When I first got on board with Mac OS X (10.1) in 2001 and purchased Photoshop 7 which ran natively in OS X and in OS 9, as well as in Classic Mode under OS X (or "Phantom 9" as Stan calls it), the Plugin situation didn't really bother me. I had a gazillion plugins from six years years of acquiring them, and I was planning on running them all in OS 9 or in Classic. Forever. After all, I didn't really *have* any plugins that ran under OS X other than the ones that are part of Photoshop, and as long as Photoshop could run in OS 9/Classic, why bother?

Flaming Pear was one of the first Plugin developerss that created OS X versions of all their filters. Then I bought the very groovy Alien Skin Xenofex which also ran under both OSs. And over the past few years, I eventually acquired a couple more Alien Skin packages, and acquired all the OS X versions of the Flaming Pears that I use, and eventually the OS X versions from Panopticum (Digitalizer, Alpha Strip and Engraver). I was also acclimating more to using Photoshop under OS X, and I liked it. It just seemed smoother, and the interface looked nicer. In fact, I was getting by pretty well using OS X. But with half my filters still stuck in Classic, I'd have to restart Photoshop under Classic each time I wanted to access some of those effects. Maybe I was just too much of a cheapskate to upgrade to the OS X versions of filters I already paid for with the Classic versions (The Flaming Pear filters were free to crossgrade) but I don't know, I think it's pretty understandable. Earlier this year, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade anyway, costs be damned. Classic was starting to annoy me.

Because Xaos' Terrazzo, one of my all-time favorite filters, hasn't been upgraded since 1998 and has no OS X version, I decided to give the newly released Human Software's PhotoTessel a try. Like Terrazzo, it has all the 17 symmetry patterns that are so much fun to create incredible designs with. I ordered it along with PhotoRepeat and PhotoWeave (which I used to create the Plaids on this site). I LOVE PhotoWeave, I mean, hey, it makes Plaid, and the only other plaid software I've encountered was extremely expensive. The problem with Human Software is that the documentation is weak, not just in quantity but in substance as well. I've read and re-read the PDF manuals that come with it, but it still baffles me. I think these programs will have to grow on me. Maybe I'll have infrequent epiphanies of how to use them, much like it was in my first years of learning Bryce. I can tell these filters are extremely powerful and deep, but much is left unexplained in the documentation. Also, I tend to get a lot of spinning beachballs, especially in PhotoTessel, while any mouseclick seems to take forever to process. Also, PhotoTessel's handling of the symmetries is different than Terrazzo's. There is distortion involved, whereas there is none with Terrazzo. However PhotoTessel does allow one to rotate and distort not only the source tile, but also the way the tile is applied to the image, which can create many interesting effects.

I also upgraded my Andromeda software, Screens and Cutline. The upgrades are only $20 each (but of course with Flaming Pear that's the price of a whole new plugin with free upgrades for life). So naturally, the idea of paying $99 to upgrade my Kai's Power Tools filters rubbed me wrong. After all, I had KPT 5, KPT 6 and KPT Effects (7). I already had them, why should I pay almost $100 to get them again, except for a different OS? But if I wanted to use some of my favorite filters like Shapeshifter, FraxPlorer, Noize and Lens Flare in OS X, I had no choice. But still, there's something wrong with idea of one who already bought the licenses for the filters under OS 9 paying the same price as someone buying them for the first time. No upgrade pricing. Maybe if they'd thrown in a carbonized version of the KPT 3 Suite, maybe then it'd be justifiable. I mean these are POWERFUL pluigins, and a $99 first time price actually seems very LOW for 24 filters of this calibre. Make it $149 first time pricing (that's just a little over $6/filter) and $49 for the upgrade, then it would make more sense. But that's my only rant. The KPT Collection doesn't include *all* the filters from 5, 6 and 7. Missing from 5 are Smoothie, Orb-It and FraxFlame (FraxFlame II from 7 is included), and missing from 6 are Scene Builder and Sky Effects. I honestly don't remember needing to use Smoothie, Scene Builder was rather quirky and crashed, and Orb-It is easily replaced with Scatter (which I now have experimented with extensively like I never did before and LOVE). I do miss the original FraxFlame...somehow it seemed faster to render than the version II of it, and I did like Sky Effects a lot. But Alien Skin's Little Puffy Clouds can easily replace that one.

There were still some Plugins eternally stuck in the 20th century version of the Mac Operating System, and I will never, ever be able to use those in OS X. There's the incomparable Terrazzo. PhotoTessel, despite being able to do much more than the extremely simple Terrazzo, doesn't cut it. It's too complex, and Terrazzo is beautifully simple. Then there's the handy little freebie "Grid Creator", a Mac-only plugin that makes grids and lines that no other filter has ever done (why?). There was Ink_XHatch, a filter that simulates various drawing techniques. And most importantly, there's the KPT 3 series, some of which were completely peerless and irreplaceable. Despite my love for Flaming Pear's Hue and Cry as a noise/color/texture generator, there's something about KPT 3's Texture Explorer that just wows me. And what about Spheroid Designer? Not even KPT Shapeshifter or Gel can compare when making spheres. And although Scatter is easier and smoother to use than Spheroid Designer's Genesis Editor, the latter creates spheres layed out in patterns impossible in the former. But one of the hardest to do without? A very simple KPT 3 filter called Twirl, which also has a circular Kaleidoscope effect. I've never been able to find any other filter that kaleidoscopes like that. How could I still get these effects when I also swore off switching back between the two Photoshops--quitting and restarting the program each time is such a chore. What's a Macintosh digital artist to do?

I'd still have to employ the Classic versions somehow, some way. I know that eventually all things Classic will be completely obsolete, when and if I get an Intel-based Mac I will not have Classic available to me except on any old computer I still may have. Until then, I could still harness the power of these legacy filters, but I only wanted to do it the easiest way possible without restarts. Then it came to me: ImageReady, the sister program to Photoshop. Would it work? Yes it did! In the Finder, I chose Get Info for the ImageReady Application, and clicked "Open in the Classic Environment". Now, I can work in Photoshop natively in OSX, but if I need the help of an old filter, I simply switch to ImageReady, which will run in Classic. No quitting and restarting and quitting and restarting. Just toggling. Sure it's not perfect, but considering the alternatives, It's a dream come true.

Labels: Graphics and Software