Flood
at a Glance

Maker: Flaming Pear
Price: $20
Platforms: Macintosh and Windows
Demo Available: Yes
URL: http://www.flamingpear
.com

Overall Impression: Flaming Pear's plugins are top-notch, and Flood is no different. The water effects are versatile and impressive, and the filter works pretty quickly, even on high-resolution images. (On a low-end G4, you won't even see a progress bar until your image passes about 1,024 x 768.) This is a solid piece of software.

Key Benefits: Like most of Flaming Pear's plugins, Flood provides a decent number of controls for customizing the look of the effect. This is a pretty specialized filter, but you'll still see a goodly range of effects. You can use the presets that ship with the filter, create your own or even generate random settings.

Disappointments: I like this filter a lot, but I'd like to see more control over the shape of the bodies of water that are generated, maybe some special edge effects (breaking waves, mist, etc.) and the ability to insert more than one ripple.

Recommendation: Strong Buy

 
REVIEW • MAY 23 , 2001

Flaming Pear Flood
[Page 2 of 3]

The bottom line
Flood is certainly a worthy addition to your plugin collection, assuming you have the need to submerge objects in water. It's performance is great, and it provides the user with lots of options for customizing the look of the effect. Certainly the price is right ($20). But there are some enhancements I'd like to see go into this filter. First, I'd like to be able to create more than one ripple. Second, I'd like to be able to create breakers or add a little whitewater. And third, I'd like to be able to add effects to the edges, such as mist or contours.

I'm still going to give this a strong buy recommendation though because I know some of you out there are flipping through the stock catalogs looking for a perfect body of water to composite over an image. Flaming Pear Flood is a much better solution with its high quality, customizability and performance, not to mention its modest price.

Flaming Pear Flood is available for Macintosh and Windows for $20 or in a bundle with two other filters (Melancholytron and Hue & Cry) for $40. For more information or to download a demo, visit http://www.flamingpear.com.

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