Whither Photoshop and GIMP?

[Richmond Mathewson]

Richard Gaskin wrote:
> Richmond Mathewson wrote:
>
>> For those of you who haven't been to the conference or
>> looked at Ben Beaumont's stack (with RevMedia dp-4),
>> the:
>>
>> Dropshadow
>>
>> Inner Shadow
>>
>> Outer Glow
>>
>> Inner Glow
>>
>> and Color Overlay
>>
>> are at least as good as Photoshop's and considerably
>> better than GIMP's.
>
> They're gorgeous, but with two significant omissions:
>
> 1. bevels - every other of the core set of image enhancement
>    goodies is there but this one, and this is the one most
>    needed for making custom buttons.
>
> 2. while these image enhancements work with all objects
>    (and beautifully so), the wonderful gradients added
>    in the last version are limited to graphic objects
>    only.   I can think of a great many cases where I'd
>    like to use button objects with gradients and shadows,
I don't know what all the fuss is about as I seem to always be
'breaking the rules' by using IMAGES, FIELDS and GRAPHICS
as BUTTONS.

A GRAPHIC object layered above a text field with all the
jazzy gradients can then be grouped with the text field
(or button, for that matter) to achieve all sorts of
spectacular results.

Go, get them:

http://mathewson.110mb.com/FILEZ/FB.rev.zip

>    but alas it's not possible without doing the screen-
>    capture-and-use-as-icon method, which is pretty much
>    the same as using Photoshop or any other external
>    tool to make custom buttons.  :(
Lateral Thinking  :)

Why do I feel that the graphic effects that have appeared
in the RR 4-dp4 offering are symptomatic of more to
come - I certainly hope so.

 From my point of view it is really lovely to leverage
these effects along with GIMP. GIMP does bevels (not
particularly good ones, admittedly); but its dropshadows
are really fairly awful, as are its glows.