Aetherize

What it does

Aetherize produces dreamy, gauzy, or surreally colored images from photographs. It can add subtle variations of hue or extreme coloration. The best results come from using it on scanned photos, but it can be used to soften flat-color graphics too.

How to install

Illustrated installation instructions are online.

To use this software, you need a paint program which accepts standard Photoshop 3.0 plugins.

Just put the plug-in filter into the folder where your paint program expects to find it. If you have Photoshop, the folder is Photoshop:Plugins:Filters or Photoshop:Plug-ins. You must restart Photoshop before it will notice the new plug-in. It will appear in the menus as Filters->Flaming Pear->Aetherize.

Most other paint programs follow a similar scheme.

If you have Paint Shop Pro: you have to create a new folder, put the plug-in filter into it, and then tell PSP to look there.

PSP 7:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences-> File Locations... and choose the Plug-in Filters tab. Use one of the "Browse" buttons to choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Effects->Plug-in Filters->Flaming Pear->Aetherize.

PSP 8, 9, and X:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences-> File Locations... In the dialog box that appears, choose Plug-ins from the list. Click "Add." If you are using PSP 8 or 9, click "Browse". Now choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Effects->Plugins->Flaming Pear->Aetherize.

Controls

When you invoke Aetherize, a dialog box will appear:

Quick start
If you just want to see some effects quickly, click the dice button until you see something you like; then click OK. Using the dice is the easiest way to use Aetherize. If you want to hand-tune your own effects, it helps to learn the controls, which are explained below.		dice

Sliders
Aetherize recolors and blurs the image, and then combines the result with the original in various ways. Blur controls how far colors will bleed from their sources. Hues sets the number of new colors introduced into the picture. Colorize sets how much the new colors will replace the original colors. Haze influences the contrast to produce a gauzy look. Dreaminess, when set to high values, will produce stark contrasts and vivid colors.

Things to try
1. Soft focus. Try these settings: Blur 30 Hues 12 Colorize 100 Haze 50 Dreaminess 13 You'll get a soft-focus effect that you can adjust in several ways: Changing Blur changes the sharpness of the edges in the image. Changing Hues will introduce new colors not present in the original. Changing Colorize will affect the saturation of those new colors. Increasing Haze will produce a gauzier look. Increasing Dreaminess will produce starker colors.
2. Rainbow. Use the same settings as for soft focus, above, but turn the Hues up to 100. Settings like these will produce colored stripes in the sky, in softly lit fleshtones, in washes of bounce light on walls, or anywhere a gradient of brightness appears. The Blur control will change the width of the stripes; Dreaminess will strongly change the colors.
3. Moody sky. Set Blur 25, Hues to 40, and the other sliders to zero. If you change the Hues or Dreaminess, new colors will appear.
4. Subtle color influences. This example uses the same settings as for the rainbow effect, but with a much larger Blur and a smaller Colorize setting so that faint washes of color appear. You can use this effect to add life to drably colored images.

Other controls
Dice The dice choose a random effect. Click as much as you want to see different effects. Glue mode popup menu Lets you combine the result with the underlying image in various ways. Modes other than "normal" produce special effects. The next-glue button advances to the next glue mode. Plus, % and minus buttons: These zoom the preview in and out. Drag the preview to move it. Load preset Aetherize comes with some presets, which are files containing settings. To load one, click this button and browse for a preset file. Save preset When you make an effect you like, click this button to save the settings in a file.  Undo backs up one step. OK  Applies the effect to your image. Cancel  Dismisses the filter, and leaves the image unchanged.		dice next glue load preset save preset undo

Versions Version 1.55 June 2007 Fixes a problem where the plug-in wouldn't remember its registration when it was installed in one user account but activated in another. Version 1.4 July 2004 Works in 16-bit color. Version 1.3 December 2003 Recordable as a Photoshop action. Version 1.25 September 2003 Adds more glue modes and the next-glue button. Version 1.22 February 2003 Adds more glue modes and fixes a crash that could happen when using the menus under Windows XP. Version 1.21 December 2002 Adds new glue modes: Color, Luminance, Linear Light, and Pin Light. Fixes the appearance of text in the interface when running under Mac OS X 10.2.3 . Version 1.2 February 2002 Adds previews in the preset browser. Version 1.1 September 2001 Adds an Undo button. Version 1.0 September 1999 First release.

Questions

Answers to common technical questions appear on the support page.

For bug reports and technical questions about the software, please write to support@flamingpear.com .