. Although Illustrator isn't compatible with Photoshop plug-ins, the idea was the same: Small bits of add-on code could be used for manipulating Illustrator drawings. With Illustrator 6.0, which will probably be available by the time you read this, Adobe plans to usher in a new era of plug-in possibilities as it begins to shift all of its programs to a single plug-in architecture -- that is, rather than having a set of plug-ins for Illustrator and another set for Photoshop, all of your applications will be able to use the same plug-ins. Users of Macromedia FreeHand, Illustrator's main competitor in the PostScript drawing field, are already used to these capabilities: FreeHand 5.5 supports Photoshop and Illustrator plug-ins as well as its own FreeHand plug-ins. Fractal Design Painter also supports Photoshop plug-ins, as will the forthcoming Canvas 5.0, from Deneba Software.
The best-known plug-ins are filters -- tools that apply special effects such as edge sharpening, blurs, distortions, and color shifts to your images. And in addition to serving as image-manipulating filters, plug-ins can take the form of acquire and export modules, which allow you to access special pieces of hardware or perform complex operations on image data as the data enters and leaves your host application. For this article, we divided image-editing plug-ins into three categories: Acquire, Filters/Effects, and Export. We treated the less numerous drawing-program plug-ins as a fourth category. Our ratings are based on the plug-ins' effectiveness at the task(s) they perform, their ease of use, the quality of their documentation, and their overall value. Consult the ratings tables for our topline views of all the plug-ins we tested, and read on for a more in-depth discussion of those we liked best in each category.
Acquire Plug-Ins Harness Images
Acquire plug-ins make it easier to scan as well as use images while you're working in a graphics program. Such plug-ins give you access to scanning hardware from within such programs as Photoshop. Scans acquired through these plug-ins appear as new documents within your application. This can be a real time-saver, since it spares you the hassle of using a separate scanning application and then having to open the resultant scan in your graphics program anyway.
Most scanners -- whether of the flatbed, transparency, or video-capture variety -- ship with their own custom acquire plug-ins, and when shopping for a scanner, you should pay close attention to its acquire software. In particular, look for such features as zoomable previews; built-in histograms; and comprehensive color-correction tools, including level and curve controls.
Second Glance Software's ScanTastic PS is a very good acquire plug-in and is available in custom versions for Apple, Epson, and Hewlett-Packard scanners. In addition to the features mentioned above, ScanTastic PS includes several color-correction tools and the ability to process images before they're scanned.
No matter what acquire plug-in you get with your scanner, if you use Photoshop, you'll want to also buy a copy of Flamingo Bay/ImageXpress' ScanPrep Pro. A truly extraordinary plug-in that works only with Photoshop, ScanPrep Pro commandeers both your scanner and Photoshop to scan your image and perform complex analyses and corrections. It's so well designed that it practically guarantees better scans, even with older hardware. Note that ScanPrep Pro works only with certain scanners, so check with Flamingo Bay/ImageXpress to be sure the plug-in supports your hardware.
Image Fixing, Flexing, and Futzing
Most plug-ins are designed to alter or enhance an image. From the simple blurs and sharpens that ship with most applications to complex 3-D-shape generators and texture makers, there's a plug-in filter to do most anything. Packages range from collections loaded with effects to specialist plug-ins that perform just one or two tricky tasks. Each package's usefulness depends in part on your specific requirements. Although there's probably no package you'll use every day, you'll soon come to depend on those that meet your needs.
Alien Skin Software's The Black Box collection does nothing you can't do by combining Photoshop's standard effects, but it's an incredible time-saver. Drop shadows, blurs, and beveled-edge effects are just a few of the package's many filters. Inexperienced users will be glad to have these effects at their disposal, and Photoshop veterans will love the convenience. Webmasters and multimedia designers who routinely create 3-D chiseled buttons and interface elements should pay particular attention to this package.
Probably the best-known and best-selling plug-in collection of all, MetaTools' Kai's Power Tools, deserves its renown. KPT, a powerful collection that provides a vast array of features, includes filters you'll use every day as well as some so exotic you may have to look for excuses to try them. Everyone will find something of value in this package. In particular, Texture Explorer will appeal to everyone, from hard-core Photoshop users to 3-D illustrators. In version 3, KPT provides real-time previews for all of its filters, making its powerful tools much easier to use.
MetaTools' KPT Convolver provides many of the same filters as Photoshop -- including those for blurring, sharpening, embossing, and changing hue -- but with visually oriented controls that are much easier to use than Photoshop's sometimes cryptic menu commands. What's more, Convolver lets you apply multiple effects simultaneously. Although it is perhaps not as flashy as Kai's Power Tools, Convolver is a product you might use more often.
Adobe Gallery Effects (volumes 1, 2, and 3) provides 48 filters designed to make electronic images look as if they were created with traditional media such as paint, chalk, and pencils. These filters run the gamut of traditional painting and drawing techniques and produce effects that mimic frescoes, watercolors, and even photocopies. Don't expect, however, to scan your favorite snapshot and have Gallery Effects create a perfect chalk-and-charcoal rendering. Even at their best, Gallery Effects-filtered images look like stylized pictures with traces of a particular technique. The real strength of Gallery Effects comes from combining these filters with each other and with other tools and effects. Each package is well designed and fast and provides great flexibility for the money.
If -- instead of making an image look as if it were painted -- you prefer to make it look painted on, try Xaos Tools' Paint Alchemy. You select from a variety of brushes, each of which has adjustable transparency settings similar to those for masks in Photoshop. As a brush is moved over an image, the various transparency levels are applied; a wide range of brushes and transparency settings allows a near infinite variety of brushed effects. Paint Alchemy does just one thing, but it does it extremely well. For those who like the hand-painted look Paint Alchemy produces, it's a great buy.
Andromeda Software sells three sets of powerful plug-ins. Series 1: Photography Filters provides plug-ins for creating optical effects that normally require a camera with special lenses or filters. All the effects -- including flares, rainbows, reflections, and star patterns -- have the same interface. Series 2: 3D Filters lets you create simple 3-D shapes and render them with textures and multiple light sources. Although it's no substitute for a full-featured 3-D program, the plug-in is quick and powerful enough for those who need only some simple geometric shapes. Series 3: Screen Filters brings powerful mezzotinting features to the Mac. Mezzotinting, which is similar to traditional halftoning, screens your black-and-white images through a coarse filter to produce halftone images that consist of dots in a variety of user-specifiable shapes. More than just a visually interesting effect, mezzotinting provides an ideal way to get better results from low-resolution devices or to produce artwork for coarse-screened publications such as newspapers or phone books.
Xaos Tools' Terrazzo is a texture generator that can create seamless textures of variable size by running the selected part of an image through a kaleidoscopic filter. Terrazzo provides extensive controls for manipulating the kind of kaleidoscopic symmetry and its orientation. The finished kaleidoscopic texture is tiled over your image.
There are many stand-alone programs for rendering 3-D type, but only Xaos Tools' TypeCaster lets you extrude, bevel, and render 3-D type within Photoshop. In addition to full controls for scaling, rotating, and texturing, TypeCaster includes such advanced features as the ability to apply separate textures to faces, extrusions, and bevels. TypeCaster can also automatically create a mask for compositing your type with other images.
Bluescreen compositing, long a technique used in big-budget Hollywood movies, is the most effective way of superimposing one image over another, and Ultimatte PhotoFusion is simply the best tool available for applying this technique to your still digital images. Although other masking commands -- such as Photoshop's Select Color -- let you mask and composite images, they don't come close to the power of PhotoFusion. Designed expressly for blue- and greenscreen compositing, PhotoFusion can create subtly shaded masks by allowing you to superimpose reflections and semitransparent objects on images. It also includes controls for matching the color casts of foreground and background images.
Photoshop's color-correction features -- a host of curve, level, and density controls -- are powerful but are intimidating for novices. Extensis' Intellihance can free you from dealing with many of these obscure controls by automatically performing many simple color, contrast, and sharpening operations. It won't take the place of all Photoshop controls, particularly for Photoshop mavens, but Intellihance can immediately improve most images.
Although it might sound like the name of a fish, Human Software's Squizz! is actually a filter that lets you do complicated distortions and warps of any CMYK or RGB image. By providing a unique distortion brush as well as mesh-based warping that lets you push, pull, and stretch your image, Squizz! makes it easy to treat your image as if it were Silly Putty.
Finish the Job
Export filters allow you to save your images in formats not normally supported by your favorite graphics program -- and such filters can also perform complex operations as your image is written to disk.
CyberMesh, by Photoshop cocreator John Knoll, is a perfect example. CyberMesh lets you save a black-and-white image as a 3-D model with the darker parts of the image having a higher elevation than the lighter parts. One of CyberMesh's greatest strengths, in addition to the program's interface, is the ability to create spherical and cylindrical objects. Using CyberMesh is a great way of generating organic 3-D models such as landscapes.
Most color printing is performed with four printing plates (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), but there may be times when you need extra plates -- maybe to add a varnish or an extra spot color. PlateMaker, from a lowly apprentice production, lets you output image files on any number of plates.
Drawing on Illustration Plug-Ins
Plug-ins for Illustrator and FreeHand run the gamut from performing simple operations such as adding and removing points to doing complicated operations such as sophisticated 3-D modeling. Although somewhat less flashy than their image-editing cousins, what these filters lack in pizzazz is more than made up for in their usefulness. Careful study and clever use of even the plug-ins that come with Illustrator and FreeHand can greatly streamline and enhance the way you work, and add-on packages can take your drawings to uncharted territory.
MetaTools' KPT Vector Effects is a set of 12 plug-ins that provide some amazing special effects. Drop shadows, lens flares, 3-D extrusions and transformations, warps, and distortions are all included. This easy-to-use package provides incredible power.
On the less glamorous side, Extensis' DrawTools includes Photoshop-like color controls for your Illustrator drawings. DrawTools -- which includes an Edit Curves dialog box, a Replace Colors command, and other sophisticated color controls -- greatly enhances color control in Illustrator as well as FreeHand. Also included are handy Move and Front-to-Back controls. FreeHand users will appreciate DrawTools' separate plug-ins for FreeHand, which take advantage of the application's proprietary plug-in capabilities.
BeInfinite's InfiniteFX collection offers capabilities somewhere between those of KPT Vector Effects and DrawTools. With 55 plug-ins, this package lets you create a limitless variety of distortions, warps, waves, 3-D transformations, and wiggles. Particularly nice is the package's ability to apply its manipulations only to specified control points or to the handles attached to them.
Drawn Conclusions
By this point, it's probably apparent that there are plug-ins for creating just about any effect you can imagine and for streamlining complicated tasks that normally require multiple steps. So which plug-ins are right for you? As with any type of software, that depends largely on your tastes and the type of work you normally do.
Probably the most important thing to remember is that no plug-in is a worthy substitute for a good eye and a thoughtful use of tools. None of these plug-ins will immediately turn you into a great artist, and you shouldn't depend solely on them to create an interesting or expressive image. But after you've supplied the vision and the imagination, plug-ins can be highly effective in helping you realize your ideas.
Graphic designer Ben Long has been using plug-ins since their debut and is so steeped in image-editing software that he uses Photoshop as a PIM.
Acquire Plug-Ins
Rating Product Comment Price*
Outstanding (5 of 5 mice)
Flamingo Bay/ImageXpress' Worth the high price, if top-quality image $695
ScanPrep Pro scanning is essential to your work.
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Second Glance Software's For those whose scanner is compatible $99
ScanTastic PS with it, this tool is highly useful.
Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
Total Integration's Epilogue Acquires PostScript files and converts $895
them into Photoshop images.
Acceptable (3 of 5 mice)
Total Integration's FastEdit/IVUE A must for Live Picture users, it converts $249
files to Live Picture's IVUE format.
Poor/Acceptable (2.5 of 5 mice)
Human Software's Automask Lets low-RAM Macs do compositing, but $199
improves very little on Photoshop.
* Estimated street price.
LISTING IS ALPHABETICAL WITHIN GROUPS OF EQUAL MOUSE RATINGS.
Filters/Effects Plug-Ins
Rating Product Comment Price*
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Adobe Gallery Effects Outstanding variety of high-quality filters $100
(volumes 1, 2, 3) that create textures, mimic natural media.
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Alien Skin Software's The Black Box Versatile "everyday" filters simplify $99
shadowing, embossing, other effects.
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Andromeda Software Series 3: Powerful mezzotinting creates wide $99
Screen Filters variety of halftones, other screen effects.
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
MetaTools' Kai's Power Tools Tons of easy-to-use effects -- many $119
weird, a few indispensable.
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
MetaTools' KPT Convolver Provides a powerful interface for blurring, $119
sharpening, embossing, and more.
Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
Ultimatte's PhotoFusion The best tool for performing $695
bluescreen-style image compositing.
Acceptable/Very Good (3.5 of 5 mice)
Andromeda Software Series 1: Makes it easy to create complex optical $79
Flamingo Bay/ImageXpress' ScanPrep Pro takes control of both your scanner and Adobe Photoshop to scan and correct your images automatically.
These examples from Adobe Gallery Effects, volumes 1 and 2, demonstrate filters that mimic natural and traditional textures and painting effects. Clockwise from top: Smudge Stick, Graphic Pen, Colored Pencil, Craquelure, Watercolor, Rough Pastels, Emboss, Poster Edges, and Chalk & Charcoal.
MetaTools' KPT Convolver provides a powerful, easy interface for simultaneously applying several types of filters, such as Blur, Emboss, Sharpen, and Find Edges. This image was processed by a single pass of the Convolver plug-in.
Knoll Software's CyberMesh enables you to create realistic landscapes and other organic images by converting grayscale images into 3-D models with depth variations that correspond to the shades of gray in the source image.
MetaTools' KPT Vector Effects filters do everything from distorting shapes to creating 3-D objects. Sketch, Shatter, and Vector Distort filters were used on the Grunge image, and 3D Transform and Neon were used on the Flash image.
