Paint Shop Pro support - [Update] Xero plugin set 3

Author

[Update] Xero plugin set 3

CoMa

2005-02-14, 4:23 am

Xero plugin sets
http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/xero...htm?plugins.htm

February 13th, 2005
Major update to set 3!
Changes in this release:

1. All filters have had a complete UI makeover.
The background bitmap has been replaced with
a simple gradient, and the 'About' button (that
strange circular symbol in the bottom right corner)
has been replaced with a slightly more meaningful
strange circular symbol. The 'Ok' and 'Cancel' buttons
have been replaced with standard Windows-style
buttons, which aren't as pretty, but do at least move
when you click them. All filters in set 2 now also
have the ability to save and load settings.
Finally, all filters now have a clickable link to the xero website.

1. All filters now have a standard set of "convenience"
controls, immediately beneath the preview pane:

A '1:1' button, which goes directly to 100% zoom.
(Shift-clicking the + button does the same thing,
and always has).

A 'Fit' button, which goes directly to the highest zoom
setting that will allow the whole image to fit within the
preview pane.

A 'Reset' button, which resets all sliders to their
default values.

Bad Dream
This one now has separate sliders for the three colour channels,
so that you have full control over the colouration. Additionally,
as this filter tends to make images darker and increase contrast,
there are brightness and contrast sliders so that you can fine-tune
the result.

Duochrome
There is now a choice of linear or cosine gradient types.
The linear option gives the same behaviour as in the
original - the colours used change smoothly from
shadow-colour to highlight-colour over the image's
brightness range. The new cosine method (together
with the new breakpoint and transition sliders) gives
much more control - the breakpoint slider controls the
brightness level at which the gradient changes from
shadow-colour to highlight-colour, while the transition
slider controls the smoothness of the transition. If that
doesn't make sense, then a few moments playing with
the sliders will clarify!

Emphasis
This one has had a major re-write! The original had more
bugs than a boarding-house bed. The 'Scan' feature,
especially, was giving results that were nothing like I
intended. It now works correctly... I think ;-) Each of the
colour buttons also now has an associated checkbox and
a radiobutton. You can untick the checkbox if you want to
leave that colour out of the processing - in the previous version,
you had to actually change the colour button to black, which
wasn't exactly intuitive or even convenient. You can also now
select a colour from the preview pane by right -clicking it.
The colour from the image will be copied to the colour button
currently selected by the column of radio buttons. To help
things along, there is now a button marked 'Original' just below
the 'Scan image' button. If you click this, the preview pane will
change to show the original image, to make colour-selection
easier. The text on the button will also change to 'Processed' -
when you click it a second time, the preview pane will revert
to showing the processed image. In addition to all this, the
plugin now has an overall 'Strength' slider, and a new
'Transparency' mode. The default 'Colour emphasis' mode
together with the new 'Invert Selection' checkbox gives the
original 'Emphasis' and 'De-Emphasis' modes. If you select the
'Transparency' mode, however, the image will be made progressively
transparent in affected areas, rather than the default behavious of
making it monochrome. Obviously, this only works on a layer with
an alpha-channel... ;-). You can get some very nice effects by
duplicating a layer, blurring the lower one, then using this plugin to
make selected parts of the upper layer transparent.

Fuzzifier
This one has one new slider, which brings back some of the
detail from the original image. There's not much more I can
say about it, really.

Improver
Nothing on the outside has changed, but the code has been
hacked about a bit and tuned for speed. It'll be quicker,
but not dramatically so.

Lineart
There is now a new edge-detection algorithm available,
called 'Enhanced'. This tends to give nicer results, and is
ess prone to generating artifacts than the 'Original' method -
which is still available for those who actually like artifacts.
In addition, when you select the 'On background colour' style
you can actually select a background colour on the fly, rather
than being forced to use the host's background colour.
Similarly, when you select the 'Monochrome' style, you can
select a foreground colour.

Pastellise
There are now two new rendering modes, called 'Natural'
and 'Soft', and an associated slider called 'Colour strength'.
These give the plugin a vastly greater range of possibilities -
click the 'Random' button a few times to get a feel for what
it can do.

Tekstya
Ok, I confess... I wimped out totally on this one.
I couldn't think of any useful improvements,
so it's just got a new UI. Sorry.

Tweaker
Internally, this plugin is the simplest in the whole set,
but it's given me more headaches than the rest of them put
together. Finally, I managed to make it work the way I wanted
it to, though. You can now control saturation (as well as
brightness) separately for shadows and highlights. Additionally,
there are two 'Quick fix' checkboxes for easy correction of
images containing black and/or white areas. Give 'em a try!

/CoMa

rzed

2005-02-14, 6:41 pm

CoMa <hubbabub-nys@algonet.se> wrote in
news:thg011poohf5ggguht97fcu6q1j1vau6n0@4ax.com:

> Xero plugin sets
> http://www.xero-graphics.co.uk/xero...htm?plugins.htm
>
>

I just want to say thanks huge bunches for the plugins. I find them
the most useful set of any I've had over the years.

--
rzed

Carl Frisk

2005-02-14, 6:41 pm

"rzed" <jello@comics.com> wrote in message news:Xns95FD976C35F3Ejreeder@63.223.5.95...
> CoMa <hubbabub-nys@algonet.se> wrote in
> news:thg011poohf5ggguht97fcu6q1j1vau6n0@4ax.com:
>
>
> I just want to say thanks huge bunches for the plugins. I find them
> the most useful set of any I've had over the years.
>
> --
> rzed
>

I've just began to use them. Nice interface!

--
....Carl Frisk
Anger is a brief madness.
- Horace, 20 B.C.
http://www.carlfrisk.com