Review of Eye Candy 5 Textures

Textures is the first in the series of Eye Candy 5 plug-ins by Alien Skin . It consists of ten seamless texture generators with over 200 presets. Some of the filters are from the previous collection but have been updated and their effects increased.

The interface gives the user a lot of control. For example, there are unlimited undoes and redoes; the filter settings can be saved, exported, etc. And, what I always like to see, each filter can be reverted to its factory default. The filters are easy to load and manipulate with a live preview as well as a copy of the original image on the screen. There is also a toggle button to change the effects on the image back to the regular image. And, of course, there is a magnifier for changing the relative size of the image. The filters are packaged in a nice box with a well illustrated and informative manual.

The first two columns of images were created from images with white backgrounds. The last column of images was created from a pink and scarlet colored flower. Only some of the filters can draw from the color of the original instead of from a solid color of the user's choice. Even then, some of the filter's specific presets superimpose their own color on the background color like the filter Texture Noise's preset Grey Diamonds.

Filters Effects Using White Original Variations Using White Original Using Patterned Original
Brick Wall
Animal Fur
Diamond Plate  
Reptile Skin
Stone Wall  
Swirl
Texture Noise

Weave

Wood  
Marble  

Each filter has a myriad of possibilities. The menus for the Snake Skin filter are as follows:

Original Image
Reptile Filter

Notice the red arrow above. It points to the Seamless Tile Option. Only check it when you want to create a seamless tile.

One of the effects suggested by Alien Skin was to use the Swirl filter to create an Impressionistic style. See the results below:

Original Swirl Filter

I decided to have some fun and turn my dog into a cat with the Animal Fur filter. The picture on the right shows that the color of the fur chosen picked up the color from the original image. The image on the bottom used two different colors.

My Dog My Dog with Longer Fur
My Dog as a Calico Cat

Since Textures is a plug-in, it must be used with a host program. The requirements for the host programs for both the Mac and Windows are: Adobe Photoshop 7 or later, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 or later, Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 or later. Added to the Window's OS is also Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 or later. The system requirements for Windows are: 1 GHz Pentium III processor, 256 MB RAM, Windows 2000 or XP. And for the Mac they are: 500 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, 256 MB RAM, and Mac OS X 10.2.6 or later.

The estimated Street price is US $99.00 and the upgrade price for registered users of previous versions of Eye Candy is US $49.00.

This is an easy to use flawless set of texture plug-ins that can be used as backgrounds, screen savers, especially if tiled, or to augment any design. I enjoyed using them and recommend them as a good addition to one's set of filters. Alien Skin has a demo which good for 30 days.

For a review of Eye Candy 5's Nature plug-in, go to Nature.