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 One of the most active companies around, Flaming Pear has released four interesting plugins : the fabulous
Blade Pro of course, but also
India Ink,
FeatherGif,
Tessellation and the latest,
SolarCell.
They have also released two simple freeware plugins :
Swap and
Vitriol.
They also have numerous other free plugins
Here. |
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Blade Pro 2.1 |
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 YES ! You have always known that such things could and should exist, but now you can witness it : Blade Pro is one of the most amazing tools I have ever seen, it enables you to endlessly mix textures and colors, adjust, load and save parameters at will, create everything you have ever dreamed of... It is especially impressive with middle-sized shapes, and is provided with a huge number of presets, so you can immediately get started. You can download 3 additional sets at the website.
The best way remains to play with it by yourself, but if you own
Eye Candy or
KPT, it should remind you of the first time you played with these... |
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India Ink |
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This new port of Mac plugins to the PC is quite promising, with the same interface as Blade pro, only less cluttered, the ability to save settings or randomize them, and it enables you to achieve great effects too.
The problem is that most of these effects are obtained quite randomly, and lack the precision and width of settings of Andromeda Screens for the line effects. |
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FeatherGif is a really simple filter to help yo u create feathered edges for your web images with a number of controls to help you determine the edge color and size you want.
Nothing too exceptional, but quite handy when you do not have the time to create more sophisticated frames with Extensis PhotoFrames for example. |
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Tessellation creates a diffract effect o n your image, thus making it a seamless tile, which is interesting for instantly creating nice web backgrounds in a moment (the same can be done with only Photoshop, but it takes way much longer and you do not have the real-time preview of the final result).
Once again, nothing exceptional (you cannot invent Blade Pro every week), but a very useful little filter.(at a Flaming Pear price ;-) ) |
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Two really simple plugins : Swap inverts Green and Blue, or Red and Blue, or Red and Green ; and Vitriol "changes the colors´ contrast as if viewed through a tinted glass, but without tinting the image" - the effect being barely visible, but a nice means of playing with contrasts.
None of these filters have ways of adjusting the effect. |
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 This plugin creates all sorts of planets and stars, with many possibilities for adjusting the sphre itself and also the rays, the flares... so you can use it both for lens flares, whether realistic or surreal, or simulating planets. There are enough settings for you to get exactly the effect you want (maybe a bit too many in fact, you can easily get lost when you begin), plus some features present in all the other Flaming Pear products, such as the Randomize function (great when you want an interesting effect, without having a orecise idea in mind), and the different blending modes to chose from - including the great Composite mode.
As always with this company, the interface is nice and clean, the plugin as bug-free as possible, and they have given a great deal of consideration to the texturing uses : try zooming a lot on the "suns", and you get very interesting rocky textures. It can also be made to great use in conjunction with Rayflect´s Four Seasons plugin to create fantasy skies without having to go in Bryce. The final word : get it (at $20 it´s a bargain !). |
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