Adobe Photoshop
The good folks at MadeBySource have released Fontea, a plugin for Photoshop that allows you to apply one of 700 Google Fonts with a single click via a native panel. It’s quick and easy, and works quite well.
Adobe Photoshop
This short video should tell you all you need to know about what PixelSquid does. Manipulating images as 3D objects right inside Photoshop without the hassle of knowing how to use 3D tools is a concept I’m surprised more companies haven’t tried to tackle.
Read more “Manipulate 3D images right inside Photoshop with free plugin”
Adobe Photoshop
I told you FlatIcon was the one Photoshop plugin you should absolutely be using back in March. It’s so convenient. When I updated to Adobe Creative Cloud 2014, the Photoshop plugin stopped working.
Read more “FlatIcon plugin updated for Photoshop CC2014”
Adobe Photoshop
I’ve tried a LOT of Photoshop plugins. They all have their specific uses, and many of them are worthy of your purchase. But few are as useful on a daily basis as this one.
Adobe Photoshop
Ink is a plugin that helps web designers and developers provide extra information about their mockups by documenting layers, typography, effects and shape sizes, etc.
Read more “Photoshop documentor plugin for web designers & developers”
Adobe Photoshop
Alien Skin Software announced the immediate availability of an update to its Eye Candy 7 graphic design effects plug-in. The update adds the capability to store presets in a cloud storage folder so that they can be synchronized between multiple computers.
Cloud preset sharing is available to all users of Eye Candy 7, not just users of Photoshop CC. It works with multiple cloud storage services, including Dropbox.
I’ve done a visual review of Eye Candy 7 in the recent past, and I love the plugin!
The update also adds compatibility with the new Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud.
Adobe Illustrator
SubScribe Designer is a creative workflow enhancement tool for all designers working in Adobe Illustrator. It provides simple access to common drawing tasks such as lines to/from curve tangents or perpendiculars and circles and arcs defined by 2 or 3 points.
Another key function is the Orient tool which allows users to rotate or straighten objects intuitively, precisely and easily.
SubScribe Designer tools:
SubScribe Designer for Adobe Illustrator is completely free. Illustrator CS6 installation requires Adobe Exchange.
Adobe Illustrator
I spend a lot of time searching for stock photography. One of the sites I spend the most time on is iStockPhoto due to its large selection of images and relatively low cost. Switching between my InDesign layout and Safari to compare the images on the website to the layout to see if the image is appropriate can be tedious – especially when you consider the time to download and place the comp images.It would be so great if you could do it right inside InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator without using a browser. Thankfully, you can with this nifty plugin.
iStockPhoto has released the iStockPhoto Plugin for InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator that adds a Panel to all three apps which allows you to search for images, view the images, create and view light boxes, and place a comp image directly into your file, and purchase the image – all without ever leaving the Adobe application.
Installation is simple, as the plugin is installed for all three apps via the Adobe Extension Manager. The plugin is free. You can search for images and add comp images to your layout, but you must have an iStockPhoto account to use lightboxes and purchase images.
General
The FontShop Plugin Beta allows designers and other type enthusiasts to try out FontShop fonts directly inside Adobe Photoshop CS5 and CS5.5. You can preview any of the over 150,000 FontShop fonts for free, in the context of your own artwork. This is a great new way to find the perfect typographic fit for your project.
You can get more FontShop Plugin info here.
Apple | Mac
One annoying function of OS X’s Mail app is that it automatically marks an email as Read the second it is selected. This is compounded by the fact that Mail automatically selects the top most email in the list (usually the newest email). Sometimes I just want to take a quick peek at an email without actually marking it as read. Thanks to this clever plugin, you can alter the delay Mail uses to mark an email as Read.
TruePreview is a simple plugin that allows you to adjust the delay time Mail uses to mark an email as Read. Once installed, you will find a new tab in Mail’s preferences where you can set the delay time to whatever you wish for all emails. Alternatively, you can turn of the “Mark as Read” status completely until you open an email in a separate window by double clicking the email, forwarding, or replying to an email.
If you prefer, TruePreview allows you to adjust the delay time on a per-account basis. This is particularly useful for those who have multiple email accounts with different providers. Read more “Delay OS X Mail’s “Mark As Read” status”
Adobe Photoshop
Enlarging photos appears to be a simple and mundane task for the average user. But as a pro, you understand the ramifications of firing up Photoshop and just using the Image Size dialog box, or worse yet, just stretching an image in your page layout application. Blow Up 2, from Alien Skin Software, is a Photoshop plugin that produces high-quality image enlargements by using an algorithm which temporarily converts pixels in your photo to vectors. The results are a sharper, more detailed enlargement. Read my full review of Blow Up 2 at Macworld. Blow Up 2 isn’t for everyone, but if you do a lot of image enlargements from low resolution or small high resolution images, Alien Skin has a pretty good solution with Blow Up.