Spotlight on . . . Filter Forge

I am a big fan of the work being done by third party Photoshop plug-in creators and have a sizable collection of plug-ins. Filter Forge is a tool for producing and applying filters and procedural textures, and a whole lot more besides. Filter Forge comes in three versions, a $99 Basic edition provides unlimited access to the filter library but cannot create filters. The $199 Standard edition allows photographers and graphic artists to create their own filters including effects, textures, distortions, patterns, backgrounds and frames. The $299 Professional edition was designed with the needs of 3D-content and game creators in mind, providing support and features useful in architectural visualization, 3D rendering and design and includes support for bitmaps as large as 65,000 x 65,000 pixels, 16 & 32-bit images, and floating point-based file formats such as OpenEXR and PFM. I was extremely impressed by the performance and the range of filters available via the online filter library. Once accessed and downloaded you can transport your filters with relative ease. You have access to well over 2,000 filters and textures. Core features and technology include support for Dual Core CPUs, HDRI Images, 8, 16 & 32-bit image modes, floating point file formats and a really useful smart anti-aliasing feature which uses anti-aliasing only where and when it is needed. The creation of filters is facilitated via a visual node-based editor which is both extremely powerful and quite easy to use once you get your head around the concept. Filters are created visually by connecting components in a flow diagram to combine effects and functions. Available components include Brightness / Contrast, Channels, Gradients, Noise, Color Adjustments, Distortions, Patterns, Curves, Curve Operations, Image Processing Controls and so on. More than just a single effect tool, Filter Forge really has no equal. It is a library of effects and treatments that work as both a Photoshop plug-in and as a standalone application. I found Filter Forge both powerful and easy to use. This is one tool any imageer, artist and photographer should have in their toolbox. Highly recommended. The full Filter Forge review can be found here.

Google Acquire Panoramio

Google have announce the acquisition of Panoramio, a spanish based company that has a free photo sharing web portal. The site allows users to store up to 2 GB of info and photos so that they can record and share their journeys and vacations. The site would appear to be the perfect companion to google earth. Visit Panoramio for more info...

Critical Flaw Found In Photoshop CS2 & CS3

An exploit code that could take advantage of a "highly critical" security flaw in Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3, as well as CS2, has been published. The security flaw is related to the way Adobe Photoshop handles the processing of bitmap files, such as .bmp, .dib and .rle. A malicious file of these types, could allow an attacker to exploit the flaw to launch a buffer overflow attack. The resulting buffer overflow could then allow the intruder to take over the affected user's system. For more info visit silicon.com.

Adobe Begin shipping CS3

Adobe have commenced shipping CS3. Quite how many folks will upgrade initially remains to be seen. I've heard the opinion from a few designers that although the U.S. price is excessive, even higher pricing in the UK presents a huge purchasing barrier there. Many UK-based designers are thinking about buying grey market US versions. Can't say I blame them. For more information on the release visit Adobe.