Plug-Ins and XTensions: Illustrator Path Editors, Photoshop Photo Filters, QuarkXPress Productivity Enhancers

Jay Nelson

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Each month Design Tools Monthly reviews some of the best plug-ins and XTensions on the market. Most of the mentioned products can be purchased through The PowerXChange.

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Illustrator

• Advanced Path-Editing in Illustrator
  CValley’s Xtream Path 1.1 ($139) is a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator CS that adds several features: You can click anywhere on a path and drag it to into a new shape, rather than adjusting anchor points (similar to the feature Macromedia FreeHand has had for six years). A new palette shows the numerical values of the position of anchor points, handles and the length of segments (a feature FreeHand has had for 12 years) and copy and paste the values onto another anchor point. You can symmetrically change a shape — pull on one side and the other side mirrors the change. A Smart Rounding effect changes sharp corners into rounded ones, even on editable type. A Multi-Line tool makes it easier to draw isometric shapes such as 3D boxes. You can copy paths and insert them into other paths. You can bevel or round corners and easily create arcs, and more.

CValley, Inc.

Photoshop

• Blue Screen Plug-in
  Nova Design’s Cinematte ($190) is a plug-in for Photoshop that automatically builds clipping paths for any object that was photographed in front of a solid blue or green backdrop. Cinematte supports Layers and Actions and can batch process multiple layers.

Nova Design

 

• 75 Professional Photographic Filters
  Nik Multimedia’s nik Color Efex Pro 2.0 is a plug-in for Photoshop 5.5 and above that adds 75 professional-quality filters that you can use on 8- or 16-bit images. Amazingly, you can “paint” the filters onto your image with variable strength, using a Wacom pressure-sensitive pen and tablet. The basic filters let you apply red, green and blue lens filters to create traditional color lens effects. The red filter can enhance skin tones, the blue filter enhances blue colors and brightens skies, and the green filter makes foliage much greener, all without damaging the rest of the photograph. One of the most amazing filters is the Sunshine filter, which transforms the dull colors in a picture taken on a cloudy day into the colors you would see on a bright summer day. In effect, it frees you to take photos on cloudy days, knowing you can “add sunshine” to them later. The package also includes many other useful photographic effects, including Darken Center and Lighten Center, color washes, aging filters, and instant pastels. New filters in version 2.0 include Burnt Sienna, Cool Ice, Color Cast Remove, Cross-Processing C41 to E6, Graduated Fog, Indian Summer, Infrared, Soft Gold Reflector, White Neutralizer, and 21 others. It’s available in collections from $99.95 to $299.95.

 

Nik Multimedia

QuarkXPress

• Use Native Photoshop Docs in QuarkXPress
  Both Techno Design’s Photoshop Import XT ($69) and alap’s ImagePort ($99) let you import native, layered Photoshop documents into picture boxes in QuarkXPress 4, 5 or 6 without first having to flatten them or save them as TIFF or EPS. These XTensions support multiple clipping paths and alpha channels, and you can select the clipping path you need from within QuarkXPress.

ThePowerXChange
Techno Design
alap (a lowly apprentice production)

 

• XPert Tools Pro 2.1
  Alap’s XPert Tools Pro 2.1 ($180) is an XTension for QuarkXPress 4.1, 5 or 6 that adds many features:
  • XPert Align lets you easily align or distribute items to each other or to a page.
  • XPert BoxTools makes it easy to adjust a box to fit a picture, or adjust text to fit a box. It also lets you lock text to prevent editing.
  • XPert FindChange lets you find and change just about any attribute of any item (color, width, scale, angle, etc.)
  • XPert Guides lets you numerically create guides and grids, copy, move and mirror guides, and import and export sets of guides.
  • XPert ImageInfo displays all available information about a selected picture, and lets you change the attributes applied to it in QuarkXPress. It also lets you print a report of all the pictures in your document.
  • XPert ItemMarks lets you place crop and registration marks, slugs, color bars and dimensional arrows around any item, and onto any layer.
  • XPert ItemStyles works similarly to paragraph styles, except these styles apply to item attributes (frame, color, line width, etc.)
  • XPert PageSets lets you save combinations of New Document settings for easy reuse. It also lets you specify the number of pages, section start, and document name.
  • XPert Pilot provides a palette with a thumbnail of your document that lets you drag and resize a marquee to control which area of a page displays in the document window.
  • XPert Print lets you select an area of a page to print or export as EPS.
  • XPert Scale lets you scale groups of items, either visually or numerically, with control over what gets scaled and how (proportionally or not).
  • XPert TextLink gives greater control over linked text boxes.
  • XPert Toolbars lets you build icon-based toolbars that invoke menu items.
  • XPert Type replicates commonly-used items from the Measurements palette, adding the ability to increase or decrease values by clicking up or down arrows, and to interactively apply changes by dragging type, paragraphs, or rules.

  alap (a lowly apprentice production)

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