Gel filter

[gwpriester]

I just finished a review of several new products fromauto fx. One of these is their Dream Suite Gel Series filters.

I was disappointed that the fitlers do not work in Xara X (they do work in Illustrator 10). But if you have any of the bitmap editing applications, Photoshop, PaintShopPro, Photo-Paint, etc. you can create your images in Xara, export the images as bitmaps files and apply the filters in the bitmap applications.

In the attached image, I created the letters in Xara using the Freehand and Brush Tool, made the line width very heavy and the line joins and ends rounded and exported the letters black on white. I used the magic wand tool to select the individual letters and applied three different Gel filter types in Photoshop.

Gary

Gary Priester

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[joel]

Some of you might be interested in a free Auto FX plugin called Dreamy Photo. You can get it at the link below...Joel

Dreamy Photo

[gdavidson]

Gary,

Those filter effects are remarkable [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I toyed with the idea of getting Dreamsuite/Photographic Edges 5 in February but at $399 I decided against it. Do you know if the price changed any?

--
Graeme

[ivan louette]

Nice image, Gary, and an interesting filter.

I think a better compatibility with some photoshop plugins could be a must for the next release of Xara X.

But the ability to apply these filters to pictures with alpha channels may be even more important!

Friendly,
ivan

[Ross Macintosh]

Looks like a great filter set. I downloaded the free effect Joel linked and found it worked great in Xara X on an imported bitmap (a previous xara export). I posted the result in this thread in the Xara Gallery Forum.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Erik Heyninck]

If I'm not mistake, the Dreamsuite plugin also works as a standalone app. At least: 1 was/is.

http://www.photoshopgurus.info/forum...ine=1019851685

[jens g.r. benthien]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I toyed with the idea of getting Dreamsuite/Photographic Edges 5 in February but at $399 I decided against it. Do you know if the price changed any?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>



check out Filter Factory - they have gazillions of PS compatible plug-ins. And best of all: they work together with XARA X and they are FREE.

Sorry I don't have a link at hand, but try to search with google.

If you should have problems with the required DLL just let me know - I have posted a link to my server a while ago where I stored the DLL for all of you who don't have this DLL.

jens

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://www.sacalobra.de

----------//--
If you don't know how to dream you'll never be a designer.
----------//--

[gwpriester]

Erik

Yes, all the filters I tested are stand alone as well as plug-in. In fact, all filters when accessed from within another application launch the stand-alone version. The only difference is once you are happy with the results and press OK the changes are applied to the image inside the host application. Still, to apply most of the gel effects you need to have a pixel selection.

In Illustrator, I rasterized the image with the mask option. I assumed this was the same as Xara's PNG + Alpha but when I tried it in Xara it was not. So Illustrator must be using a different method of masking a bitmap object.

Here are the latest prices (in US dollars):

Product Price
DreamSuite 1 199
DreamSuite 2 149
DreamSuite Ge l 99
Photo Edges 5 199
AutoEye 2 129
Creative Edge Bundle (contains DS1 & PGE 5) is 349

DS Series Bundle (contains DS1, DS2, DSGel) is 399
Product Line Bundle (contains DS1, DS2, DSGel, AE2, PGE5) is 599


Gary

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[gdavidson]

Thanks Jens and Gary [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Jens, thanks for the info about the filters. I'll have a good look at the free filters - should be fun! I've already bought KPT3.0 and 5.0 (well, it was thrown in with another package!) which seems to be a rather odd collection of filter effects.

Gary, thanks for listing the prices. It looks like DS2 and DS Gel are recent additions. It seems an expensive package but they must be a real timesaver to some poeple. There's an electronics catalogue round here which is practically a Auto FX filter gallery [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

--
Graeme

[gwpriester]

The PR Director at auto fx has agreed to make a copy or two of the DreamSuites 1 and 2 available for free. I will (if I remember) have a drawing in the next Workbook.

I installed both DreamSuites and AutoEye, their auto photo correcting application which does a bang up job in my Xara Plug-ins folder.

The only set that does not work is the GEL which requires a pixel selection. The other filters work very well.

One word of caution, if you are working with high resolution images on an older computer, you might have to wait a while for some of these effects to happen. Even on my DELL 8200 some of these effects seem to take forever.

Gary

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