Ever wonder how graphics professionals do those cool manipulations of photos and drawings you see in ads, packages, and whatever? They cheat, that's how.

Update Below

The secret sauce usually is add-on graphics filters. If you aren't a graphics software professional you probably don't think much about them because they typically are expensive and are only available through limited sales channels. But the fact is that filters exist to simplify complicated tasks, and thus can benefit "civilian" users as well.

Case in point: Image Doctor from Alien Skin Software, which will work with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Paint Shop Pro.

This is as close to being a "must have" as there is in this category. Mind you, with a price tag of $129 list ($99 if you do a little web searching), it can cost you more than Elements or PSP. (The cost is more proportional with Photoshop). But what it does is sufficiently impressive for you to check it out.

Image Doctor has a simple setup program that in finds your graphic software and then installs the filters into the proper folder. Should you have more than one graphics program on your system, setup will only let you put the filters in one at a time. You could, of course, rerun setup and install again, but that is silly -- all of the supported programs let
you choose your plug in
folder so you just install once, and direct the other software to that folder.

One of its components is "JPEG Repair," which is an aid to the digital photographer. Most digital cameras by default take pictures in compressed JPEG format. You can set your camera to a high-resolution format, but that will eat up space on your memory card. Plus you probably are going to want to work with them in JPEG format anyway. However, you may have noticed that when you look at your pictures on your computer screen there is a graininess to them, and when you blow them up, areas that should be solid color are blotchy.

This is what is called a compression "artifact." It is a result of the shortcuts that the JPEG process takes in storing the picture data. If you crop or alter a JPEG photo, then save it again, the picture quality deteriorates further.

Image Doctor's JPEG Repair filter smoothes out the colors in the JPEG image. Essentially, it is a very smart blurring tool. Easy-to-use settings, with several presets, let you adjust the effect as needed. The only downside I ever saw in working with it was that some textured surfaces -- a field of grass, for example, or highway
asphalt -- can lose some
of that texture. This is not
 much of a problem, however, as typically those are the background elements of your photo, and the repair effect cleans up the primary image. With it, solid colors look solid again.

Image Doctor also includes Scratch Remover and Spot Lifter -- both of which do pretty much what they sound like. They will look at a defect in your photo and try to determine what should be there from surrounding pixels. However, the killer app in the package is Smart Fill, which is a grander execution of the other two.

Smart Fill is designed to solve one of the traditional frustrations of

photography: You frame your shot as best you and, and when you go to review the picture you find that there is something -- a street sign, a fire hydrant, obscene graffiti, an unwanted person, whatever -- strategically located in the photo that makes a hash of the scene. Smart Fill is like having an ace retoucher at your command. Use your graphics program's selection tool to mark the offending element, launch Smart Fill, and it will cover over the trouble spot.

It doesn't work all the time, but I had success on 75-80 percent of my attempts, which impressed the heck out of me. According to an Alien Skin spokesperson, the complexity of the item you are trying to hide is unimportant. The key to a successful Smart Fill is having a background that is uniform enough for the software to devise an appropriate cloaking device. It's very cool.

Alien Skin's catalog also includes a number of more conventional filters Eye Candy 4000, Splat! and Xenofex 2, which, frame, manipulate or distort your pictures in interesting ways. Paint Shop Pro users probably don't need these since it includes scores of similar effects. But neither Photoshop nor Photoshop Elements are as well endowed.

Splat!, for instance, provides interesting borders and textures while Eye Candy lets you make Macintosh-like translucent buttons and Xenofex lets you "rip open" an image. Many of them are particularly useful for building buttons and other web page elements. I lost count of all the variations, but I would guess there are several hundred among the three packages -- the number of effects are way more than what my imagination can conjure up ways to use.

Alien Skin is offering the three as a bundle for $299 -- $130 off the price of the three separately. That is steep for casual users, but in the ballpark for Photoshop prosumers.

With a little help from the right filter, your graphics can get a more sophisticated look. Demonstration versions are available for you to test; see if they make sense for you.

UPDATE: Eye Candy 5

Alien Skin is updating its Eye Candy filters with a series of three new bundles, the first of which -- Eye Candy 5: Textures -- has been released.

The company says the other two will be released next year. "Nature" will simulate fire, smoke and other natural phenomena, while "Impact" will contain the Eye Candy's classic graphic design effects. Those effects can be found now in Eye Candy 4000, which remains on the market. Because there are now three bundles sold separately, the revision makes Eye Candy less attractive to prosumers, but more powerful for graphics pros.

Alien Skin uses the term "generators" to describe these tools, because each of the 10 effects has multiple presets and custom settings, so the range of possibilities is infinite.

By way of illustration, the graphic to the left is the same auto show photo above, with the car given a knotty pine texture while the background has a "medium, no twist" spiral. No graphics pro -- at least none that I would hire -- would actually use that combination.

But you can see how you might take a stock auto show photo and make it more dramatic by turning the stage background into the space warp effect produced from the swirl effect. Or, since this was a new car introduction, an artist might mask the car with the pine paneling for use in an advance "teaser."

From my perspective, the presets are a huge advance over Eye Candy 4000. Each of the 10 filters has 20 or more presets. It's nice to have infinite possibilities, but when you are working on a tight deadline, a way to narrow down your choices to manageable proportions is even nicer.

(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com

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