Product Reviews

Alien Skin's EyeCandy has long been the premier generator of real-world effects for Photoshop users. But as the filters have become more powerful through the releases, so EyeCandy has become a vast, expensive suite of plug-ins. Alien Skin has taken the decision to split the behemoth into three separate sets, correspondingly lowering the price of each to a third of the original cost. The first set to become available is Textures; Nature and Impact will follow next year.

Some of the Texture filters will be familiar, in name at least: Fur, Marble, Wood and Weave all appeared in previous versions of the filter suite. But that's about where the comparison ends. Where the previous texture filters required a certain degree of suspension of disbelief on the part of the user, the new versions are sophisticated, intricate texture generators that really do build the effects whose names they bear.

The filters that simulate real-world textures are the most impressive. Animal Fur recreates six fur types: cheetah, dalmatian, giraffe, leopard, tiger and zebra. These names refer to coarse characteristics: all the parameters of hair length and direction, base and spot/stripe colour, speckle and variation, wave strength and spacing, stiffness and lighting can be tweaked to produce both realistic and alien fur combinations of infinite variety.

The Wood filter has also had a massive boost in this upgrade, with expert control over knots, grain, swirls, texture and colour. To ease the potential minefield of complication, there's a large variety of presets, from Cedar to Walnut, Mahogany to Knotty Pine. Wood has always been a difficult material to simulate, and this filter makes a fair stab at it. But it over-reaches itself with its attempts to create panels and floorboards, which look plastic and unconvincing. The Marble filter has also been enhanced with more control, more presets and greater overall realism.

Almost as impressive as Animal Fur is Reptile Skin, which fills selections with a scaly pattern. The ingenuity comes from the sense of lumpiness: rather than creating a flat mosaic, Reptile Skin optionally builds in an undulating

ADVERTISEMENT

three-dimensional effect that suggests the muscular structure beneath the surface. Again, the many presets allow you to begin with a texture anywhere from a goldfish to a crocodile, and tweak it.

There are three man-made texture filters to complement the naturalistic ones. Stone Wall is actually better at crazy paving and patio effects than walls, which tend to have that uniform stone-cladding look that was so popular in the 1970s. Brick Wall, its counterpart, renders the kind of plasticky walls that grace the outside of doll's houses, although, to be fair, its Provenal-style bathroom tiles are rather more convincing. Best of this bunch is Diamond Plate, used for building those dimpled metal panels reminiscent of industrial flooring. There's a good degree of control over the shape, size and scattering of the diamond pattern, and you can also add wear and tear in the form of scratches and surface roughness, which is a neat touch. The final filters in the set, Swirl, Texture Noise and Weave, all add synthetic texturing to existing images.

The interface draws heavily on the excellent existing Alien Skin model, with several enhancements that build on its legendary ease of use. Presets, both factory-supplied and user-defined, now appear in two panes within the main window, rather than tucked away in the menus as before. There's also a new message bar panel, which uses an Internet connection to keep users informed about updates, new presets and general tips and techniques.

As the first set of EyeCandy spin-offs, Textures is something of a mixed bag. The good stuff is very good - the natural world filters are enormously convincing and hugely customisable - but the brick and stone walls have a nagging model railway feel to them. And while the Swirl filter can generate reasonably convincing Van Gogh lookalikes, it's been demonstrated a dozen times before that no one actually wants to do this.

Whereas EyeCandy filters have in the past appealed to mainstream Photoshop users, this selection is more targeted at those who need to generate textures for 3D modelling. The ability to generate seamless tiles from all textures is one they'll certainly value, as it will allow them to create texture maps that can be applied infinitely to 3D surfaces.

The price point of Textures has been set low enough for users to be able to buy the set for the one filter they need; all the rest can be regarded as optional extras. 3D modellers will delight in the ease with which they can now generate both natural and man-made textures, and we can expect to see fur and lizard-skin lettering adorning magazines and websites in the months to come.

NEEDS: Photoshop 7 or later or Photoshop Elements 2 or Fireworks MX 2004