Photoshop is capable of doing most of the things Alien Skin's Eye Candy (now version 7) can do, but some of the capabilities it adds aren't things that can be done with Photoshop alone. The question, though is why use Photoshop alone and spend half an hour creating an effect that Eye Candy can create in a few seconds. Time, after all, is money.
Here is a big panic button. I started with a red rectangle and a yellow word.
As with other Alien Skin products, Eye Candy has lots of default effects. Think of these as factory defaults, but you can ad
d your own touches to all of them and create exactly the look that you want.
Even a relatively simple bevel has three top-level presets and nearly 30 second-level presets. After picking the appropriate starting point, you'll look to the panel on the right to modify basic settings (such as bevel height and width), lighting (brightness, size, color, and direction), and the bevel's profile.
Chrome effects can be created directly in Photoshop, but I've never been able to get the kind of result I like and the process is long, involved, and tedious. Using Eye Candy, I created this effect in less than a minute.
But maybe you want something more. Eye Candy effects can be stacked. All you need to do is make both of the effects visible and then export the image in the format you need.
Or perhaps you'd like a glass effect. For this I started with a yellow starburst. Eye Candy remembers the last effect used, so when I opened it with this new image, I was greeted by a glorious corona effect on the image. I'll have to remember this one.
But I wanted the glass effect. You'll see how the controls on the right have changed so that they are appropriate to the effect being created. There are still bevel settings because they are needed for this effect, but now there are settings for glass color, opacity, tinting, refraction, inner shadow opacity, and more.
Some of the effects are more appropriate for text and objects, but many can be used with photographs. Fortunately, Alien Skin has a lot of on-line tutorials that explain how to use Eye Candy. If you download a trial version, be sure to watch at least the first few tutorials so you'll understand how things work.
Effects are divided into two primary categories, shape and texture. The shape effects primarily modify, well, the shape of the object you're working on. How's that for stating the obvious? The texture effects modify the surface.
Let's say, for example, that I'd like to cover the word "cat" with fur. Easy!
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Alien Skin's Eye Candy Offers a Huge Range of Useful, Fun, and Sometimes Whimsical EffectsBoth photographers and designers will find something to like in the latest version of Eye Candy. In version 7, the Photoshop plug-in has evolved to be more usable and more powerful while retaining an interface that makes it easy to use.
Additional details are available on the Alien Skin website.
Firefox has fallen to around 8% market penetration and continues to sink. Chrome now has, by far, the largest share of the market -- 50% overall and 54% if you look at just desktop and notebook systems. For Windows 10 users, Edge is making inroads now that more plug-ins are available. It's beginning to look like future battles will be largely between Edge and Chrome (and Safari if you want to include MacOS systems).
In recent months I've noticed that Firefox needs to be restarted several times per day.
I've been looking at Maxthon (the browser from China) and Edge (the replacement for Internet Explorer) in addition to Chrome and Opera. On any given day and depending on what I'm doing, I will have one or two browsers running. Generally it's been Firefox as the primary browser and Chrome for other tasks.
Maxthon is a decent browser, but I couldn't get LastPass to work with in. Maxthon offers its own LastPass-like function, but I don't want to use it. It also offers additional features that I like, but those features require being signed in to a Maxthon account. Apparently it's necessary to sign out of the Maxthon account to make LastPass work.
Edge works properly with LastPass, but the Facebook Purity add-on isn't yet certified for use with Edge. As a result, users need to enable some developer extensions, jump through a few hoops to install the add-on, and then confirm loading of the add-on every time Edge starts. As a security measure, Edge disabled any "unapproved" extensions when it closes.
So neither is exactly a perfect solution, but Edge looked like the winner. For about a week, it was my default browser and Chrome was second, followed by Opera, Maxthon, and Firefox. I may decide to switch the order of Opera and Maxthon, but what's unusual is the position of Firefox. Even when I've specified a browser other than Firefox as the default, I've generally kept it in second or third place.
When Edge crashes, it doesn't take down the entire browser, but the page reload process is a bit cumbersome. I saw regular crashes on Facebook and by "regular", I mean at least once an hour. So I've reversed Chrome and Edge. Edge looks like it will be a winner, but Microsoft still has a lot of work to do.
When Chrome crashes, just a single page crashes. In addition, it seems to be faster than Edge and has far more extensions and add-ons available. So ....?
For now Chrome is the winner, but I'm keeping an eye on Edge and maybe it's time to admit that Microsoft has created a decent browser. Maybe it's time to say that unless the Mozilla Organization gets its act together, it will no longer be even a minor player
More than half of Android users are running outdated versions of the Chrome browser according to research by Duo Security. The company provides monitoring services for portable devices from Microsoft and Android that are used in corporate environments.
Old applications are often capable of being used by thieves to gain access to the portable devices and then to the corporate network. Duo's research examined about 1 million Android devices and found that nearly 60% were running outdated versions of the browser, about a third had no security code, and more than 20 thousand had been tampered with.
The dominant mobile browser is Chrome, with 36% of the market. Internet Explorer is second with 29%, followed by Firefox (12%), Safari Mobile (8%), Safari (7%), Chrome Mobile (3%), Microsoft Edge (3%), AppleMail (1%), and Chrome Mobile IOS (1%).
More than 60% of Internet Explorer installation were found to be running old and vulnerable versions of Flash and it's clear that users are lax in updating Flash across the board: 32% of Safari and Firefox installations had outdated versions. Only 11% of Chrome users had out of date versions of Flash. Security flaws in old versions of Flash can result in data leaks and remote code execution, allowing an attacker to take control of an affected system.
Commercial stock photo and music provider Shutterstock has expanded the functionality of its design application, Shutterstock Editor, to include templates and the ability to upload personalized visual content to the template. The application is aimed at small business owners, so it will probably have a limited affect on Adobe and other applications that are intended for professional developers.
Shutterstock launched the editor in open beta about a year ago. It's a web-based application that provides access to millions of photos and illustrations that can be used for presentations, social media posts, and advertisements.
After selecting one of Shutterstock's templates, users can search through the company's collection of 100 million images. After selecting a photo or illustration, the user can then edit the selected image, personalize the document by uploading their own logo or other business images, and then save the document for additional editing or publishing. Designs can also be published directly to social media sites.
Shutterstock provides licensed photographs, vector images, illustrations, videos, and music to businesses, marketing agencies, and media organizations. Currently the company has nearly 150,000 contributors and adds thousands of images per week. Shutterstock is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Chicago, Denver, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Paris, and San Francisco.
For more information, visit the Shutterstock website.
