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As a long time user of numerous products from Alien Skin, I was excited to get an initial look at this new "Nature" version of Eye Candy 5.
As with all of the previous software that I have loaded up from Alien Skin, the CD loads up quickly, and in just a few minutes, I was already working in "Nature" under the filters menu.
Like most filters, Eye Candy 5, Nature, is a plug in, and works only in conjunction with your other digital editing programs like Adobe Photoshop, Elements, Firewire, or Paint Shop Pro. And is normally accessed via the filters menu.
The filters menu in Nature contains the following filters: Corona, Fire, Drip, Icicles, Ripples, Rust, Smoke, Snow Drift Squint, and Water Drops. But within each of these main categories their are numerous other "presets" that make it extremely easy for any user to find a pre made effect without having to doing it from scratch.
A handy feature in the filters menu is the ability to navigate to all of the main effects from within the program using the pull down menu. This alone saves a great deal of time when I am just browsing through all of the fun effects.
The sheer amount of Preset effects is staggering (over 500), and will save the user an enormous amount of time and effort trying to come up with a specific effect.
The Preset menu is great, but as a feature request, I would like to see it split up into two distinct categories: Those for use with selections, and those that need no selections.
Splitting these effects would help to clarify up front which presets need selections, and which do not.
Another great feature that is a real help with this version is its ability to work with 16 bit images! Way to go!
The new addition of filters to this version of Nature includes Icicles, Ripples, Rust, and Snow Drift. Users do not need to be rocket scientists to figure out what each respective filter does from its name.
I spent a great many hours using, and experimenting with all of the filter in Nature, and currently the "Icicles", and the "Rust" filters are my favorites.
But the test of any great program is just how much fun that it ultimately is to play with.
After playing with all of the built in preset filters, and designing a few of my own, I can say from personal experience that this is truly a powerful, and fun program.
In summary this is a great effects program. It has numerous feature updates which make it even more user friendly than ever. The new Render in new layer, and the Show original buttons are two upgrades that are simply great to have at my fingertips.
The Photoshop style keyboard shortcuts, along with the addition of scriptable Photoshop actions puts the finishing touches on a fine, fun, and feature rich effects program.
And one that everyone should own, and keep in their filters menu at al times.
System stats: I ran this program on a 1 GigHz, twin processor G4 machine with an 80 Gb internal drive, and 1 Gig of RAM. Plus two LaCie Firewire HD's, all running on System 9.2.2, and Sys 10.3.8
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Mac Power PC, G3, G4, or G5, 500 Mhz or higher processor
Mac OS system 10.2.6 and higher. 256 MB of RAM.
"Nature" will work in Photoshop 7 or later, plus Elements 2 or later, and Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 or later.
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