It's difficult to quantify the quality of these filters. Do yourself a favor and download the demo version so you can see for yourself. Versatility is also a bit tough to quantify. As I mentioned above, these are general-purpose visual effects and can be used over and over without having the feel of canned effects.

Performance isn't difficult to quantify at all. In After Effects 5 on a G4 400 running OS 9.0.4, the blurs took anywhere from one to five seconds to render in "Best" mode on the first frame, less time on subsequent frames. Most of the other filters take one or two seconds. Paint, the slowest of the filters, will took about 10 seconds to render per frame. (In all cases, the test comp size was 720 x 486 with a variety of still and moving images.)

In terms of functionality, the filters provide three ways of working. You can adjust position and modifiers directly in the comp window. You can adjust numeric sliders. And you can work in the Output window (seen above) to adjust parameters like position, radius and direction of any given effect.

Disappointments
In every review we do, we come up with at least one or two drawbacks to a product. After all, nothing's perfect. Tinderbox 2's failings, however, are almost nonexistent. On the installation front, the only hardship was having to register the product in order to gain access to the Kaleid filter. Big deal. In terms of pricing, I think Tinderbox 1 customers should receive a deep discount on this particular set. After all, I think the second volume is a supplement to the first. Not that it can't stand on its own as well, but still, it never hurts to reward loyalty.

In terms of the product itself, it's tough to find anything wrong with it.

It is worth noting that anybody out there running After Effects under Classic in Mac OS X will not be able to use this set of filters. After Effects itself, so far, seems to run fine in Classic mode. But this filter set with crash the beejeezus out of you. It'll crash not just After Effects, but the whole Classic environment with it. I don't think this is too much of a problem just yet, since few professional compositors have been willing as yet to make the switch to the new OS. Nevertheless, it will be a problem in the future. I would like to hear word from The Foundry that they plan to offer a free or heavily discounted upgrade once an OS X version of both After Effects and Tinderbox become available.

The bottom line
Tinderbox 2 is a sensational addition to the offerings found in Tinderbox 1. The filters are useful and innovative, not to mention speedy, and the output is professional all the way. The price, again, is a bit steep, and I would like to see a discount for existing Tinderbox customers. But, on the whole, I think you'll be pleased with the results you get from this package. I give it a recommendation of Strong Buy.

Tinderbox 2 is available for Macintosh and Windows NT for $595. It requires After Effects 4.x or 5.0 and a Power Macintosh running Mac OS 8.6 or higher (but not OS X). For more information, visit http://www.thefoundry.co.uk.