Filter Forge

I've been experimenting with a free trial of Filter Forge. I have run into a lot of problems with it. The plug in itself seems to work fine, but when the filter is applied to the image in Xara it doesn't always display correctly, for example one image I tried had a grey border around it. I tried to crop it but the photo tool wouldn't work on it. one image I did I was able to make a bitmap copy and work with that but a second image with the same filter applied sent Xara into a tizzy of errors when I tried to make a bitmap copy.

Has anyone else tried Filter Forge? You get a 30 day free trial of the fully working program.

It's too bad that this doesn't work better, Filter forge allows you to create your own filters a combination of that and Xara would be very interesting.

Xtremes Crop/Clip tool doesn't function when there have been filter/effects applied to it. This I think is by design due to the non-destructive nature of Xtremes cropping/clipping, as the effect/s would need to be re applied and the outcome would look slightly different for the resized image. Therefore a bitmap copy is usually required before cropping can take place.

Having said that, you could always use 'Clipview' instead?

Some plugins will return a border. You could try running the plugin from XPE instead of directly from XXP. I set my system to lock the effect be default. With Akvis Sketch, without the effect being locked, the plugin will run again when I make a bitmap copy. I usually make bitmap copies in between, regardless. You may be confusing the program by having the last plugin active.

I set my system to use Photoshop as an editor because I can run plugins Xara doesn't see. And, I don't get an image with an extra border.

You might look close at the result if your trying a transparent graphic. Some plugins will return with pixels in the transparent area.

Rich

Thanks for the help. I think I'm getting the hang of this now here is an example of a filter I put together for turning a photo into a black and white illustration. The original photo on the left is from Xara clip art.

The website is www.filterforge.com

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Filter Forge is now at version 11 and can be used as a useful plug-in component for Xara Desktop Applications.
You will be less lucky with earlier versions since current XDAs are 64-bit.

Do raise a new Thread if you have a Filter to share on how you have integrated FF into your workflow.

Acorn