Photoshop Plug-In's - What's in your creative arsenal?
 

I've got Photoshop CS (Ver 8) with these plug-ins

Eye Candy 4000
Xenofex 2
Focal Blade
Kai's Power Tools - Versions 3 to 7
AutoFX DreamSuite
Virtual Painter
Andromeda

Any other really cool ones out there? Post samples of what they can do if you have some.

This will be a good thread :thumbsup

Why use pluggins ?
Photoshop can do almost anything anyway .
and if not , it wasnt meant to be done in photoshop ..

All the plugins I ever tried were total trash .
Eyecandy is pretty much useless ..

To add to this here is a question.

I have setup a nice little batch to auto level and auto color correct images. It works pretty well on pictures that I otherwise wouldn't use.

I have heard that there are some 3rd party plugins that are spose to produce amazing results but do not have a name for them, anyone know?

For Adobe Photo Shop CS

http://pornslinga.com/entropybanner/filters.jpg
Ive ditched many, but I use these the most.

I dispise filters, they make your work look like shit and plus half of them are..yes JUNK.

everything can be done without plugins

yhea right, after 2month of work when a plugin can do it in 2 seconds.

Surprised you're saying that. Have you look at these filters by AutoFX for example?

http://www.autofx.com/mystical_light...g_gallery.html

http://www.autofx.com/dreamsuite/ds1_Gallery.html

http://www.autofx.com/PGE_6/PGE_6_In...e_Gallery.html

http://www.autofx.com/mystical_ttc/m...c_gallery.html

http://www.autofx.com/dreamsuite/gel/gel_gallery.html

http://www.autofx.com/dreamsuite2/ds2_Gallery.html

http://www.autofx.com/detail_pages/AE_Gallery.html

As I said ,
nothing that cant be done in a matter of seconds in PS ..
With exception of the Puzzle filter .
which , again is pretty useless .

The only filter I use is eyecandy. Faster for drop shadows than manually with PS (for me at least). Also, I use the cutout filter. That's pretty much it. Everything else manually.

I tried Auto FX once but it sucks. I'm glad I didn't pay for it, cause it's a waste of money :)

Eyecandy is only good for newbies. Professional designers don't use shit like that.

Well yeh that's true, but can you do that as fast as a filter can?

KRL, if you get a chance, could you ICQ me? I want to ask you something. :)

ICQ 460-0137

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AHH the Auto Eye FX was one of the programs I was asking about. Qeustion, can it be used in an Photoshop cs batch like the auto level or auto color can?

Well no obviously not , not with all of them
Many of them are really only 1 or 2 clicks more work than opening the plugin .

The difference is the finished product
Eye candy and plugins like that are great for people that dont have the " know how " but they suck if you know what PS is really capable of .


The other thing .
If any of you dumped the filters and learned how to do it by yourself , you'd learn how to do 1000 more things just as cool in the process .

you'll learn that if you want to make fire , Eyecandy is crap .
and if you do it yourself .. fire is one or two steps away from Ice . and so on . its a never ending learning circle .

I agree completely. I don't do designing as a profession obviously. I do it for fun, touching up my photography work, and when I do my own creative projects I like being able to do things fast and productively.

So I don't have the time to sit there and do it through a long professional way like you can when I can get the same effect I'm looking for with a couple clicks.

You do really nice design work by the way.


:thumbsup

you guys forgo the best one of them all:

Knochout


its like Extract but you wont believe how well it works

every strand of hair - this thing picks up - gotta try it!

:thumbsup

i actually haven't used filters for a very long time. adobe now incorporates most of that into their layer styles. although sometimes i do miss my lightning plugin :winkwink:

I'll admit that some of those are definitely really cool. But 99% of the plugins I've ever seen or tried have been pretty bland, overused, or just plain bad looking, so I dont even bother anymore. Maybe I've just been downloading the wrong ones.

Why use plugins when doing it by hand can create happy accidents?

I have 0 plugins and proud of it.