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MAY 29, 2003 Auto FX Mystical Lighting
On the more whimsical side, Mystical Lighting also includes an effect called FairyDust. This, as you might imaging, allows you to create glowing, trailing particles of twinkling lights, stars and other assorted objects. This is a painted-on effect, so users can control the length, width and path shape of the dust trails. The effect of this filter ranges from the absolutely goofy to the sometimes sublime. The example below combines LightCaster and FairyDust (along with a hue shift, curves adjustment and saturation boost).  [an error occurred while processing this directive]Mystical Lighting also includes shading effects. Of course, by selecting black as the light color, any of the above effects could conceivably be used for shadows or other forms of shading. But the dedicated shading effects include ShadowPlay, which is the inverse of SurfaceLight. It allows you to use preset shapes to cast shadows. ShadingBrush is the inverse of LightBrush, allowing you to paint shadows on objects. And Shader is the inverse of LightCaster, allowing you to generate floods of shadows, rather than light.Finally, there are two filters that fall into the miscellaneous category. The first is Mottled Background, which produces effects similar to Photoshop's own DIfference Clouds, but with some more interesting variation and much, much more control over the effect. And the second is the somewhat utilitarian Rainbow, which allows you to generate rainbows along a path. Now, overall, I like these filters a lot. There's no doubt that some of them are just repeats of basic Photoshop functionality, particularly LightBrush, SurfaceLight and ShadingBrush. But even where functionality overlaps, Mystical Light provides greater control and ease of use than those effects that come with Photoshop. And, mind you, this is a standalone application, so you don't even need Photoshop to use this package. The one negative comparison I can make where functionality overlaps is that this package does not seem to support pressure-sensitive tablets, at least not in Mac OS X. Photoshop, of course, does. Again, though, this package had effect-specific functionality that Photoshop doesn't, and it's much better implemented than many light-effect filters I've examined in the past. Performance, interface, workflow Typically, I'm not a big fan of custom interfaces, especially ones that take over the whole screen. However, I like the Auto FX interface a lot. It's easy to use; it places all of the effects in one location; and it gives you several tools that you won't find in a lot of standard Photoshop plugins. (It is, after all, a standalone application merely integrated with Photoshop via a plugin.) Prev 1 2 3 4 Next Related sites: • Creative Mac • Digital Media Designer • Digital Producer • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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