Test reports

3. Softwaretest: ArtEffect Plugins-Collection (by Christian Aichinger)

Recently, Haage & Partner [1] offered new supplies for the graphics artists among Amiga users. The "ArtEffect Plugins Collection" extends ArtEffect with additional filters, a Postscript print function, border effects and a new load/save module for additional graphics formats - the SuperView plugin. Users who have never used ArtEffect before can use the full version ArtEffect 2.5, which is included on this CD as well. Now let's look if it is worthwhile to spend about 45.- Euro on this disk.

System requirements

The Plugins Collection requires ArtEffect Version 2 or better. It doesn't work with version 1.5 or 1.5SE. To avoid an unhealthy consumption of coffee (some of the filters do some heavy computing) it is recommended to have a fast 68k CPU (040/060), a graphics board, large amounts of RAM and a fast harddisk. PowerPC boards are not supported. The icons on the CD-ROM are saved in the OS3.5/3.9 icon format, which gives a less appealing look on OS versions older than 3.5. But the program itself requires only AmigaOS 3.0 or better.

Contents

The Plugins Collection does not include a printed manual. An english/german manual is on the CD. The disc, which isn't a real CD-ROM, but a CD-R with a colorful label, comes with a one-sided inlay in a normal jewel case. Surprisingly, the inlay is also kind of Do-It-Yourself - made with a bubble jet printer. And since the Collection comes neither with a registration form nor a serial number and is obviously not copy protected in any way, I cannot help but wonder why Haage & Partner is making it so easy for pirates to copy this software. The customer is also always a little unsure whether he bought a licensed copy or only a pirated one.

Installation

If you don't have an installation of ArtEffect, you should start by installing the included version 2.5. After a reboot you can start to install the plugins.

The installation of the plugins is done with an installer script as well, but is not as problem-free as the ArtEffect installation. While the installer does not report any errors and the installation process runs to the end, you don't find any new plugins in the menu of ArtEffect after rebooting. At least not if you did not install ArtEffect from scratch before. That's because the older plugins preferences in the directory "Settings" don't work with the new plugins. A cure for this is to delete or rename the whole directory ("ArtEffect:Settings"). After another reboot, ArtEffect properly recognizes the new plugins. Unfortunately you also have to reconfigure ArtEffect after that. That's something Haage&Partner should improve.

If you want the store the new border documents on your harddisk, you should have 500 MB of disk space available. But you can also keep them on the CD-ROM or on another partition. The script asks you what you prefer before performing the installation.

The SuperView plugin from Andreas R. Kleinert is installed with a separate script, which worked absolutely smooth. Caution: The script warns you not to use the MCP commodity together with the SuperView plugin (some functions of MCP have to be deactivated). Take this warning seriously! Using the SuperView plugin while having these patches installed led straight to a crash on my system.

Documentation

The description and documentation of the new plugins are supplied on the CD as a multilingual HTML document. The english and german texts are always shown one below the other in the same HTML- frame, which doesn't really help to read the texts. Well done, on the other hand, are the "Before/After" graphics. A click on an image loads the image after the filter has been applied. So you can easily see what results you can expect from using a certain filter. The english documentation by Haage & Partner is also available on the Internet. So if you want to take a look, go to [2].

The documentation for the Postscript plugin is a separate (english) AmigaGuide file on the CD. The manual for ArtEffect and the SuperView plugin is also included on the CD as (german and english) AmigaGuide texts. Unfortunately, they are both somewhat hidden on the CD, so you have to go looking for them. I don't understand why these are not installed with the programs.

For your convenience: The german manual for ArtEffect 2.5 can be found at [3], the english one at [4]. The english documentation for the SuperView plugin is at [5].

Postscript

The new Postscript plugin has a lot of options.

You can scale images to ratios like DIN A3, DIN A4 and DIN A5, save them as a colored EPS file and of course also output them on a Postscript printer. Besides setting margins and dithering algorithms you can also set a lot of Postscript-specific options, like resolution, contrast or orientation. Since I don't have a Postscript printer, I used the Ghostscript 5.10 [6] package, which had no problems handling the files created with ArtEffect. I would like to mention that the plugin is very fast, even on a 040. A truecolor image with 640x480 pixels took less than 4 seconds to be saved as a compressed monochrome Postscript file.

A high resolution truecolor image with 878x1314 pixels took 15-20 seconds, which isn't a too bad result for a 68040 CPU.

New file formats

The new SuperView plugin gives the ArtEffect user the possibility to load and save a wide range of new file formats. This includes the GIF and YUVN formats, which were heavily missed by some users (you can load and save these two formats) as well as some more exotic formats like MacPaint and ACBM (these two can only be loaded). With additional third-party software like MetaView[7], Ghostscript and fig2dev[8], you can even load vector formats like WMF, AMF, EPS, PS or FIG or convert them into a pixel oriented format.

Here's a short list of the supported formats:

Loading and saving:

BMP, GIF (87a, 89a) FBM, IFF (ILBM uncompressed, ILBM CmpByteRun1, DEEP, RGB8, RGFX, YUVN), JPEG, PCX, PNG, PNM (PPM), QRT, SGI, SunRaster, SVG, TGA, Amiga-Piktogramme (NewIcon and MagicWB/OS3.1), UtahRLE (only with third-party software), Limbo (only with the third-party software), EPS (Loading only with Ghostscript)

Loading only:

Datatypes, IFF (ACBM, FAXX, PBM), PhotoCD, Pictor/PC Paint, PNM (PBM, PGM), Mac (MacPaint, PICT2), C64 (Koala, Doodle), WPG, TIM, CorelDraw- Header, IMG, Windows-Piktogramme

Loading only with third-party software:

AMF, DXF, FIG, CGM, DR2D, Postscript, WPG, WMF

only saving:

ASM- and C-Source

You should keep in mind that some formats do not support 24bit color depth, so images may be reduced in quality or color depth. If you plan to edit the file later, be sure to pick the right file format.

Borders

Interesting for all layouters and hobby photographers: The "Bordereffects" plugin. This function, a little hidden in the filter menu, let's you create a stylish frame around any image.

The width of the frame can be chosen freely. Since there is no way to create your own border documents (at least not that I know of), The Plugin Collection comes with 264 high quality borders. What I missed was a preview function that gives a quick impression on how the border looks like. As it is, you have to select each (2 MB large) border document and have it rendered by the filter preview function. But at least all borders have a telling icon that gives an idea on the result if you take the detour over the Workbench.

Filters

Besides the new functions, the Plugins Collection of course also contains a large number of new filters. These are simple but useful functions like "Eraser" (clears the image to a selectable color) or "Prisma" (the name says it all) as well as real professional filters like "Smart-Blur" or "UnSharpMask". Since a detailed description of all filters would be too much for this article, I will only list the new filters with a short comment:

Color filters:

Threshold+

• colorizes light and dark parts of an image in black and white


• the blur setting removes pixel artifacts for the black and white areas

Shift

• changes the colors of an image in a way that looks like "Modern Art"


• no user-settable parameters

Prisma

• the image is covered with a prism pattern


• no user-settable parameters

Lightchange

• changes the colors to blue/cyan tones


• no user-settable parameters

Color to Gray

• converts a colored image into a greyscale image


• you can influence the conversion by modifying the RGB color channels

AutoLevel

• for quick changes of contrast and brightness


• a slider to regulate the intensity


• no preview


• very useful for scanned, yellowed photographs

Alien

• ever seen the movie "Predator"? ;)

Soften/Blur filters:

Softener

• you can exclude light/medium/dark colors and/or color channels (RGB or combinations) for the softening

Smart Median

• blurs areas with the same color/the same brightness


• you can exclude contours


• ideal to remove the "noise" from scans

Smart Blur

• like SmartMedian, but offers several blur algorithms


• quite slow, but still my personal favourite :-)

Gaussian Blur

• a very fast blur filter with Gaussian-algorithm

Average

• direction-based blur filter


• several algorithms


• extensive settings possible


• creates the "looking through tears" effect for romantic pictures ;)

Sharpener:

Unsharp Mask

• professional sharpener


• quite slow, but great results

Style filters:

Solar

• colorful fun filter


• perfect for designing flyers ;)

Shine

• Halo-effect with transparent layers

Psycho

• colorful fun filter


• outlines in the images are drawn with dark colors

Pagecurl

• creates a "dog-ear" in a corner of the image


• many options

Oilpainting

• another oilpaint effect (do not confuse this with "Oilpaint")


• very slow

Neon

• fun filter


• a quite cool neon/shine effect

Highpass

• fun filter


• similar to neon, but with an additional emboss effect

Glow

• glow effect with many options

DarkGlow

• another glow effect

Border Effects

• see above

Deformation filters:

Wave

• the image gets shaped like a wave

Warp

• stretches a quadrant towards the center of the image

Wabble

• distorts the image heavily


• some parameters

Ripple

• earthquake effect


• isn't mentioned or described in the manual


• parameters are self-explaining

Polar

• spherical deformation, could be used to wrap a flat texture of the earth around a globe

Object Warp

• a freely selectable area of the image can be deformed


• the area is selected with 4 X-Y-coordinates

Coarse filters:

Rankorder

• the result looks like a smeared stamp or a totally dissolved watercolor painting


• great effect

Special filters:

Smear Blur

• some kind of motion blur


• no parameters


• quite fast

Eraser

• fill the image in either foreground/background color or black or white


• useful

Engrave

• the image is dithered with horizontal black&white lines


• can give a nice "Venetian blinds" effect

Autocrop

• unused border areas can be masked or removed


• useful


• no preview

Result

Well, what can I say? I like the Plugins Collection and would recommend it to every ArtEffect user. It provides ArtEffect with a lot of new filters and functions. The only drawbacks are the not completely problem-free installation and the somewhat hidden documentation. For a price of 45,- Euro you don't even get a single filter like "UnSharpMask" or "SmearBlur" on other platforms (prices there start with 75 to 100,- Euro). Even users who never used ArtEffect before are recommended to buy this CD-ROM, because the included full version ArtEffect 2.5 has only some small limitations compared to the current version V4 (no text/effect layers, no color gradients). Owners of a PPC board will have to live without the (sometimes direly needed) support for their fast CPUs.

References

Christian Aichinger <christian@aakt.de>