Filters Unlimited BETA2 available!

["Michael Johannhanwahr" <mjohannh@provi.de>]

Hi all.

Finally, some month later than expected, I've found some time to 
finish the Filters Unlimited project. Within the next few days you 
can expect a final release.

I decided to give away a free beta version which expires may 1999 but 
it's fully functional except some minor bugs and some missing 
features not yet implemented.

The URL is
http://icnet.simplenet.com/fun10b2.zip (~760 KB)
The file contains a minimal installer and is password protected!
The password is "fun" (without quotation marks)
Install it somewhere in your plugin directory.

Please do not redistribute the file - I want to keep it as private 
as possible. There are still some bugs and except the expiration date 
no further protection. Filters Unlimited will be Shareware, the 
registration fee will be 35 USD.

Here is a feature list:
- Manages an unlimited amount of Filter Factory filters
- Manages an unlimited amount of filter databases
- Imports FFL, AFS & 8BF files (Filter Factory format only)
- Fast & easy to use interface
- Adobe Premiere support: Animate filters over time!
- Full Photoshop Actions support
- Filter preset management system including preview images
- Drag & Drop filters to any category you want
- Supports fractional subsampling (means optimal sized preview)
- Comes with more than 100 ready to use filters
- Embedded Filter Factory editor: Create your own filters
- Enhanced Filter Factory functions for even more effects
(...to be continued)

I think it's very powerfull and maybe the development system we all 
have dreamed of some month or even years ago in this group. You can 
keep the whole FF Galleries, all Andrew's Filters (if you like them) 
in a database with lightning fast access. All filters are kept in a
separate file in a new file format (*.FFX) - each database has its 
own subdirectory. The filenames are created automatically and 
contain both the category and filter name. This makes it very easy 
to redistribute the filters - you can identify them with Windows 
Explorer. The disadvantage is that you are wasting space of your 
harddrive if you are using a FAT16 file system since the filter 
files are usually very small. If you start creating presets, the file 
size grows, because a JPG snapshot is appended to the filter file 
each time you add a preset. So the actual waste is relative. But this 
is a general problem in Windows and DOS.

There is no manual yet - I'm still working on the german version and 
I will pass this to someone who is able to translate it into english 
- hopefully better english than mine ;-)

Some filter operations are only available through context menus - 
use the right mouse button to activate them.

Premiere support is great! You can apply filters to a video sequence 
and let Premiere animate the slider settings. Some usually boring 
filters are really beauties when applied to a video sequence. Just 
cool. I was only able to test it with Premiere 4.2 and it would be 
great if someone could test it with Premiere 5.0. 

The best thing regarding Photoshop is the Actions support. All 
filters are 'actionable' and are recorded with full source code and 
slider settings. When distributing Actions, you don't have to provide 
the filter itself - just the ATN file and Filters Unlimited. 
You can even create new filters while recording an Action!

Please have a try and tell me what you think. 

Thanks for your time and have a great day,
Michael.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Johannhanwahr  mailto:mjohannh@provi.de   ICQ:#6653703
Robert-Bunsen-Str. 70  http://johann.simplenet.com
28357 Bremen, Germany  phone: +49 (0)421 256312 / fax: 2576325