Eye Candy 6 Brings New Tools to Photoshop
Alien Skin’s Eye Candy is one of the first set of plug-ins I purchased, back when I was but a Photoshop nube. Eye Candy 6 (released in December) is the latest refinement of the company’s seminal plug-in pack. The Eye Candy collection is comprised of more than 30 plug-ins that do everything from create buttons to create fire and smoke effects. You’ve seen countless images created with Alien Skin. This video tutorial page shows some nice examples of what you can do. Alien skin is $249, but the package is useful for so many tasks it’ll pay for itself in no time.
We include the info from the features page below.
Performance. Under the hood, the Eye Candy rendering engine has changed significantly. You will notice that the filters are much faster and can run on much larger images than before. If you have a computer with one or more multi-core CPUs, Eye Candy will take advantage of the modern hardware to accelerate its rendering speed.
Scaling Modes. Eye Candy 6 adaptively scales filter effects to the current image size, making it easy to get great looking results quickly. Factory settings now work better than ever in the new adaptive mode. For those who want precise control in a graphic design production environment, Eye Candy also supports a fixed mode, which allows the filter effects to be specified precisely in pixel units.
Settings. Settings have been reorganized and now have categories. If you are new to a filter, the Settings Tour category takes you on a trip through the filter’s most interesting effects. The factory settings were completely remade. There are now over 1500 carefully designed settings that handle a wide range of common design tasks.
Fire. The Fire filter now looks more natural. Sharp edges have been smoothed to look more like realistic gaseous flames.
Panels. Panels for Photoshop CS4 are provided for starting Eye Candy filters with a single click and for quickly creating attractive buttons.
Non-Destructive Editing. All of the filters now have the option to draw their output on a new layer. In Eye Candy 5 this feature was only available on some filters and it didn’t work the same for all filters. Now all filters cnsistently apply their effect to a copy above the original layer. The new layer is named after the setting used. All of the filters work as Smart Filters when applied to Smart Objects in Photoshop. These features contribute to a non-destructive workflow.
Professional Features. Eye Candy is made for professionals in demanding production environments who need support for 16-bit/channel images and CMYK mode. Eye Candy 6 now takes advantage of multi-core CPUs to run fast on modern machines. Eye Candy 6 is one of the first plug-ins to work with the 64-bit version of Photoshop.
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Author: David Schloss
David Schloss is the director of the Mac Create Network and the Aperture Users Network, a professional photographer, writer, editor and photographic educator who specializes adventure sports, travel and lifestyle photography. Schloss is the author of the books Blue Pixel Personal Photo Coach: Digital Photography Tips from the Trenches and Blue Pixel Guide to Travel Photography: Perfect Photos Every Time. Schloss is the former Technical Editor for Photo District News, a position he held for six years.
