12 replies to this topic

[Red ochre]

Hello, I've made a plugin to render those twinkly highlights you get when a photo is taken towards the Sun, highlights on water or metallic text.
It is also good for space type pictures.




It works on transparent layers, allowing more blend options and uses the primary and secondary colours - so try setting those first, ( a slightly off-white for the secondary gives good results).
Tell me what you think (don't be too cruel, it's the first plugin I've dared to publish!). Enjoy.

Highlight (updated) is now in my plugin pack. Here's the link
Red ochre plugin pack

Edited by Red ochre, 24 October 2012 - 08:31 PM.

[Goonfella]

Nice work. Perfect for spacescapes.

[homebrew]

Tested with fire plugin alone and add water reflection, tested on text and various effects, and with edges detect + ink sketch

always good , think there are plenty of uses!

a four star plug-in

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Very cool Nice job Red Ochre.

[Red ochre]

Thanks for the encouraging feedback - it will spur me on to finish some of my other 'beta' plug-ins

[dj1551]

I love it ! This is great for jewels and chrome and shiny sparkly icons. In only a month it's already become one of my favs.

[Valkathis]

I love it, thank you for sharing

[Red ochre]

Thanks Valkathis and dj1551, for taking the time to reply . Glad you are finding it useful.

[avim1968]

Hi Red ochre

Just wanted to tell you that your highlight2 plugin is GREAT !! :-)
I love it.

I have an idea to add to your plugin, tell me what do you think.

Can you add a selection circle and in it create two radius's with a
changeable angle between them.
this can restrict the effect span to between those two lines only.
saving the need to use/create selection with angles etc..
for example creating a desk light with rays toward the table only.

i also have a question?
I want to create a light bulb effect but with a twist, i want the middle to be empty.
ie. the rays would start to be shown only from a selected radius from the center.
can you tell me how to do it? or can you add such feature to this great plugin?
you can add it to my former idea above, and add the radius selection to the
angle selection box from the above idea.


thank you
Avi.
p.s.
i know i can select a circle on top of the work area cutting the glow start lines.

Edited by avim1968, 22 June 2012 - 09:31 PM.

[Red ochre]

Hello avim1968

Glad you're finding the plugin useful and thanks for taking the time to give some feedback.

Your suggestion to add controls to limit the effect to a segment would be possible, however, I won't be changing the plugin (sorry!). The reasons are as follows:-


1. What you have suggested is very easily achieved by running the plugin on a new layer on top of your image, then deleting the portion you do not need.
a. To select a segment I would draw two straight lines from the centre using the line tool at 1 pixel width, and then 'magic wand' the area to keep, invert the selection and delete.
b. To remove the centre, either use the ellipse/circle select tool or the eraser at a very large width.
I also tend to use a small Gaussian blur after using the effect too.

2. The U.I. (user interface) of the plugin is already huge - I like to give the user as many options as possible, meaning my plugins tend to have more controls than most - if they get any bigger they won't fit on the screen!
Multipage U.I.s are possible if the plugin is created using an advanced program called Visual studio - however I'm too much of a novice to be able to use it. This plugin was one of my first and created with the wonderful 'codelab' plugin.

3. Plugins, ideally, are useful for many users with many different uses for the plugin. Although your ideas would be useful for your use, they would just over complicate the plugin for others (unless I suddenly get 100 post asking for the same thing!). Bespoke plugins are possible though, by using codelab.

4. Life is too short:-
Coding takes time - for me at least.
How many sunrises left? - even optimistically, less than the number of pixels in a 100 by 100 pixel image!

Anyway, keep coming up with ideas and I do recommend you have a go at writing some plugins with codelab.
All the best.

[avim1968]

Hi

thank you for the answer,
I have used your answers to make my image. i just wanted the plugin do it for me.

i was thinking again, about the UI you are correct it is one of the crowed so angle circle would
be too much. so scrap it.

but if you ever get 100 requests for angle restriction /or nothing else to do in your spare time,
i guess you can just add a small box with an angle number (no big circle)
where user can enter 0-360 , default 360,
i think there would be room just for this in the UI ;-)

about the inner circle scrap it too. since doing it the other way is very fast.

codelab:
i have started to look into it, using BoltBait great tutorials!
and learning by looking into other plugins codes, that i can put my hands on.
(any chance to see your highlight2 code ?)


again thank you thank you :-)

Avi

[pdnnoob]

Any chance there will be an anti-alias option in the future?

[Red ochre]

Hello again Avi,
The Highlight code is quite large and difficult to edit in codelab because it's constantly trying to compile and run the plugin whilst you are editing it.
I have just uploaded the code for the 'squirkle' plugin, which is very similar, and much easier to understand/ better written.
http://forums.getpai...le/#entry363068
I do caution you that I am only a novice in coding so the code could probably be much better!
If you get on o.k. understanding that then p.m. me and I'll share the Highlight code - I warn you it's not pretty code though!
{There is a good free code editor called Notepad++, that would be better for just veiwing the code.
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/}

@ pdnnoob - I know some of the options are a bit 'pixelly' - I'm probably not going to fix this any time soon as the whole thing could do with re-writing really.
The best work around for the time being is to run it on it's own layer and apply a small zoom or Gaussian blur - but you've probably worked that out already!
Anti-aliasing gets quite complicated at the best of times - it would be a nightmare without simplifying the code a bit first - sorry.