by David Nagel
Executive Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com

Panopticum has released Photo FX, a collection of Adobe Photoshop plugins previously available separately. The collection includes Panopticum Fire 2.0, Alpha Strip 1.1, Lens Pro II and Panopticum Digitizer 1.0.

Alpha Strip 1.1 is a set of procedures for cutting images in the alpha channel. It's designed to create cutout effects using editable geometric shapes. Alpha Strip contains six adjustable masks: lines, squares, circles, rings, spirals and waves. Each mask contains a set of adjustable parameters, which can be changed in real time in the preview window.

Fire 2.0 is a filter designed to create fire effects for still and animated work within Photoshop and applications that support Photoshop filters. It can also produce crackling fire sounds.

Lens Pro II includes 12 filters for creating lens effects. Lenses include Universal Lens, Gradient Len, Triangle Lens, Ellipse Lens, Square Lens, Droplet Lens, Torus Lens, Star Crystal, Diamond Crystal and others.

Panopticum Digitizer creates a matrix of alphanumeric characters representing the original image. (The text used to draw the picture can be edited.) The result can be saved in Photoshop format, as well as RTF, TXT and HTML.

Panopticum Photo FX is available for Mac and Windows for $139.95 ($35 off the price of each filter separately). For more information, visit http://www.panopticum.com.