Human
Software Classic Frames 1
Frame
creation plugin for Photoshop, PhotoPaint and PaintShop
by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
This is
the first plugin I've reviewed for this site that borders a
bit on the consumer level. Human Software, maker of a number
of higher-end image editing and effects plugins, publishes a
filter called Classic Frames 1, which is designed exclusively
to add frame edges to images. This is, of course, a one-trick
filter, but it has several variations and a few pretty decent
professional applications as well.
One
of the 60 frame styles that ships with
Classic Frames 1 from Human Software.
For magazine
layout, the possibility of adding frames to images can have
a certain appeal, depending on the theme of a particular story.
You know, if it's a story about elderly people going in for
higher education, you can composite a fancy-looking frame over
a fake diploma. Or for another story you could do one of those
endless variations on American Gothic. Whatever.
Web designers
can also use it for adding a little variation to pages containing
thumbnails or, in the case of gallery pages, to beef up the
metaphor a bit by adding actual frames to images.
But for
me, the appeal actually lies somewhere else, where the impact
can be a bit more significant, namely in the area of bump, texture
and displacement maps for 3D animation.
The Load Effect window in Classic Frames 1 allows you to select
frame styles, which can then be tweaked in the effects editor
(seen below).
We've discussed
before that 3D is becoming an essential tool for designers who
work in Flash or need to create animations for the Web. And
what goes hand in hand with 3D design? A hunger for texture
maps.
So let's
say you're designing an interior scene. You populate the room
with furniture, rugs and knick knacks, but what do you do with
the wall? Leave it bare? Well here comes an incredibly easy
and effective way to add detail to your 3D interior scenes.
Now, I know
what some of you are thinking: Frames are easy to make in 3D
programs. Yes, true, but not frames that come out with the kind
of detail you'll find in Human Software's plugin. Let's take
a look at how it works and what it can output.
What
it does
Classic Frames 1 is not the kind of frame-creation tool we've
seen in the past, where you have to manually composite the image
of a frame over your current layer. It works just like any other
plugin, in that it's accessed through the Filter menu in Photoshop.
The difference is that the primary effect is not an effect at
all but an actual image stretched and stitched on top of your
current image.
There's
no drawback to this approach, since you're not limited to the
selection of frames that ships with the filter, but, since it
is stretching an existing image, you will, depending on the
aspect ratio of your own image, see varying degrees of distortion
in the final output. But if you keep the images to standard
photo ratios or something close to them, you're not going to
see any problems.
The first
time you launch Classic Frames, you see a dialog box giving
you several options, but you can't do anything with these until
you've located the folder that contains your frame images. After
you do this, you'll be presented with thumbnail views of the
available frames (60 styles standard), which you can select
through the graphic display or through a menu selection.
After you
apply the effect, you're given the option of changing the parameters
of the frames and each individual element of the frame. (Frames
can be combined essentially as layers, and each "layer"
is tweakable until you finally apply the effect to your image.)
Classic
Frames 1 provides a number of effects that can be applied to
each element of the frame individually.
There's
a broad range of tweaks available, including several apply modes
(maximum, difference, etc.). You also have the option of applying
some basic effects. These include shadow, wind, wave and other
effects along those lines, as well as some image editing tweaks,
such as hue, saturation and lightness.
For those
of you who want to use the filter for bump maps, you can apply
the effect to an image for the diffuse map, then delete the
image in the frame, desaturate it and save it out as a TIFF
for use in whatever 3D program you have available.
The bottom
line
If you need to create frames for any reason, this plugin will
certainly fill that need. The frames it creates are of great
quality, especially in the leafing, and you get a great range
to select from, especially since you can combine frames for
additional effects. Aside from the actual frames, the plugin
also provides beveled mattes, borders and elements that look
like hand tooling.
The plugin
is easy enough to learn, it being geared for consumers, and
it offers a nice range of options that you're not going to get
by going out and buying a stock photo library of frames, if
you can find one. It's also priced pretty reasonably at $39.95.
I give Classic Frames 1 a buy recommendation for those who need
to produce photorealistic frame effects.
Human Software's
Classic Frames 1 is available for Macintosh and Windows. It
runs on several host applications, including Photoshop, PhotoPaint
and PaintShop. For more information, visit http://www.humansoftware.com.
