Introducing Red Prince Photoshop Plug-ins

We would like to introduce you to some of the best filters for the manipulation of your bitmap images—the Photoshop plug-ins from Red Prince.

Each and every one of these filters was first conceived, then hand coded, by assembly language guru G. Adam Stanislav (that’s his picture on the left). Because of that, the filters have virtually no memory requirements (if you can run Windows and Photoshop or a Photoshop-compatible program, you can run these filters). Better yet, they work very fast. No more waiting forever to apply your effects to your images.

As impressive as the technology behind Red Prince filters is, that is not the only reason why we recommend them so highly.

What is truly impressive about Red Prince filters is that, after writing many small plug-ins, their creator finally decided to place many different filters into a single Photoshop plug-in, which he named Red Prince Pixie Dust. He then made it available for free download to anyone who wants it. If you want it, go ahead and start downloading it now. Then continue reading.

The author created these filters because he was tired of the limitations of the filters that come built in with programs like Photoshop, Paint Shop, Photo Paint, etc. He was equally disappointed with various third party plug-ins. He wanted to gain complete control over the color of each individual pixel, indeed of every channel (i.e., red, green, blue) of each pixel. He also wanted to be able to filter his bitmaps regardless of whether he was using Photoshop, Photo Paint, Paint Shop, or any other image editing software.

To achieve his goal, he wrote a library of color processing routines, which he code named Pixie. He used it for a while, then decided he was still not happy. He started from scratch and wrote another such library. He repeated this process several times over the period of five years, until he was finally satisfied with his Pixie library.

That library, by the way, is included with the free Red Prince Pixie Dust plug-in, so if you have not started downloading it, you may want to start now!

He wrote the Red Prince Pixie Dust plug-in to enable image processing software, such as Photoshop, Photo Paint, Paint Shop, and others, to use the Pixie library.

The images you see to the left of this text are but a small sample of the various ways a Pixie-enabled image editor can manipulate images. The various effects range from very subtle error correction (such as adjusting the contrast or exposure of an image) to radical changes of the colors without distorting the essential shape of an image.

As an avid photographer, G. Adam Stanislav made sure his software would enable him to achieve with his computer everything he used to do in his darkroom. That includes adjusting the exposure (dodging, burning) and contrast, among other things. The only difference between doing it with his software and doing it in his darkroom was the much higher precision, control, subtlety, as well as repeatability, with which the software can accomplish these tasks.

But he did not stop there. All of the effects produced in a traditional darkroom are based on physical and chemical principles whose effects on the colors of an image can be expressed by various mathematical functions.

Of course, there are other mathematical functions that can be used to manipulate the colors of an image, even if their effects cannot be achieved by the physical and chemical processes used in a traditional darkroom. Adding such functions to the Pixie library was a logical step for someone who wanted a complete control over the colors of his images.

All of this functionality is available in the Red Prince Pixie Dust plug-in (if you still have not downloaded it, you can do it now).

Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro

But that is not all! You can completely unleash your creativity with an even more impressive collection of filters called Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro. It does everything that the original Red Prince Pixie Dust can do. But it adds so much new functionality that using it will completely change the way you can manipulate your images.

Not only does it let you transform the colors in your bitmaps, it lets you manipulate individual color channels. Further, it lets you set the opacity of each effect (that is, how strong the effect is). Separately for each channel, of course.

Now, you could set the opacity the hard way yourself. You could simply create two layers of the same image, modify one with a filter, then blend it with the unmodified layer, setting the opacity of the effect to anywhere between 0% and 100%. Not only does Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro set the opacity automatically without the need for a separate layer. And not only can it do so separately for each channel. It can go beyond the 100%. And it can go beyond the 0%. Yes, Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro can produce negative opacity for its filters! In other words, it can turn virtually every one of its effects into an “anti-effect”.

Take, for example, the posterize filter, which is very popular and comes with most image editors. But its power can be enhanced by doing different levels of posterization in different color channels. The posterization effect reduces the number of available color levels. But what if we reduced the red and green channels to two levels, but the blue channel to seventeen levels? And, what if we further set different effect opacities for the different channels, say -166% for the red channel, -183% for the green one, and +9% for the blue one. The result will look nothing like the traditional posterization effect. We have just created a completely new effect that we do not even have a name for!

But please do not think adjusting each channel separately is only good for wild effects. It is a perfect tool for fine tuning the results of image adjustment with unprecedented precision.

Let us, for example, adjust the exposure using the exponential method of the Pixie library. If we underexpose (darken) the red channel by 35%, but overexpose (lighten) the other two channels, green by 83% and blue by 142%, here is what it will look like:

The result is still a picture of G. Adam Stanislav but with a colder skin tone and slightly bluer eyes.

It is often hard to decide what values to use for the different channels. For that reason the filters included with the Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro plug-in come with a Random button which lets you find many interesting effects you can use to transform your images.

Is there such a thing as too many options? Perhaps in some areas. But Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro comes fully prepared for the possibility that you have found just the right combination of effect options and would like to access that precise filtering effect over and over again.

With most other plug-ins you just have to write all your options down. With Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro you do not (unless you want to). Most of the filters enclosed with Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro let you export your own custom filters. That’s right, Red Prince Pixie Dust Pro lets you create your own plug-ins from the filters you design. Go ahead, click on the above image (the one marked “Exposure”) and download that particular effect as an exported plug-in. Just unzip it into whatever directory your image editor looks for Photoshop plug-ins and you are ready to use that effect any time you want.

Best of all, what you do with the plug-ins you export is up to you. You can simply install them on your system for quick access. You can give them to your friends and associates. You can even sell them!

So where do you get this beauty? Chances are it is already on your computer. If you downloaded the free Red Prince Pixie Dust, you already have all the software (if not, you still can download it now). Simply run the setup program and install the free version of Red Prince Pixie Dust. Make sure to copy the plug-in itself to the directory in which your image editor is looking for Photoshop plug-ins. Then choose Red Prince / About Pixie Dust Pro from the plug-ins menu. You will be able to register for the Pro version right from there.

It is that simple. Luckily at that! The business advisors of the publisher (Red Prince) wanted the author (G. Adam Stanislav) to break the plug-in into a number of smaller plug-ins, each producing just one effect or a limited family of effects. They wanted that because all these individual plug-ins distributed separately would sell for $500 - $700. But the author refused. He insisted that he wanted to keep all of these filters together in one Photoshop plug-in, so anyone would be able to register and use it to their heart’s content.

Because the author did not give in to corporate pressures, you can have all of these filters not for $700.00, not even for $500.00. A registration for just $300.00 would be very equitable. But on the insistence of the author, the publisher allows you to register it all for just at least until the next version comes out when the price will go up (though current registrants will be able to upgrade for free).