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Maureen Shannon, NJCPUG
Splat! is very easy to work with which makes it ideal for all levels of users. Whether novice or pro, you’ll enjoy adding the effects to your images. If you work with photos, you may particularly like the ability to add both mattes and frames to your images. With just one click, you can enhance your image. Lots of creative elements for web pages, greeting cards, posters, and more can be found in this set of filters.
Filters:
The frame effect adds mattes, frames, and geometric borders that have a realistic look to an image. There are over 100 frames to choose from and more are available on Alien Skin’s web site for download (for Photoshop 5 and later). When the Frame Dialog Box is open you can browse through the categories that are available. Frames and mattes can also be resized to fit the image. Selections available include wood frames, Art Noveau, geometric borders, and novelty frames such as pushpins. If you use Photoshop 6 or later, you can create and save your own frames.These files create borders, frames, and mattes in a composition or selection that is rectangular.
With the Resurface filter you can add over 100 high-resolution surface textures to an object, a selection, or composition. With just a couple of clicks you can apply textures such as metal, wood, leather, stone, or paper, to a surface. The surface files are seamlessly tiling grayscale JPEGs. You can create you own bump maps to add to the file content, use others that are available by converting them to grayscale JPEGs, or download new textures from the Alien Skin web site.
Using the Edge effect, you can add a decorative edge to a graphic. The edge modes available are halftone dots and lines, pixels, torn paper, lumpy, and rough. These modes can be applied to settings that are a Dot edge, Pixelated edge, an Ink Spill, Thick Lines, or Small Tears. You can use these effects to fill text and get some great looking designs. Use the sliders to adjust settings, the color picker to change the color of the edge, and the Random Seed button to generate variations in the pattern.
The Fill Stamp is used to fill a selection with a variety of objects. You can enhance an image with stamps from over 100 stamp libraries. Some of the stamp libraries include food, flowers, leaves, buttons, and coins. The object can be sized to fit the area. The files used for stamps have a .tub extension. If you are a Paint Shop Pro user, you will recognize the tube file format. A tube is a grid of cells and there is a themed image in each cell. For example flowers, birds, or flower petals. You use these stamps to fill an area that has been selected. You can find tube files on the internet for free, create you own stamps with Photoshop 6 or later – or tube files with Paint Shop Pro. Photoshop 5 and above users can download free stamps from the Alien Skin web site.
Border Stamps: Example: Leaves around the border of the photo. The Border Stamp applies an edge around an image. Objects such as leaves, flower petals, flowers, buttons, etc. can be used to decorate the edge of the image by placing the object around it to create a border. The border adjustments can be sized, increase or decrease the number of objects (density), and then randomly generated to scatter the effect. These objects are endlessly expandable by adding more files to the content. You can find more stamps at the Alien Skin web site. These files are also .tub format files and can be found on the web for free and there are lots of them included in Paint Shop Pro. You have to add them to the file content folder in order for them to be available when you are using Splat!.
Patchwork:
Patchwork takes any image,
selection, or shape and recreates it into a mosaic design. Patchwork tile
libraries include cross-stitch, ceramic tiles, light pegs, and ASCII art. To use
it you select style from the library, resize (scale) it to fit, and apply it to
the image. More files for patchwork can be found on the Alien Skin web site.
These files cannot be created by the user. This example is ASCII art.
Splat!’s interface is easy to use and it has industry standard image editor controls. Features are a large preview pane, unlimited undo and redo’s, uses many of Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts, the menus are accessible from the filter window, mouse-over tips, and seamless tiling.
Estimated street pricing of Splat! is $99. Sidegrade price for registered users of Eye Candy 4000, Xenofex, or Eye Candy After Effects is $69. For more information about Splat! visit the Alien Skin web site at www.alienskin.com.
This is a great addition to your plug-in selections. I enjoy using it and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a selection of edge and frame, border, or background designs to use with their graphics. With the limitless numbers of objects that can be added to the content files, you will be able to expand your choices of designs with little or no expense depending where you find the file formats available. I also like the fact that this product has a combination of features to use not just edge art or stamp design but a nice sampling of design ideas to work with. System Requirements: A host application for Windows: Adobe Photoshop 5.0 or later, Macromedia Fireworks 3 or later, Paint Shop Pro 5 or later, etc., Pentium II processor or higher, Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 32 MB RAM or more, Color Monitor with 24bit video card, at least 50 MB of free hard drive space. The full installation requires 300 MB
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SPLAT!
Splat!
is a set of plug-in filters from Alien Skin that creates frames, textures,
edges, borders, mosaics, and more. Splat! filters
are Photoshop compatible and will work with most image editors. Splat! works
similarly to other filters in that the filters adapt to irregular selections,
except for the frames filter. It differs from other plug-ins in that it works
with "content-powered special effects engines". The filters use
various images to create the effects and these images are in content files. They
can be added to so that you can increase the variety making the selections
infinitely expandable. Splat! nicely brings together a selection of edge and
images effects into one fun package.
Frame:
Resurface:
Edges:
Fill
Stamp:
This
is the image used in the ASCII Art.
