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SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 Digital Anarchy Texture Anarchy
Need more to do? You can also choose different noise types  [an error occurred while processing this directive]or select from a separate presets library to choose pre-defined noise configurations. As I say, this filter suite does not lack depth at all. It just keeps going until you're finally ready to commit to a texture you like. None of this is to say that Texture Anarchy is complex to the point of being difficult to work with. That's not the case at all. You can easily go in and work with Texture Anarchy as if it were just another simple click-to-apply texture generator. But it also has all of the power and versatility you could ever need in a filter designed to produce procedural textures, all with a very slight learning curve that you'll be able to overcome with just a little exploration. Disappointments With all this versatility, layers within layers, compositing within compositing, you can probably imagine what my first disappointment with this software is going to be: performance. On moderately sized images, such as ones you might create for the Web, there's really no problem at all. Some basic textures will render before a progress bar even shows up, while more complex textures might take up to 15 or 20 seconds. Really not a huge deal. But when you get into larger images you do start to see a performance hit, specifically with Edge Anarchy. Texture Anarchy Explorer isn't bad at all. Running on a dual 1 GHz G4, a 720 x 540 image takes 17 seconds to render with moderately complex settings in "Normal" render mode (as opposed to the alternate "Fast" and "High-Quality" modes). And at 4,000 x 3,000, it took a little more than eight minutes. Not terrible, to be sure, compared with some other third-party Photoshop filters, at least when you consider the size of the base image. Edge Anarchy, however, takes considerably longer to render. Averaging the results from two different presets--I wasn't going to try this test more than twice!--I found that Edge Anarchy takes 60 minutes and change to render on the same 4,000 x 3,000 image under the exact same circumstances in "Normal" render mode. Again, it's OK on smaller files (about 25 seconds for the same filter on a 720 x 540 image), but for the larger ones, bring some reading material. (Note that this issue may not be a problem on all systems. This was tested on a dual 1 GHz G4 running Mac OS X 10.2.6 with 1.5 GB of memory installed. Other configurations were not tested for this review, and Digital Anarchy's Web site notes that performance should not be an issue in most circumstances. You can download the demo to see how it runs on your system.) I have two other minor disappointments. First, I'd like to see multiple levels of undo in a future update. And, second, I'd like to have some simple way of returning to my starting texture once I've spent some time clicking around on mutators. I'm not asking a lot, just something akin to Photoshop's Variations function, which, no matter where you go, provides you a method for stepping back to where you started. AT present, you can only step back one move using undo, or you can save each variation as a preset, which will slow you down. So maybe a "Session Presets" feature, which would store your steps as you go and then clear them out later, would be helpful. The bottom line Texture Anarchy is such a deep program that there's no way to overstate its power, flexibility and adaptability. It's the kind of filter I like--a generalized filter that allows the user to explore limitless possibilities and come up with truly unique effects, but one that also provides simple, useful starting points for those times when we really just need to create a simple fabric edge or a metallic surface. It's wonderfully implemented, with a lively interface that, once again, may appear daunting at first but is really quite approachable once you take just a little time to navigate around and see just how much functionality is crammed into this package. For me, the edge effects alone are worth it, but all of the filters will come in handy at one time or another. The one major drawback is the performance of Edge Anarchy on large images. This being potentially the most useful of the three plugins, I can't get around the fact that its performance on large files limits it's practicality. But even with Edge Anarchy's performance limitation, I give this collection a Buy recommendation, with the understanding that this will be bumped to a Strong Buy recommendation when the performance issue is addressed. I suggest that, at the very least, you download the demo version with the full suite of presets and check it out for yourself. Digital Anarchy's Texture Anarchy is available for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Windows for $129. For more information, visit http://www.digitalanarchy.com. Contact the author: Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Mac OS, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at dnagel@digitalmedianet.com. 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