Below is a message posted August 2006 from Sally Beacham in the Paint Shop Pro Scrapping forum.
Hi guys and gals -
I've been reviewing the suite of plugins at www.twistingpixels.com - and thought I'd pass along some info at this time.
There are 4 plugin "groups" - one freeware/demo and the other three commercial. All 4 plugin packs install into a single installer, so if you download and install the demo, you actually get the freeware fully functional set, along with the demo versions of the commercial sets (which are watermarked in the preview.) You can turn off the demo stuff in the interface, if you only want to keep and use the freebies. You can also register the commercial stuff directly from the interface if you decide to buy them, so installation is pretty neat, I think.
The effects seem to be nearly perfect for scrappers' needs. PixelSampler (the freeware set) has 9 photographic film effects, such as Duotone, Starlight and Grain. The PixelCreation set shares some similarities with Auto FX's Mystical Lighting and Flaming Pear's Solar Cell/Lunar Cell plugins. Plus it's got some nifty cloud and sky generation filters!
The PixelPaper set is probably the most useful for scrappers - the fold/crumple/crinkle/rip effects are exactly what most of us use when creating scrapbook elements. You can use bump maps, surface, lighting and reflection effects to create all kinds of realistic paper effects.
The PixelPack has several Eye Candy/Blade Pro/DreamSuite type effects - Rock Candy is a texture/bevel generator that would be useful for all those shiny cool things people want on their layouts. One plugin that makes me smile is LabelMaker - yep, creates labelmaker tape effects.
The interface is somewhat similar to the Alien Skin interface. Load the plugin, and you can access all the filters from inside the interface. In addition, there's a layers palette which allows you to build effects and turn them on and off as needed.
The on-screen rendering preview of effects is pretty slow, but the actual render to the image is ungodly slow at print sizes - but that's true of most other plugins too. If you don't have at least 1 gb of RAM, you will definitely NOT be happy with the speed here. I'm not all that delighted at 2 gb. I have not printed anything yet, so can't speak to actual print quality.
If you already own the Alien Skin or Auto FX suites, you probably don't need this - but... if you want a less expensive option, the entire bundle can be had $129. The individual plugin packs range from free ;-)))) to 109.95 US (so if you were tempted by one pack, it makes sense to get the whole thing.)
Sally Beacham
p.s. If anyone has a plugin jones, we could futz around with the freebie stuff this weekend....
Actually, considering the sheer numbers of effects, I think it's fairly easy to figure out. The same interface is used for all the effects, and any tools or features that are used in the effect are "standard" to the plugin - meaning, the layout is the same, the tools are the same, they work the same way.
It does something a little funky with selections, which I just have to figure out... but there's a 64 page PDF manual that's very friendly so I'll be looking at that.
I like that you can build effects on top of each other in the preview, and you can save presets that combine multiple effects, as well as append a preset to an existing set of effects while in the preview.
Plus, it makes good use of standard Windows OS features to view the preset thumbnails - each preset includes a preset file AND a .jpg. Just set your Folder View options to Thumbnails and you can view all the presets as you browse them. Somebody must have been listening to all those Blade Pro nuts who always create preview files for their presets before they share them.Oh wait, I'm one of those Blade Pro nuts...
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Sally Beachamwww.dizteq.com / www.lvsonline.com
Paint Shop Pro 8 Zero to Hero
Digital Scrapbooking (Course Technology)